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

wspohn

The 2010 was outstanding - the only reason I have a bottle left when it is probably sliding a bit now is that I am reluctant to not have one to drink. You are lucky to see it as I don't think production is huge.

wspohn

I have a last bottle of the 2010 in the cellar. These wines have a decently long life and quite high quality. This is the good one, although the Dix Arpents is also pretty decent.

wspohn

I wish we could get some of those Syrahs up here in BC!

wspohn

I buy a case of the Violette every year - best Syrah at around $30 Can. I have around three years in the cellar at any given time. The rose, Vaila, a Pinot Noir Rose, can also be very good although in some years it can be eclipsed by the Rose from La Stella, the other winery owned by the same group ...

wspohn

I am encouraged - I have a couple of cases of Amarone back to the 1971 Bertani and have been meaning to get into it, but the occasion just never seems right.

wspohn

Best in BC and competitive with CA and WA producers is Le Vieux Pin, Particularly this one

https://levieuxpin.ca/product/2016-equinoxe-syrah/

wspohn

Vince L. wrote: ↑
May 2nd, 2020, 9:00 pm
Alcohol brings out the worst in people.

Been spending to much time in the Asylum....?

Tasting should restart by appointment and maybe only a few people per appointment - no more bus tours, assuming the buses are even going to be doing tours for awhile.

wspohn

I still have a few of these, but will drink the 82s and 88s first as I think that the 90 is a long hold wine. Also have a bottle of the 1970 I had forgotten about but IIRC there isn't too much risk there either. The 1990 is an excellent wine, though I would put the Montrose and probably the Angelus ...

wspohn

Opened a bottle of this tonight - corked! Certainly seems to be an issue with this vintage.

Opened a second bottle - as expected, although having lost the first flush of youth, it has a bit more flavour interest and is holding very well. Drink over the next 2 or 3 years.

wspohn

Sarah - glad I read you right. BTW - I have never had goat liver before (though am a fan of goat meat generally). How i it? Stronger than chicken or calves' liver? I have a bottle of the Langhe out to open for dinner tonight to refresh my recollection/assessment of the wine, and to help me decide wh...

wspohn

There are a lot of clueless people that post on CT. I almost never post there but was incited to do so when I saw a note from some idiot saying that the 1975 Bordeaux were over the hill. My response indicated that those wines were nowhere near ready yet. I have similarly seen such declarations of pr...

wspohn

We've been hunkered down at home having a bottle a night buy for some reason I haven't been taking notes. Mostly 200, 2001 and such. Tis time I wanted to look at the hard 95 vintage to see if they were coming around. Good dark colour, still significant tannin but soft enough to be pleasant drinking,...

wspohn

Thanks Mark.

wspohn

Same - amazingly dark but not oxidized. I asked a prof in the wine department at a local university if anyone had investigated why there was this difference between German and American Rieslings with similar age and RS and he thought it might make an interesting project to find out. It also occurs t...

wspohn

You give me hope - I have a bottle of 1978 Villa Mt Eden Reserve Cab in the cellar that I figure is probably long over the hill. Guess I should give it a try. The only other 1978 Californian I have is the Ch. St. Jean Riesling TBA and that still drinks superbly.

wspohn

Notes from a blind tasting lunch. 2013 Conceito Blanco – this was a wine I had picked up for my wife to present. It is made in the Douro by a perfectionist winery and is a field mix of ten different native varietals, fermented and kept in oak. Showing some colour and a very attractive nose with fain...

wspohn

Lot of respect for the Figeac red here. We swapped an 82 Mouton for 3 bb of the Figeac - I figure we came out far ahead on that one. Am pretty much out of 79s now as I intentionally drank them while they were drinking well (last bottle was a Ducru that had the effrontery to be corked). Have one Lato...

wspohn

I thought this was a nopale.....

Have never been a fan of the Paulee - prefer to do that sort of thing at home with small groups.

wspohn

As I did a lot of real estate law in a very affluent area, I saw a lot of botched 'wine cellars', some of them nothing more than a hollow core door on a closet with a 'wine cellar' sign on it. Building a proper cellar is demanding even for the usual contractors if they have no experience with them. ...

wspohn

I have always preferred Jaboulet to Chapoutier, but have had some pleasant surprises with Chapoutier including their basic 1995 Cornas, which was quite presentable and the Ermitage Les Greffieux which in some vintges excels. And their Crozes, Meysonnierrs has been a best buy in the last couple of vi...

wspohn

OTOH, I have slowly worked my way through almost a case of 1993 La Sizeraine, some good some not so much, and the last one I opened was the best I have ever tasted.

wspohn

Blind tasting notes Feb. 28, 2016 Northern Rhone theme, with Southern Rhone allowed only for whites and good ringers invited. Laurent-Perrier Champagne Grand Siècle Iteration 24 Grande Cuvée – this one was based on the 2006, 2004, and 2002 vintages. Excellent nose, smooth crisp entry, very good. 201...

wspohn

Notes from a Spanish wine dinner. Vouette et Sorbée Brut (nv) – Showing a bit of colour, and a nice nose with lemon and orange notes, good mouth fell, a bit soft at the end. Laurent-Perrier Champagne Grand Siècle "La Cuvée" – this one a blend of three older vintages, but our expectations were dashed...

wspohn

'Old' single malts are a mug's game anyway. Unlike wine which develops in the bottle, distilled liquor is stable and static in the bottle so a bottle with a label that says it was a 10 year old bottled in 2000 and one that says it was a 10 year old bottled in 1975 should sell for the same price. The...

wspohn

https://nationalpost.com/news/scientist ... e-of-fakes

Those really (supposedly) old bottles of single malt that some idiots ....er, well heeled people pay ridiculous prices for, may not be what they seem.

wspohn

Soon I´m going to do a comprehensive St.Emilion-tasting. My order will be (most probably): 1st flight: 1995/98/99/2000 2nd: 4x 1995 3rd: 1983/85/85/86 4th: 4x 1998 5th: 4x 1990 6th: 1970/1975/1976/1978 7th: 4x 1989 It also depends on the meal served in between ... Just for fun, my comments on that ...

wspohn

Four rather different wine experiences come to mind: 1. A bottle of Mateus Rose in the garden of the faculty club of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver [take note, Bill Spohn!] (in a year long enough ago that I have no interest in disclosing it publicly) with a young lady (whose name I...

wspohn

Because if you taste a huge fruit and tannin monster first, your palate is challenged to appreciate and assess the subtleties of the mature wines.

wspohn

Many great memories, but this one still sticks in my memory. 1928 Dr. Barolet Collection Grands Echezeaux ((Henri de Villamont) - The good doctor collected and made wine from 1911 until his death in 1969, and left a collection of 160,000 bottles. He is thought to have adulterated extensively with wi...

wspohn

A medium amber colour, an identifiable Gewürztraminer nose with a sweet apricot overlay, some RS in the finish and could use a tad more acidity. For the first while there was a slightly bitter almond component in the finish, but that disappeared with time in the glass. 15% alcohol. Still drinking we...

wspohn

David, it is possibly a conscious choice by the importers to only bring in the 'big' Dolcettos that get great reviews. Another example of this phenomenon is that in my market we get all the big blowsy Australian wines I can't stand, while they continue making lovely balanced reds that simply aren't ...

wspohn

Some of Ravenswood's least expensive Zins are light enough to pair pretty well with Italian food. As for Dolcetto, does anyone recall when it was the Beaujolais of that part pf Italy, a nice light fresh fruity wine, before it was transformed/Parkerized and pumped/plumped up into something it had nev...

wspohn

Yes - the excellent match with the clean acidic Barbera and then the jarring sweet ripe wine that just wasn't doing anything for the food.

wspohn

Went to a new Italian pizza place that just opened and my friend and I each took a bottle. Neither of us knew what the other was bringing. My bottle: 2015 Elio Sandri Barbera d'Alba - fairly dark, with aromas of dark fruit - blackberry and currant, with a herbal aspect and a hint of earthiness. On p...

wspohn

Ron Erickson wrote: ↑
January 19th, 2020, 7:58 am
I still have a few 98's and 01's. The 98's were case purchases at $19 a bottle.

I tasted that one on release and bought two cases (19 bb remain) as it presented soooo well. I probably paid $40 Can. for it.

wspohn

What I can't figure out is how the ripe vintages were given similar high scores as the more classic moderate vintages. How can the same critics think that those two styles, at opposite ends of the scale, are equally meritorious? And don't dis the 2007 - I shall live in hope that they transform with ...

wspohn

Think Cambie considers himself to be king of grenache. It would be instructive to open a bottle of his Halos de Jupiter Châteauneuf-du-Pape (or maybe the Adrastee) beside the same vintage of Vieux Donjon....

wspohn

Cambie says his first vintage consulting there was 2003. Sounds like he hasn't made much difference in the house style? Hard to say. The period saw not just his involvement but also a series of hot weather vintages and how much of the stylistic change is due to which influence is hard to know. I wi...

wspohn

That would have been nice, but we already had 12 vintages for 10 people and some were driving....

wspohn

Notes from a Vieux Donjon vertical tasting dinner at a local restaurant. 2017 Chante Cigale Extrait blanc – mid golden colour, and a nose of honeysuckle and peach, smooth and long on palate with a hint of marzipan in the finish. Very good. (We couldn't find a bottle of Donjon blanc) 1990 – light gar...

wspohn

My turn to host our local group blind tasting and I chose a theme of Australian wines. I have been working through my backlog of older Aussie wines, many of which were in a style I enjoyed, but I stopped buying much at all when the style changed to a sweeter and often less structured sort of wine in...

wspohn

We decided to taste the old and new world pinots of equivalent cost (~$50 Can) to see which was the more interesting. 2015 Gérard Raphet Bourgogne – light garnet colour, a very nice nose with red fruit and spice, good fruit on palate with medium weight and elegant medium length finish. Delightful. C...

wspohn

Chuck, I have had exactly the same experience in the past and no one would believe that they were the same wine! Fortunately both halves stayed the same in this case, but I still wonder what accounted for my other experience (with a different Bordeaux), Maybe something in the decanter, or....?

wspohn

Mmmm, Grange. My/our tastes had changed over the years and I suggested that we consider selling or trading the Grange for a decent half case of older Bordeaux, but there were no local takers, plus anyone that would be interested was unlikely to have any claret to swap, so I think we've resigned our...

wspohn

I belong to a group of four wine aficionados who came together back in the 1980s with the purpose of acquiring bottles we wouldn’t or couldn’t afford individually and to do cellar buy-outs when the opportunity presented. Time has passed – we last did a dinner about 10 years ago – but we still had a ...

wspohn

Notes from a blind tasting lunch Being Christmas time, we had a larger than usual share of bubbly. They were served with a really, really good French onion soup. 2002 Piper-Heidsieck Champagne Cuvée Rare – huge effervescence on opening, fresh nose with both lemon and toasted cashew notes, well balan...

wspohn

Bear in mind that given a necessary spacing between a bin and the next bin - I figure about 30" so you can bend down and find bottles - (assuming several parallel rows of bins) it makes no difference at all whether the bins are double deep with one side blank, or double deep with both sides open. Sa...

wspohn

I know a ton of people with huge cellars and double deep (in my terms) racking. Our space is quite large, and we have double deep everywhere that isn't open bin, including back to back double-deep (like yours, but double on either side) for the center aisles. With our cellar volume, to do back to b...

wspohn

I guess there are different uses of the term "double deep," and I can see both making sense. In building ours and speaking with several cellar designers, we were on the same page with the way I used it - the front bottle in each individual slot needs to be pulled out to access the one in the back. ...

wspohn

Double deep doesn't mean like a wine cooler where you have to pull out bottles to reveal the back rows. It means that you have a double thick rack accessible from both sides (the racks on the walls are single depth only). No idea why it insists on putting the image on its side.... That's a wall of R...

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