Ménage à Trois Cabernet Sauvignon, 2018 (California)

“Call me a cab.”

Price at Purchase: Gift

Location: Gus’s Market

Want a cab that tastes like a cab? Choose this one right here. This is your tried-and-true deep-red cabernet sauvignon that has the expected dense and depth to it to make even the biggest wine snob nod in approval.

It has all of the traditional tastes—cherry, blackberry, and plum—to go well with pretty much everything. The “gimmick” with this bottle though is that 2/3 of us tasted black licorice (I was the outlier). So take that as you will, since it may bring you back to the last time you bought a box of Good & Plentys. Or in my case, misjudged the flavor of a black jelly bean and immediately spat it out. Now that I think about it, maybe it's for the best that I didn’t get any of that flavor in this wine, or else this would have been a VERY different review.

Observation: with a name like Ménage à Trois, I was expecting some more sultry, sensual notes to it. However, their website comes at you fast with all of the NSFW lingo, keeping well on-brand. They call each varietal a “confession”, each with its own come-hither tagline. For example, this one’s one-liner is “We’ll tempt you with our irresistible sensations”. Cool cool, I may have signed up for more than I thought by purchasing this bottle. There’s also only two figures on the label image—am I supposed to be the third?!!