One of those days

Maybe it was the solstice or something. Blame the moon.

Robert Weil 1976 Kiedricher Grafenberg Riesling Auslese - brown, smells like hairspray, muddled and over the hill. One sip then dumped. Tried again later and dumped again.

Ponsot 1995 Clos de la Roche - first sip was nice, palate-filling and silky. Unfortunately started to thin out and crumble a bit after that. Half-glass then dumped.

Armand Rousseau 1997 Charmes-Chambertin - not bad, but noticeably disjointed in comparison to the Ponsot, with a wincing bitterness. Half-glass then dumped.

Louis Jadot 1993 Clos St. Denis - much more supple compared to the previous, thought we’d have a real winner for a moment but the structure quickly asserted itself and cobwebbed up all the fruit. Not bad, but this bottle just wasn’t in the mood. Nor was I. Half-glass then dumped.

Jaboulet 1989 Hermitage La Chapelle - pruney scents had me thinking this might be a bad bottle, but nothing about the taste suggested cooked wine. It still had an adolescent red color and a mildly varietally correct peppery flavor, but it’s still much closer to generic red wine than Hermitage with the tannin seriously drying out the fruit. Can’t say whether this was damaged along the way or damaged before it even went into the bottle, bad whether it’s a bad wine or a bad bottle it was just plain bad. A few sips then dumped.

Jean-Louis Chave 1989 Hermitage - clearly more interesting to taste than the Jaboulet, but this is way more tannic, way less savory, and way less fruited than other bottles I’ve had of this. The disturbingly large amount left in the bottle at the end of dinner testified that this was not a good example of this wine. Good examples of this won’t have a drop in the dump bucket. I dumped much more than that. Forgot to note whose import strip.

Jean-Louis Chave 1998 Hermitage - intermediate stage of development, which is the most benefit-of-the-doubt way of saying this offered absolutely nothing. Plenty of tannin, no gloss at all, not showing any fruit. No importer strip. A few tastes then dumped.

Chateau Latour 1971 - very, very tannic. It’s soft but there’s a whole lot of it. This wouldn’t be so disappointing if it had come out of an old cru bourgeois bottle, but this didn’t offer anything in the same hemisphere as a first-growth experience. Others noted some lead pencils… I think they were fishing. A few tastes over a long period to see if anything would come of it… and then the rest dumped.

Bruno Clavelier 2002 Vosne-Romanee Beaux Monts - thought a young Burgundy would be a nice reset after all those tannic and anonymously old duds. Wrong. The first sip offered some nice youthful fruit; five minutes later when I came back to the glass it was so tannic, inelegantly muscular, and dull that I thought I had grabbed one of the Hermitages by accident. Dumped.

Muller-Catoir 2003 Haardter Herrenletten Riesling Spatlese - first bottle we opened, really tasty then, and the only one I came back to at the end of the night. Started out fresh and pineapply, eventually turned more apply and less tropical, a real bright acidity running through it and just the right amount of the sour at its core to balance out some of that luscious '03 fruit. At least we had one thing worth drinking! A Christmas Eve miracle!

Merry Christmas Keith!!!

Hey, a New Year starts soon. Better luck in the coming new year:)

I’ve had days like that: 3 wines in a row were corked, off, or simply awful. I admire your perseverance because after 3 failures I usually give up and switch to beer.

I was just thinking “time for a beer…”

Or a nice martini to kill the pain.


A.

I was thinking Gin & Tonic myself.

Sorry to hear about the bad luck Keith.

Sometimes I’ve found that my palate gets in a “bad mood” and nothing will taste good that day. For this reason, if I open a bottle I consider dumpable for any reason, I suck it up, have a soda (or rum and eggnog or whatever non-wine I have handy) and wait until the next day to open another.

Keith,
The 1995 CdlR has been a goner from the word go-thin and hardly deserving of Bourgogne status much less GC. Sorry about your string of misses, I hate days like that.

Agree there just are those days and when you find one of these awful trends. Whether it is mood, cork, or palate, you have to break it.
I do this by going with something more consistent than wine and always switch to beer or hard alcohol as soon as I detect this trend.

Keith, you were not alone in your Christmas Day wine woes, although mine wasn’t quite as bad as yours!

1991 Lopez De Heredia Bosconia Gran Reserva; brown cork, brown wine, tasted like cooking sherry with a touch of varnish. Poured down the drain, I’d opened this about 2 hours before dinner so waited until just before dinner to open:

1974 Charles Krug Vintage Selection Lot F1; cork stained to the top, light orange color, I’ve tasted better vinegar. Poured down the drain. At that point my wife was getting pissed, so I dashed down to the cellar and pulled my last bottle of:

1998 Rudd Jericho Canyon; perfect cork, but the wine was muted with almost no bouquet, probably slightly corked but still drinkable. Decided future wine buying might be severely constrained if another bottle went down the drain, so I kept my mouth shut and we drank it.

I had a somewhat roasted, seemingly heat damaged 1998 Pegau. Things went a little better from there.

Did Michael’s cellar angel stop by?

No, but I keep going down to my cellar and looking. All I find is the occasional centipede. I want my money back!

Isn’t that the terroir?

To quote you, “Ewww, tastes like Chateauneuf.”

LOL

Weren’t these wines recently on the cover of Sports Illustrated?

Rosh Hashanah, so soon again?

rivaled only by Ponsot’s 96s for sucking major league.
alan

Keith’s notes were pretty accurate, though I would say there is promise for the 93 Jadot Clos St. Denis (this bottle showed much less mature than others from the same lot) and the 98 Chave, which on day 3 definitely started to show much better - Very pretty nose of white pepper, blackberry; lots of structure in the palate; nice combination of fruit, spice, and mineral. Needs plenty of time to mature. I also thought the 71 Latour was enjoyable, though greener and not as pristine as other bottles from the same lot.