Menage a Trois Decadence Cabernet Sauvignon – A Pleasant Surprise

Solid, crowd-pleasing 100% California Cabernet at a great price, the Menage a Trois Decadence Cabernet Sauvignon.

100% Cabernet Sauvignon from Lodi, Monterey and the North Coast of California. The wine is infused with 40% French oak and has residual sugar of 4 g/L.

Sample submitted for review. The Menage a Trois Decadence Cabernet Sauvignon has an SRP of $14 and is widely available for around $10 although you can almost always find it on sale somewhere for even less than that. Ready to buy? Check your local retailers for this wine.

The 2017 Menage a Trois Decadence Cabernet Sauvignon is a grape and ripe berry jam-a-rama on the nose. There's vanilla and chocolate in there as well but my first thought is "uh-oh, what have I gotten myself into…" However, tasting the wine shows it to be smooth and flavorful. All the ripe berry jam is toned down in the mouth and it's actually pretty balanced. This medium to full-bodied wine has lots of nice touches of spice plus more vanilla and chocolate. I'm pleasantly surprised, this is quite well done. It ends with a dry, lingering finish.

This is a solid, crowd pleasing Cabernet. Sure it's a bit manufactured, after all it is "infused" with 40% French oak, whatever that means. (Oak chips? Oak powder?) However, that doesn't stop it from being a solid wine and a good value that you can find just about everywhere.

On top of that I have to give it props for being 100% Cabernet Sauvignon which you don't typically see in Cali Cab at this price since it only needs to be 75% to be labeled as such. Lastly, it's relatively dry – at just 4 g/L of residual sugar it's about 60% lower than the Menage a Trois red blend which has 11 g/L.

Ready to buy? Check your local retailers.