TN: 2012 Rivers-Marie Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast

[Dave_H]

Lord help us if someone ever says they think a Bedrock Old Vines Zin is only “okay.”
(I have never had a R-M Pinot, but have three of the 2012 SC in the cellar.)

[Joshua_Kates]

I’m sort of w/Beau here, though perhaps not so critical. I got my RM shipment last week and popped and poured a 2012 Sonoma Coast this Sat (admittedly less than a week after it arrived). Given what I had read on the board, I had expected to be pretty blown away. That was not the case. The wine appeared relatively simple, and a touch disjointed. Some dark fruit and the intimation of something interesting on the finish. Not a lot more than that. I certainly can imagine it improving over time, but at the moment, IMHO, it is not the equivalent of the Peay Sonoma Coast 2012 (which I would give a 90), which is admittedly in the $33 range, nor by any means the equal of the Gachot Monot Cotes de Nuit Village 2011, around $25 (Kermit import), which I have plumped for previously on this board and which is an amazingly pure and nuanced expression of Pinot for the money.

[Scott_Butler]

You guys are tempting me to open one of mine…i have all but 1 of my 2011’s still…decisions…

[R_Roberts]

Your TN was similar to mine in that we both described it as high acid and ripe, but from there we diverge. While it comes off a bit disjoint, I don’t expect all wines to show finesse and a sense of place. It has to be enjoyable foremost, and this wine is for me, even if it doesn’t fit in a preconceived box.

[Vinni_Capra]

Bah, this thread made me decant one at noon so I’m at 9 hours decant like Charlie I hate popping this early. I’m drinking it right now and I’m with the masses on cellartracker 91-92. Anyone else with a 83 PM me I’ll take them off your hands.

[Beau_Carufel]

@Rama Roberts

Your TN was similar to mine in that we both described it as high acid and ripe, but from there we diverge. While it comes off a bit disjoint, I don’t expect all wines to show finesse and a sense of place. It has to be enjoyable foremost, and this wine is for me, even if it doesn’t fit in a preconceived box.

I understand what you’re saying. For me, there wasn’t necessarily a preconceived box as I hadn’t tasted from this producer before. I had no idea what to think of a pinot that I’d only heard the best possible things about. That said, pinot noir should show finesse and sense of place, perhaps more than any other grape. Those two aspects heavily influence the enjoyable factor, to me.

[Beau_Carufel]

@Dave H.

Lord help us if someone ever says they think a Bedrock Old Vines Zin is only “okay.”
(I have never had a R-M Pinot, but have three of the 2012 SC in the cellar.)

I feel faint undercurrents of ostracization whenever I don’t go bananas for a Thomas or Cameron wine from up here in Oregon, so this is nothing new. I do love me some Bedrock though!

[Beau_Carufel]

@kylemittskus

My point is drinking a wine too young is a bad idea. My Barolo comparison was in response to the argument or suggestion that because it’s “only $25,” it shouldn’t be cellared. Maybe a bad comparison.

Glad you’re not worked up. You basically insulted everyone who rated this 91 points which is part of the reason I asked, but Charlie addressed that already.

Also, this has been addressed before, but I question someone’s ability to discern acid addition. I question even more someone’s claim to be able to identify when it happened.

Kyle, your Barolo comparison wasn’t really one, come on. I understand your point about drinking wines too young, but the expectation I have for someone’s entry level wine is that it’s to be consumed while you wait for their upper tier wines to come around. I could be off base here, but I believe that method is fairly common.

If people who rated the wine 91 points feel insulted, so be it. This isn’t the only wine I’ve seen on CT where the scores seem more to do with hype and less to do with reality. Such is the way of things though.

You are welcome to question my ability to discern acid addition, by all means. But I know a little about it, working in production and tasting many wines with added acid at various stages of the wines incubation.

[brianmcbrearty]

@Beau Carufel

@brianmcbrearty

Have you not had one before? I haven’t had the 12 yet, but if it’s not a 91, it’ll be my first RM SC that isn’t.
If you’re right, I’m glad I didn’t get my wished for extra bottles.

I hadn’t had one before, nope.

A 91 points, to me, means that this wine is truly exceptional. If I score a wine that high, it usually means I wish I had a case, that I feel it is drinking above its price point, and that I feel it’s better than 91 percent of all wines in its category.

I think people who are offended by my score are not understanding what an 83 means. It means that I didn’t hate the wine and still believe it’s reasonably good, so good in fact that it’s clearly above average (which a 70 point score would be).

I’m not defending the wine. Ain’t even tasted it. But you took issue with the 91 on CT. And just to try to keep things straight here… there is no way though that you can square your “70 is average” with the world we live in. We are operating on a 30 point scale, where 70 is undrinkable, 80 is for other people, and 90-100 is where WBer’s can stand to be, all the while looking down our noses at scores in general. So a 91, at 25 bucks, is a modest score not at all screaming best QPR in the universe.

The question has to be, what’s better at 25 bucks?

And let me add… the last thing I’m doing is correcting you about the wine. I won’t be shocked if our palates don’t align when I get one open. I’m just not getting clearer one where you think this one really sits on a scale of what’s available.

[CFu]

@brianmcbrearty

@Beau Carufel

@brianmcbrearty

Have you not had one before? I haven’t had the 12 yet, but if it’s not a 91, it’ll be my first RM SC that isn’t.
If you’re right, I’m glad I didn’t get my wished for extra bottles.

I hadn’t had one before, nope.

A 91 points, to me, means that this wine is truly exceptional. If I score a wine that high, it usually means I wish I had a case, that I feel it is drinking above its price point, and that I feel it’s better than 91 percent of all wines in its category.

I think people who are offended by my score are not understanding what an 83 means. It means that I didn’t hate the wine and still believe it’s reasonably good, so good in fact that it’s clearly above average (which a 70 point score would be).

I’m not defending the wine. Ain’t even tasted it. But you took issue with the 91 on CT. And just to try to keep things straight here… there is no way though that you can square your “70 is average” with the world we live in. We are operating on a 30 point scale, where 70 is undrinkable, 80 is for other people, and 90-100 is where WBer’s can stand to be, all the while looking down our noses at scores in general. So a 91, at 25 bucks, is a modest score not at all screaming best QPR in the universe.

The question has to be, what’s better at 25 bucks?

And let me add… the last thing I’m doing is correcting you about the wine. I won’t be shocked if our palates don’t align when I get one open. I’m just not getting clearer one where you think this one really sits on a scale of what’s available.

If I had gotten a 80 in school on a test I’d probably get the feather duster. People make “average” sound like the norm. No. It’s not good to be average.

Beau if I said “your wine is average” that’s an insult. No one wants to be average. In the world, not just wine, average gets you nowhere.

edit: To be clear, I don’t care if you like the RM pinot or not. Someone’s opinion on a wine is their own. I just take issue with the way you insult everyone who scored it higher than you would by saying they can’t think for themselves then try to explain it away because you score differently. I think it’s rather insulting to everyone who has tasted the wine and agreed with the CT notes.

[Vincent_Fritzsche]

@kylemittskus

You basically insulted everyone who rated this 91 points

This is the essence here. Beau, you’re insulting people again with your abrasive lack of groupthink.

[R_Roberts]

Beau,

I did a quick scrape of your CT reviews (so this might not be completely accurate), but it seems you’ve only given 77 out of 491 wines a score of 90 or higher. So you’re either drinking a lot of shitty wines, or you’re scoring them much lower than the average CT reviewer. Surely you know this after nearly 500 reviews, so I don’t get why you’re feigning shock over the discrepancy on this particular PN? Please tell me you’re not trolling, because it smells like it to me.

[Alan_C_h_a_n]

I think the issue that people are having with Beau is that he is leaping to the conclusion that people are scoring the wine a 91 because of either hype and groupthink, rather than chalking it up to ‘some people like this sort of wine’.

[Vincent_Fritzsche]

I don’t know Alan. Beau expected to like the wine. He was surprised he didn’t. Seems like the thread took a turn when the first response essentially told him he’s doing it wrong, with others quickly following suit. Good on him for not taking the bait.

Rama, I think Beau’s already explained that he indeed doesn’t inflate scores, so that an 83 isn’t bad at all.

[Beau_Carufel]

@Charlie Fu

If I had gotten a 80 in school on a test I’d probably get the feather duster. People make “average” sound like the norm. No. It’s not good to be average.

Beau if I said “your wine is average” that’s an insult. No one wants to be average. In the world, not just wine, average gets you nowhere.

edit: To be clear, I don’t care if you like the RM pinot or not. Someone’s opinion on a wine is their own. I just take issue with the way you insult everyone who scored it higher than you would by saying they can’t think for themselves then try to explain it away because you score differently. I think it’s rather insulting to everyone who has tasted the wine and agreed with the CT notes.

CT has a 100 point scale, some of us choose to make use of it and some of us don’t. If it’s really a 30 point scale, why not adjust the website to limit our scoring range to 1-30? I use half of it, about 50 points and up. Anything below 50 is probably not worth writing about either. I’ve seen scores in the 60’s on the site, most recently a Bonny Doon Picpoul. Therefore, to me, when I see 91’s on a site that uses a 100 point scale, I start to question why the wine got that, if my experience was so different.

[Beau_Carufel]

@Rama Roberts

Beau,

I did a quick scrape of your CT reviews (so this might not be completely accurate), but it seems you’ve only given 77 out of 491 wines a score of 90 or higher. So you’re either drinking a lot of shitty wines, or you’re scoring them much lower than the average CT reviewer. Surely you know this after nearly 500 reviews, so I don’t get why you’re feigning shock over the discrepancy on this particular PN? Please tell me you’re not trolling, because it smells like it to me.

Trolling? Why? I have a picky palate and as I’ve explained before, scoring a wine over 80 points is me essentially giving it a B or higher. That’s pretty good to me, and clearly indicative of a wine that’s above average. Further, I don’t score as many wines as I write notes on, something you’d have noticed too. I don’t believe in upping my scores just for the sake of going with everyone else’s notes or to make me appear to agree with one critic or another.

As far as drinking shitty wines, well maybe that’s true but I don’t think they’re shitty, not too many of them. If you scraped my scores then you know I drink a lot of wine that is commonly held up as quite good. That 2007 Boudreaux Cabernet was kinda shitty though. Not in the Bob Wood way either.

[Beau_Carufel]

@Alan C h a n

I think the issue that people are having with Beau is that he is leaping to the conclusion that people are scoring the wine a 91 because of either hype and groupthink, rather than chalking it up to ‘some people like this sort of wine’.

Look at how the vast majority of this thread has piled on me because of a simple number. What if I hadn’t scored the wine, just posted the note?

[Beau_Carufel]

@Vincent Fritzsche

@kylemittskus

You basically insulted everyone who rated this 91 points

This is the essence here. Beau, you’re insulting people again with your abrasive lack of groupthink.

I am such a jerk

[M_A_T_T_H_A_R_T_L_E_Y]

@Beau Carufel

The bottle I had tasted like it had a post-fermentation pH adjustment done to some very ripe, rich fruit. The other winemakers tasting thought so too.

You’ve never had to make an acid or ph adjustment to any of your wine?

[Beau_Carufel]

@Beau Carufel

@Charlie Fu

If I had gotten a 80 in school on a test I’d probably get the feather duster. People make “average” sound like the norm. No. It’s not good to be average.

Beau if I said “your wine is average” that’s an insult. No one wants to be average. In the world, not just wine, average gets you nowhere.

edit: To be clear, I don’t care if you like the RM pinot or not. Someone’s opinion on a wine is their own. I just take issue with the way you insult everyone who scored it higher than you would by saying they can’t think for themselves then try to explain it away because you score differently. I think it’s rather insulting to everyone who has tasted the wine and agreed with the CT notes.

CT has a 100 point scale, some of us choose to make use of it and some of us don’t. If it’s really a 30 point scale, why not adjust the website to limit our scoring range to 1-30?

I use half of it, about 50 points and up. Anything below 50 is probably not worth writing about either. I’ve seen scores in the 60’s on the site, most recently a Bonny Doon Picpoul. I had that same wine and probably would have scored it in the low 80’s, a wine that was above average and well priced. Therefore, to me, when I see 91’s on a site that uses a 100 point scale, I start to question why the wine got that, if my experience was so different.

If you’d given one of my wines an 80, I’d assume you thought it was above average, no lie. Granted, I’d have hoped it would get a bigger number and been disappointed that you didn’t have a wonderful experience with it.