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

Philip Ente

could you elaborate on what your issues were going.

I agree the wine list lacking big names and his custom made wineglasses have an odd shape.
The sommelier (First guy on the left in the first picture ) was fine. I think he that he is not looking for blow away wines as a complement to his food.

Philip Ente

So if you have the best restaurant in the world, it automatically cannot be 1 of
the 120 best in the world the next year. Can someone please explain this to
me.
We were there one week ago and I see no decline.

Philip Ente

You could visit a wine making friend of mine: http://domainedebaccari.com/the-domain/?lang=en can mention me quite good South of France type wines which I do not think are sold in USA. The Cab franc is quite unique I think the winemaker/owner, Nahia speaks pretty good English. Stephane Derenoncourt ...

Philip Ente

Massimo is not even among the top 120 of this year. Guess that means that if you are #1 your restaurant becomes no good for a year. This is why I think these sites are no more than a fun read. I have found the best way to select where to go is to ask well connected chefs in the country. Massimo may ...

Philip Ente

I love Le Calandre, though I haven't been a few years. They graciously allowed us to open a bottle we brought in addition to buying something off the list. Regarding Francescana not being on the list, there is a rule now that if you have been #1, you can't be in the game going forward unless it's f...

Philip Ente

Recently had one of the five or six most remarkable restaurant experiences of my life. I do not believe in these classifications of 1-2 3 because restaurants of this level all have different character and principles and cannot be compared. By the way- I did look up the list of the 50 best restaurant...

Philip Ente

I guess owning a helicopter generates a certain level of entitlement. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors decided that a certain Santa Barbara/Montecito resident would not be permitted to use his helicopter from his $65 million property . This really pissed him off and according to the San...

Philip Ente

Does my friend in Santa Barbara need to have a helicopter on hand to make this work [wink.gif] come on somebody had to say it! Good luck! Careful! This guy is Russian Mafia and you would not want him to sick Putin on you This should be a great experience to get to know someone who is growing up in ...

Philip Ente

thanks for the help

Charles Banks would have done it in his Montecito home but I guess he is inconvenienced for now.

https://www.winespectator.com/articles/ ... four-years

Philip Ente

A well-known wine maker from Burgundy is asking me for help in having his 18-year-old daughter spend about a month in the Santa Barbara area. I have known her for about 10 years and she is very sweet and mature. Her English is pretty good. She will spend a few days with us in Santa Ynez Valley but m...

Philip Ente

olfactory palinopsia

Philip Ente

What about the Ente's report of levels of 15.7 % Can Meursaults carry that in any year?

Philip Ente

More feedback from Burgundy.

This person's knowledge of what is going on chez lui is second to none

Les rouges seront meilleurs que les blancs en 2019.

Philip Ente

https://m.flickingerwines.com/wine.aspx ... TEB0850.00

Philip Ente

From my cousins in Meursault How much higher than $850 a bottle can Arnaud's wine go? Benoit has lowered his acid levels and his recent wines are great. ---- En ce qui concerne notre récolte 2019, c’est une petite moitié de récolte à cause du gel et ensuite la sécheresse des mois de juillet et août ...

Philip Ente

You've got to admire this guy...he realized that the market segment of zillionaires who want to ostentatiously piss away their money was underserved, and he stepped up to the plate. There are thousands of billionaires on the planet and the only wine available at a price they would even notice was D...

Philip Ente

Philip, he served veal two month's ago when we were there. Yes, he has returned to non vegetable products but not sure how much beef is going on. I was told the photo of beef above, was from a special dinner. As I said, Passard is a brilliant griller (rotisseur) . The chicken and lobster were remar...

Philip Ente

Philip, Agree that Passard is a brilliant roaster. He has served beef again for several years. ECB29DB4-24EA-4E6A-880E-A342D4C6F9B2.jpeg I think my post wasn’t clear. While I’m not wild about the plating of the grenoilles, I would eat them in a heartbeat and hope they are on the menu when I’m there...

Philip Ente

Not sure what your concerns are here . If it's the visual appearance of this plate,I don't think French would mind. French will eat an unadorned veal head served on a plate with no problem. Alan Passard stopped serving meat due to concerns over the bovine variant of Creutzfield Jacob Disease, which ...

Philip Ente

Interesting that so many people are voting for Arpege. As we see from this topic some people are not crazy about it . It's kind of an acquired taste and from a basic organoleptic level, most of the other restaurants mentioned are superior. Passard is one of the most remarkable chefs I ever known. Th...

Philip Ente

Personally I prefer Epicure at the Bristol or Le Cinq. Wilfred is right for once. I am cynical of hotel restaurants but this is probably the best lunch experience in town. Great environment and excellent cuisine. Arpege is not for everyone- have to understand Passard's philosophy. Someone here said...

Philip Ente

Personally I prefer Epicure at the Bristol or Le Cinq. Wilfred is right for once. I am cynical of hotel restaurants but this is probably the best lunch experience in town. Great environment and excellent cuisine. Arpege is not for everyone- have to understand Passard's philosophy. Someone here said...

Philip Ente

A side question:
Parker rated a wine 100 points and said "it was out of this universe" and it is pretty certain from the articles I cited that it was a fake wine .
Does this mean a counterfeiter can make wine of the same organoleptic level of a 21 Petrus? If so , sign me up for his mailing list

Philip Ente

There are umpteen gazillion references to top-down processing on Google. This is a representative summary explanation: Top-down processing is when we form our perceptions starting with a larger object, concept, or idea before working our way toward more detailed information. So how is that not abou...

Philip Ente

and again:
"I don't see how someone could fake a wine of the level of a 1921 Petrus. "

If it was indeed a fake, his perception was most likely modified by top-down processing .

top-down processing is not a theory of how we perceive

Philip Ente

Jurgen and others, I understand what you are saying about variations and possibly very good counterfeit wines (Joe Davis, the most Burgundian of our local Pinot producers went to a tasting of Rudy counterfeits and said most were actually pretty good Burgundies)- but the Parker issue I cited above wo...

Philip Ente

Thanks for the responses. First of all "top-down processing"is an entirely different phenomena than what is being suggested here- that the tasters were influenced by the label or price. Top-down processing involves an entirely unconscious modification of incoming sensory information based on cognit...

Philip Ente

Thanks for the responses. First of all "top-down processing"is an entirely different phenomena than what is being suggested here- that the tasters were influenced by the label or price. Top-down processing involves an entirely unconscious modification of incoming sensory information based on cogniti...

Philip Ente

I'm working on a presentation of a neuroscience concept called top-down processing and its relation to wine tasting. In brief, top-down processing is the neurologic basis of optical illusions and there are examples of top-down processing modifying sensory input coming in during winetasting. For this...

Philip Ente

Any comments on the march 9 article discussing the evolution from one voice (Parker) to a degeneration of influences that include Lebron James and the Kardashians

Philip Ente

any knowledge of this place?

https://thewinedepository.com.au/shop/g ... rettyPhoto

The GGG's are half as much as anywhere else. But odd website- no address and what seems to be a European phone number

Philip Ente

Great Post S!mon, thanks We are now definitely going, two nights after Arpege. I agree that trends dominate most fields. and L'Ambroisie is an outlier. I used to work at the restaurant in LA called L'Orangerie, where the elegant French owner tried to create a L'Ambroisie type experience. He eventual...

Philip Ente

Thanks Michael

Anyone know why they picked this restaurant for the Obama dinner?

Philip Ente

wanted to try L'Ambroisie when in Paris in 2 months. Never been there. The rating scattergram and some of the recent reviews on French trip advisor are terrible: Excellent59 % Très bon15 % Moyen11 % Médiocre7 % Horrible8 % compare this to Epicure: (Wilfred Van Gorp's favorite) Excellent87 % Très bon...

Philip Ente

Told the Rudy story to a friend.
He asked why the people did not notice that there was no sediment in these "Older" bottles? Or did Rudy add sediment?

Philip Ente

Thanks for the interesting and insightful post, Philip. I did read about the family history in Neal Martin's book, but I must admit I'd completely forgotten it! It does seem like a cautionary tale, since La Fleur de Gay does not appear to have reached the heights aspired to in terms of quality, jud...

Philip Ente

Sorry to read about that, Robert - very disappointing. Not even sure it's a Rolland wine (if it is, what was it doing lurking in your cellar?!). I never got the point of la Fleur de Gay anyway - La Croix de Gay used to be a nice Pomerol, so why destroy it by removing the best parcels and subjecting...

Philip Ente

There's 3 minutes I'll never get back. Correct answer Linda was a colleague of mine in chemosensation. Haven't seen her in years but she had little interest in wine at that time, and suspect she still doesn't. This concept of hers has very limited relation to wine. One of her Yale colleagues, a ver...

Philip Ente

I once asked Aubert Du Villaine why Romane Conti is so expensive and he said, regardless of what he charged out the door, the market price would wind up the same- basic supply and demand. You can buy a certain cult Macon producer for $15 a bottle at his vignoble. He came to America and was pissed th...

Philip Ente

Say Hello to Kelly and Francois for us- will be there next year.
Still remember that den of thieves lunch (90 La Tache) we had with John Kapon and GLS

Since when has Dujac done RSV- never heard of it before

Philip Ente

Jay Have the frites at L'Ami Louis in Paris. $40 but absolutely the best. They have been perfecting the recipe for more then 50 years. Asked the owner how he does it and he said it would take 2 months to teach me. I understand; took me months of practice to get certain recipies perfect when I was wo...

Philip Ente

Robert.A.Jr. wrote:
K John Joseph wrote:of Goutte d' Or .
Golden Gout seems redundant since it’s the disease of kings

goutte=drop

Philip Ente

Many people in the USA think Arnaud trained under Coche- not true A few years ago I was with Arnaud and his wife in a LA restaurant where the wine list said "Arnaud Ente- rising superstar , student of Coche- Dury" . Told the wine steward that I did not think this was true and when he asked me how I ...

Philip Ente

Found this restaurant about one block from where we will be staying. Sounds like my kind of place based on the owner's behavior (and a lot cheaper than L'Ami Louis). Look at the bad reviews only: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187147-d2051752-Reviews-L_auberge_Des_Deux_Ponts-Paris_Il...

Philip Ente

Philip, Kevin, I understand the mechanisms you are describing. I live in the same universe. But I won't be part of this side of the wine world. I never was a socialist and I never will be. But this is no longer a party I will be a participant. Jurgen, Again we are in agreement. I too have not becom...

Philip Ente

I can´t stop wondering what happened to the wine world. Remember buying 6 Rousseau Clos de Beze vintage 1991 for about 35 Euros each in 1993 (70 Deutschmark). If somebody would have told me that the same bottle costs 3.000 dollars+ in 2018 I had given the advice to visit a doctor due to serious men...

Philip Ente

Rousseau is neither underrated nor overrated. He is a pretty constant producer of top wines. The problem is the hype. This board is an example. Reading some posts here in this thread one can think Rousseau makes wines in a quality no other producer is able to achieve. That's certainly not true and ...

Philip Ente

Will be staying at Ile St. louis the second week in May and wanted to go to Ambroisie but it is closed for the week. We enjoy walking to restaurants since that's not something we can do in California. The only other major place I know of in the area is Tour D'Argent , which was sort of good when I l...

Philip Ente

Robert Alfert, Jr. wrote:Sweet, the club membership gift is a 6-piece wine tote, perfect for carrying your concealed weapon to a taste-off.

This wine comes in April:

http://broncowine.com/product/masked-ri ... smoke-red/

FIFY;
e coffee. A full round of flavor with a

Philip Ente

on their tasting notes they use the words "flinty" and "smokey" a lot

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