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

I'll be more clear: I taste in wineries all the time. Fruit flies are more something you control, rather than eliminate. So, during harvest season you may have lids of some fashion on your glasses to keep them out. If one gets in, and it's carrying a significant amount of acetobacter, the effect on...

Fruit flies may carry acetobacteria, but they are also attracted to ethyl acetate. So if you have a fruit fly in your wine and it smells of ethyl acetate, the ethyl acetate could be both cause and/or effect. I'll be more clear: I taste in wineries all the time. Fruit flies are more something you co...

The usual culprits are high alcohol, low acid red wines, more often from places in Spain, Italy, Greece, etc. where not every winery is up to modern clean standards. Not sure I agree with that. Lopez de Heredia is an example of a wine that often has VA, Emidio Pepe is another that comes to mind, so...

I understand the purpose of it in keeping wine stable, but I think it's undeniable that wines without have a certain vibrant quality to them. I actually find the opposite. I regularly taste blindly, and I've found I can very often tell the unsulfured wines. They have an aroma and flavor that remind...

VA is the all encompassing term, but also sometimes used for specifically acetic acid, though often there's more than one culprit at work. Since acetic acid is vinegar, you can do Anton's trick, but I'd suggest white wine vinegar to avoid adding other elements. The other major player is ethyl acetat...

Like Anton said, Berserker Day is a great opportunity to sample a good selection of quality producers. Many great deals, with sampler packs and the like. Join here as a Grand Cru Member so you can preview and get an idea of what you'd like to try. Snoop around the related threads. Berserker Day is J...

Theme is: Look at the menu, notice it's a steak house, bring whatever you want.

Something we resolved long ago: Even with a theme, too much of that theme isn't great. It's good to have a flow of wine types over the evening.

I'll bring mature cabbage, and prolly something sticky.

Now this is a wine that will not improve with aeration. When I was a kid, there was always a jug of this sort of wine in the pantry. They had this strange chemically taste and did not change over the many weeks they were open. I have not gotten that taste in any wine since I became a wine geek a fe...

I've had modest older wines at their peak show better than maturing wines that will ultimately show better when they reach their peak. Not too big a surprise. I also see people down-rate those same wines, contrary to their own preferences, because they want to like those younger, greater wines more....

Ok guys - any venue ideas? I know George doesn’t like Paul Martin’s but I’ve been a few times...and their skirt steak is real good...and I like the space. Plus I owe George a meal. Good space. Room. Not loud. Steak house chain. That should give guidance to the hit and miss menu. Steaks are fine. A ...

Nursing a glass is one strategy, but you might find it more satisfying to use a spit cup, so you can take bigger sips and more often, then just spit most or all of it. Several of my wine friends have had to switch to entirely spitting due to health reasons, so they could keep up the hobby and keep a...

FWIW, I haven't felt that any of the 11s (I didn't get a bottle of the Chambertin) would make older bones, though I've had other views presented to me (by Blake Brown, among others, who definitely knows his Burgs). Still, my intention is to finish my last 2 bottles by the end of 2020 at the latest....

Rob Weaver wrote: ↑
January 5th, 2019, 7:54 am
Why even post about these wines given the justifiable heartburn it gives some in this community? It’s like crowing that you got all of your PC futures. Seems unnecessary.

A whole bunch of us own these wines. It's still useful data to many. No one needs to open a thread.

Howard Cooper wrote: ↑
January 5th, 2019, 11:42 am
What does grape selection mean?

It means the custom crush facility buys grapes from several vineyards. Their clients then select what they'd like made for them from that menu. You know... "control".

We have a very small (230 vines) vineyard at our house in Healdsburg near Limerick Lane. We have been looking for a service to help us produce wine from those grapes but haven’t found anything that operates at that scale (what would that be, maybe 30 cases?). So yes I might be interested but of cou...

LOL this was exactly my response. I already suck at so many things, I am not in search of new things to suck at. Especially ones that cost a lot of money. This is why I can't even imagine playing golf. The question being asked is about paying someone else to do that job, with a few token choices fo...

No. Apple hardware/software allows me to make my own movies. But I know that Paul Thomas Anderson, for example, makes better movies than I ever could. LOL this was exactly my response. I already suck at so many things, I am not in search of new things to suck at. Especially ones that cost a lot of ...

Funny. *Both* wineries I've seen offering a pink Chardonnay also advertised custom crush services. One of them had advertised custom crush to do along with their very own first vintage! (*That's pink from leeching out color from a barrel previously used for red wine.) Anyway, there's no shortage of ...

That's something to always keep in mind. Editors write the titles to articles, which can often be sensationalistic or reflect a shallow understanding of the content. In reading articles, we should never let ourselves be unduly influenced by the title. (Countless times I've seen arguments where someo...

The one we tried a couple years ago (for kicks at a Berserker OL) tasted like oaked up later press wine. As in when pressure from the press is built up to the point sugar starts getting squeezed out of the solids that hadn't broken down, and the level of extraction is high. No hint of raisin, but c...

The one we tried a couple years ago (for kicks at a Berserker OL) tasted like oaked up later press wine. As in when pressure from the press is built up to the point sugar starts getting squeezed out of the solids that hadn't broken down, and the level of extraction is high. No hint of raisin, but ce...

How dead? Got our first request from somebody today asking if we have any or where they could get some. The other clue was when she asked if I could tell her why it's better than grape wine. That's a good reason to use "amber wine" instead of "orange wine", along with it being a more accurate trans...

From what I understood, I though Wes wanted to think of oxidative ("oxidized", even) and non-oxidative/reductive orange wines as two completely separate styles and I still really don't understand why. And where. Nomenclature? In the labels? When people talk about wines? If you talk to just about an...

I’m curious about the comment that it’s top three feet of soil that matter. I had always thought that vines did better in poor soil so that the roots were forced to go deeper. I think I’ve read comments along those lines in different places over the years. Not sure how true that is, but plants have...

If I had to hazard a guess as to why Wes says it’s important to differentiate between oxidative and non-oxidative: Because generally they taste differently, come across differently. But for example oxidatively aged (i.e. barrel-aged) Chablis tastes very differently from reductively aged (i.e. stain...

Orange wines are skin fermented whites that have oxidized in the winemaking process. This was an odd claim. I've had lots of orange wines showing no oxidative character. Odd. Orange from what, then? If it's from skin color (ie. Ramato), that's the other category that I talked about. I think it's im...

Skin fermented whites have always come across as more of a gimmick than anything else to me that does nothing to improve the wine. The art and craft of winemaking is literally centuries old. Does anyone really think that in the centuries that preceded us, not one person tried skin contact on white ...

Those dates work for me.

There are people who only buy cheap bottles in supermarkets with fashioned labels and produced in quantities of million bottles – nobody knows where the grapes came from, there are people eating usually at McDonalds or Burger King, others are listening to (radio or online) music and don´t care who ...

I think the point here is that this variety - and in combination with other Bordeaux varieties - is by far the most widely consumed and talked about variety here in the US and arguably around the world. It dominates discussions of both wine geeks and casual wine drinkers alike, and when folks are '...

What aspects of wine an individual likes varies dramatically from one person to another. Same with dislikes. Being indifferent to something someone else finds thrilling is normal. You can probably find threads here with people discussing what varieties people don't like and it's all over the map and...

I always think of acupuncture, which so far as I know still is not understood within a Western medicine framework. It doesn't always work, and sometimes if it does, it's probably the placebo effect. But it seems that it does genuinely work in many cases. The placebo effect is likely part of it, but...

Yeah, that's part of human history and knowledge. We observe something, then create a conceptualization to help us understand and remember. So, a myth or whatever around a cure for an infection may turn out to be utter BS, but the cure still works. Dismissing a cure merely because a rationalization ...

Good stuff Wes! We need to do a tasting. And here's another thing - whites or reds? I don't recall a white screaming volcanic soil to me. Not saying there can't be a signature there that I've gotten in retrospect, but subtle enough that it hasn't been something I've honed in on. Maybe some skin con...

Iirc, the Bonny Doon Framboise is a mistelle.

Angelica has a long history in CA, usually from the Mission grape and served with lemon. The only producer I know of who recommends adding lemon is also the only one I know of that makes one from non-Mission (Chardonnay). They also don't know what they're doing, having obviously pressed right away,...

Jim I believe that. I've done it myself in other places and the different sites are quite different. I don't know how your sites are situated, or whether there are strips of different rock types in the same vineyard, but I don't know anyone who can say with any certainty, on tasting a wine, that it...

David Cooper wrote: ↑
December 25th, 2018, 9:08 am

Al Osterheld wrote: ↑
December 24th, 2018, 3:37 pm
All you really need to know about offlines you should have learned in kindergarten.

-Al
I always thought a nap half way through would be a solid idea.

Yes. It is perfectly acceptable to use you dinner plate as a pillow half-way through finishing your entree.

D.Callahan wrote: ↑
December 22nd, 2018, 4:35 pm

John Morris wrote: ↑
December 22nd, 2018, 11:02 am

I'd forgotten about smoke taint -- another great example.
It is my understanding that "smoke taint" is caused be particles on the grape skins themselves...right?

No. It's drawn into the plant tissue via the waxy cuticle.

I visited with a biodynamic practitioner who is at the cutting edge of dynamic, yet pragmatic vineyard practices. Until recently, the norm was a HUGE knowledge gap between organic farming and vineyard practices. Well understood concepts didn't register with grape growers. I'd been impressed by othe...

What's the new place in MV?

This sounds consistent with biodynamic principles. Whatever you think of the more occult aspects of hardcore biodynamism (personally, I'm a hardcore skeptic and empiricist), a core part of the practice in maintaining natural and healthy soils. I visited with a biodynamic practitioner who is at the ...

Yup, John. Agree. In the last paragraph, he refers to the unknown effects of the microbiology in the soil and much more research on that being needed. No, importantly, and I'm sure purposefully, he says "in the vineyard" rather than "in the soil". Alan posted above about the importance of a healthy...

Is there any evidence that the garrique in the south of France really does impart its aromas? Yes. Other compounds make their way into the grape tissue that same way as smoke taint (guaiacol and 4-methylguaiacol) and eucalyptol. One of the native shrubs here is apparently responsible for a signatur...

In tasting OV reds (Zins/mixed blacks), like from Ridge/Carlisle/Bedrock/etc, over the yrs; I (think) I can often taste what I think to be an OV character in those wines...a sorta "dusty" character that I associate with OV's. Could be I'm just fooling myself, though. Perhaps that's due to a small p...

This wine transformed into something beautiful on day two. Compared to day one it was less savory, less peppery with cool dark fruits, violets and subtle black olive. We enjoyed it very much. This is definitely not a jammy, overly ripe, hot climate syrah. That is what we liked about it. We opened t...

Not to be overly pedantic, but there is a world of difference between bottle shock and travel shock, and your bottle only relates to the possible existence of the latter. There seems to be much more consensus and a scientific basis for bottle shock, that is, that wines need time after bottling to s...

Spring of Faith

... There are better ways to make Cab Sauv. FWIW Domaine des Trevallon does 100% whole cluster red that is 50/50 cab sauv and syrah. To my mind their wines can be a fantastic example of cab expression outside of the expected regions — they are in Provence though on northern facing slopes (*I think*...

Seems like a wonderful tasting. All California winemakers should go to tastings like this to see what they are, in many cases, not doing. -------- Not at all surprised that a Phelps wine from that era showed so well - wish they would go back to making wines the way they did then. On the plus side, ...

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