Moral: Don't piss off Alice Feiring!

http://www.alicefeiring.com/feiringsquad/wine-cop/_98_point_wine.html
A scathing and hilarious evisceration of a Big Jay review of a Spanish 98 pointer.

and long,
(ENOUGH FOR A MAGNUM XL?)

OH MY!

Yawn…AliceF**ring is so…yesterday. Reading her drivel is so tiring, IMHO.
Tom

Sort of seems like low-hanging fruit, if you ask me. Very expensive, low-hanging fruit, though.

Bruce

Awesome. I love Alice.

Times like these, I miss Posner.

RT

Seems remarkably lazy to me. She plays one note, yet still manages to sound atonal.

-Al

+1.

I’d seen this note too, and was trying to imagine the scene in the cellars, say, a year and a half and 3 (of the 4 it’d eventually see) new barrels in.

Picture it: the winemaker, domaine owner, consulting oenologist, perhaps a couple of friends or owners of neighboring estates all draw off the samples that have already been in 3 new oak barrels. They sniff, swirl, taste, ponder. Finally, one of them has the courage to speak up: “Well…it’s pretty oaky…”

Have to say that was my take on it too. In five minutes, anyone could do the same with 90% of the tasting notes out there. Nothing in her remarks that targets much that’s specific to the particular wine or review. I think she’s capable of better writing but has settled for the easy pot-shots since people seem to like those.

When short-selling is legal, it’s amazing how wealthy you can become by trafficking in the barn-burning bidness.

The older and more cynical I become, the more I wonder whether Rome [or, say, the library at Alexandria] burned to the ground because someone had arranged for a short contract on it.

Gotta give her credit for finding the most ridiculously exaggerated wine imaginable. $750, 400% new oak, black in color, and so on. The original note is virtually a self parody (as its author). Ripe for mockery, and mock it she does!

Of course she can do better (I’m no fanboy though), but this one is impossible to pass up.

Very low hanging fruit these days. At least she could have made it clever or funny. I don’t see the value in that post other than to preach to the choir.

Entertainment.

The sad thing about what she did is that the wine is actually amazing. I’ve been lucky enough to have tried it a couple of times, and I still have a couple of bottles in my cellar. Thankfully I didn’t pay $700 - I got it direct at the winery (and one bottle was gifted to me by the winemaker). And yes it’s expensive, but to me, it’s one of the few wines I’d ever rate 100 points. And they only make 200 cases or so a year. Think of it as the Screaming Eagle of Spain. But it’s not for everyone, since it is a monster. To put it in perspective, it made a bottle of SQN Midnight Oil on the same table one night seem boring.

And it doesn’t get racked 3 times into new oak. That was an error on JM’s part. It does get racked once into new oak (200% new oak), but the wine actually needs it given how much other stuff is there.

Making fun of RMP and JM is easy sport, but it’s unfortunate when a great wine gets unfairly disparaged in the process.

Are these barrels in Lompoc?

If so, is it a new facility?

Brian,

How dare you actually comment on the WINE here (-:

As Tom and others have said, much ado about nothing . . .

200% new oak, eh?!?!? Is THIS where those guys got the idea?!?!? Not that there’s anything ‘wrong’ with that - and I’m sure they’re not the only one doing it - maybe one of the few that is actually ADMITTING it!

Too bad the wine’s so expensive - seems like it’d be an interesting wine to try . . .

Cheers!

I’m sure this is what gets her goat more than anything…
“Vina Sastre is a benchmark estate in Ribera del Duero. It is committed to organic farming and biodynamic principles with the wines naturally made”…

Very effective tasting note. It tells you alot about the wine.

Ripe for mockery as well.

The mockery isn’t terribly well done though. And someone should tell Alice that there’s a wine region out there where pencil lead has been used as a descriptor for a while now.

Why? While the “benchmark” comment is arguable (but I happen to agree), the rest is a statement of fact. I’m not a proponent of biodynamic farming, but it seems to works for Sastre and their Pesus. And just because a wine is big and bold, it doesn’t mean that there was any “spoof”. If someone wants to point at the 200% new oak as “un-natural”, I disagree. It may be a bit extreme, but given that DRC uses 100% new oak on Pinot Noir, I don’t see that 200% on incredibly (naturally) concentrated Tempranillo is that big a deal. And certainly within the bounds of natural winemaking (IMHO).

To me, it just seems that Alice doesn’t like this style of wine. Nothing new there… she can get in line behind Eric Asimov, Matt Kramer, etc.