Wine Berserkers - international wine social media, online community, and discussion

GregT

Absolutely Robert, and his close reading of TNs is awe-inspiring. The patience, the dedication, the analysis - it leaves me speechless. Too bad it doesn't do the same for a few others. "lifted by metallic minerality" is indeed a great addition, implying precision while being precisely impossible. Wh...

GregT

So, do you clean your corkscrew after each use, or just if you happen to notice TCA? I forgot to clean mine after using it previously on a tainted wine but fortunately no transfer (that I could perceive at least) occurred. Jeremy - Seriously - why bother? Even if you put it into a TCA tainted cork,...

GregT

Everyone wants to talk about the wine to have with Thanksgiving, but the leftover turkey sandwiches are just as important! And I never really want the same wine. Many years ago that was the day I had an "aha" moment and finally understood the appeal of wine. It basically started my foray into wine. ...

GregT

My view is the same as it's always been. Australia is a continent. It's about twice as big as Europe. So it's obviously going to have a lot of different microclimates. A lot of the wines that were exported came from McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley in South Australia, which would be like coming from ...

GregT

What’s the strategy with guests coming over who don’t appreciate/know anything about wine. This perfectly describes our situation. Since it's only the two of us, we'll probably do sous-vide turkey breast with some herbs from the garden, and start with something like a Chardonnay, maybe American, li...

GregT

Taught with tension is fantastic. Rather than hinting at nuance, or rising vertically, or existing in dimensions, it's now instructing us! Teaching. I imagine the wine must be like Charlton Heston - standing alone to face the crowd, sweating, teeth clenched, delivering the lesson of a lifetime - " t...

GregT

People on this board love to hate on this guy. But I bet 98% of y’all secretly wish to be him. He’s internationally known, respected in some circles (not here though, bunch of haters), most likely does well financially, travels the world, drinks amazing wines. Has a much better life than probably 9...

GregT

I've always found it interesting when people get their wines from their favorite mailing list and say they need to set the wines aside for a while so they lose their "baby fat". I never understood what that was supposed to mean, or why they wanted the wines to age. Many of the big Napa Cabs that cos...

GregT

Joke's on the rich folk. They'll never taste wines from Santorini, Friuli, the Loire or the Dão. Agreed! Besides, his headline and his facts contradict each other. There is no new land in Bordeaux. So the land and vineyard output hasn't expanded. But the customer base has. In the past there weren't...

GregT

I wouldn't buy them but if I did, I'd wait until I was interested in drinking them. For example, last night I wasn't interested in drinking this inexpensive Rioja. Instead we had a rosato from Sangiovese and a cheap Bordeaux. But tonight, for some reason I have a taste for that Rioja so I'll open it...

GregT

Plus, it has the advantage (to you) that only speakers of a Finno-Ugric language will have any idea how to pronounce it! neener :D Well, I'm not entirely sure. Us Finns have the benefit that for the most part we have the same sounds as Hungarian, so compared to English-speakers we might have it eas...

GregT

John that whole paragraph is horrible. "Emerging resilients" is exactly the kind of BS consultant-speak that makes them so irritating. And what is "balancing optionality"?? Is optionality a noun? Or an adjective? Does it mean something like the quality of having options? Would you say "Hey pardner. ...

GregT

Isn’t red Riesling just a mutation of white Riesling and hence still a white wine grape? Very interesting question but the answer is no. Most grape cultivars get divided into red and white because of the presence or absence of anthocyanin in the berry skin. But that mutation has been found to be a ...

GregT

1996 Ch. Rauzan-Segla, Margaux This wine was splashed-poured into a decanter and back into the bottle 2 hours before our crazy good, cast-iron grilled Snake River Farms wagyu ribcap Sunday dinner. Some floral and gravel notes fused-in within its appealing perfume. In the palate, red berry acidity, ...

GregT

Steve Matthiasson's Tendu is 69% Vermentino, 27% French Colombard, 4% Chardonnay. It's dirt cheap and an outstanding summer white. Comes in a one-liter bottle with crown cap. One of the best buys out there - crisp and lean without being cruelly acidic, has some notes of pear on the nose, no wood and...

GregT

Either exit or add exclusions to their policies.

Here's an article looking at the 2017 smoke problem. Lots of issues to think about if you're a vineyard owner.

https://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com ... tinctions/

GregT

Absolute. You see CT ratings influenced by critics all the time. The old cliche was people giving a high (like 94) rating to a big, over-ripe, overly oaky wine they did not like. Absolutely nuts. "This wine is undrinkably revolting. 94 points." As has been discussed in recent threads, some of the m...

GregT

championing the truly indigenous varieties of Rioja Baja (or Oriental) But those are both from Aragón! Tempranillo however, is the offspring of Albillo Mayor and Benedicto and nobody knows exactly where it first appeared, although it's been in Rioja for centuries. And Cabernet Sauvignon has been gro...

GregT

They get huge accolades by the WS too.

Fish probably hadn't tasted by the time the issue went to print, or he's going to do a separate feature, or they didn't submit on time - any number of things. I wouldn't read too much into it.

GregT

I just ended up buying faster than I was drinking and eventually needed somewhere to put it so I bought a wine fridge. Then I built a cellar for the overflow. Then I got offsite storage. I couldn't care less about verticals, joined three or four CA lists and never bought anything from them, and just...

GregT

Apples, raisins, peanuts, cashews, chicken, shrimp, seafood, carrots, radishes, bananas, beets, garlic. And also other drinks - sake, green tea, beer, whiskey, bourbon, etc. Anything that's pre-cut and packaged can have it because it can be in the packaging, and anything where bleach has been used t...

GregT

Shades of nuance?

My fifth grade teacher would be horrified.

But it has me wondering.

Does nuance stay with the wine as it ages or does it settle to the bottom of the bottle?

GregT

Craig G wrote: ↑
September 11th, 2020, 12:00 am

John Morris wrote: ↑
September 10th, 2020, 3:51 pm
How long for Godot?
We’ll probably kick the Beckett first.

GregT

Was laying on the bed and getting ready to go to work and I watched the planes flying overhead. They'd head left and then at the same spot make a 90 degree right turn and head to LaGuardia. I marveled at how precise they all were. Then one flew by randomly and I commented to my wife how wierd that w...

GregT

Yeah but he was way too sophisticated for people like me. I like James Suckling. Whatever wine I'm drinking at least I know it's probably 93 points.

GregT

+1 People here hate him but I always found him a good reviewer and he's really a pretty funny guy in person. That said, I haven't read one of his reviews in a long long time. Or anyone else's really, unless John highlights it on the bingo thread. But Joe Cz is a solid down to earth guy and his revie...

GregT

Monica - We want the big long confusing reviews that provide material for the bingo thread!!

GregT

As far as chocolate goes, I was interested in that long before I discovered wine. When I was 19 I spent the summer in Europe looking for the best chocolate truffles and learning about good chocolate. And much as I really dislike much of the verbiage highlighted in this thread, you really can find ch...

GregT

Sure, there are a myriad of people who buy based on reviews as long as those reviews are printed on the shelf talkers in their local liquor store. Yeah but they're buying on the points, not the verbiage! I was thinking more about the people on this board, or at least this thread. I'm aware that poi...

GregT

But that's . . . unnatural.

GregT

So what I'm wondering is whether anyone will really buy or not buy based on a review. All of the people on this thread have opinions on the various wines. Take Realm for example. If you know it and like it are you seriously going to avoid it because it got a few points less than last year? Or are yo...

GregT

I agree with Alan - I don't like the tiles at all. What exactly is wrong with text? Why does everything have to be icons and graphics and different fonts? And more importantly, why change simply for change's sake? It's the problem Microsoft has had for years. They come out with a new version of Offi...

GregT

I don't pay attention to most of them. But you might want to see how our friend Eric Guido is doing. He's a careful taster and at least you'll know his thoughts on a wine. Same with Mark Squires. He's a very careful taster and he actually seems to enjoy a fairly broad variety of wines. Michael Shach...

GregT

I didn't know that the tasting rooms were opened again.

Kind of hard to keep up these days.

But have fun with the new gig!

GregT

Mike - I don't know that it really gets a bad rap, but it is a confusing wine. It was a big loud project initially, and it was a costly wine for the time. Then a lot of wines came out that were every bit as good and not as expensive. A lot of people started pooh-poohing it. And I admit, I was one. B...

GregT

I'm sure that there will be more astute people responding, but if I get a kind of SweetTart quality, like candy, I often think it's acidity. And if you're a Burgundy lover, you've probably had a few since they both acidify and chaptalize, albeit on two different products - must and wine. I think the...

GregT

It's actually not so much changes as the actual temps. Also people have this idea that slow changes are better than fast ones but there's no science that I've ever seen to back that up. A change is a change, no matter how fast or slow it is. The idea is that air expands and contracts, possibly movin...

GregT

I think there's a misunderstanding of corkage here. Restaurants don't necessarily love it when a stranger shows up with his own bottle. But what restaurants do love is repeat diners, regulars as it were. So they offer corkage to be known as the wine-friendly place, hoping that the people who come in...

GregT

Actually I think it's pretty easy. We've been drinking a lot of it lately as I got a good deal on some. Seems to be OK with a whole lot of things. So far we've had it with pizza, various pasta dishes, chicken legs, salmon, smoked trout, quesadillas, and I don't remember what else.

GregT

Do this few people drink Ribera del Duero Tempranillos or did I just post this at the wrong time? No, some of us do. But I haven't been checking in much and the sixty dollar price was a bit random. I'm not sure what that really has to do with anything. And it really depends on what you like, as alw...

GregT

This difference in taste is only apparent if you habitually taste identical lots before and after shipping. If you do not do this you are in no position to judge whether it's true or not. I have never seen the Mona Lisa, so I have no opinion about it. Oliver - unless you're an MW. Then you can tell...

GregT

You’ve just assumed away the question Seemed like the best approach! neener More seriously, I wonder if people know how wine is sold at the wholesale level. In Manhattan, it's dragged around the streets all day long, taken on subways up and down stairs, and shaken to smithereens. Then sometimes tho...

GregT

A few hours.

Oloroso sherries however, may last for a few months.

On extremely rare occasions, we have some wine left in a bottle and drink it the next day. When I sold it, I'd often have leftover wine for the next day, but often as not that became cooking wine.

GregT

I love Grenache but I don't know that I'd put any from CA as top in the world yet. Some good stuff is made, but they aren't competitive with Spain or France or Australia at the super high or the low end. Syrah? Sure. The US is getting that right in more and more places. And Mourvedre. But for some r...

GregT

Yes, Dutch auction is an interesting model, but you would need to develop a dedicated software solution to be able to offer it in a combination with an allocation model. Perhaps a bigger discussion: If I think if America has done one thing wrong, it's that we hitched wine consumption to the luxury ...

GregT

Next time I see you I'm going to do an experiment. Without letting you know which is which, I'll take a bottle, pour some wine into a glass and pour some into the blender and then put that into a different glass. I've been doing this once in a while lately just because I didn't believe the story by ...

GregT

Thanks for clarifying.

And to think we were under the impression that this covid thing was bad!

I love how people still try to screw each other when the going gets rough.

GregT

Thanks Dave.

GregT

So is this back? I got a note from Woodland Hills today, July 16, asking for support against the tariffs. Do they know something that hasn't been published? Annex A of the notice doesn't mention wine. https://www.ustrademonitor.com/2020/07/u-s-targets-french-luxury-and-beauty-imports-in-response-to-...

GregT

Maybe some of us should make a pact. I hope you don't ever lose your senses of taste and smell, but if you do, I can certainly ensure that your wines will be enjoyed!

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