AFWE confessions - aka let us make Alfert feel better

We have all had a wonderful time making fun of Ovid Alfert and his recent foray into the land of Rolland. But, I have to believe that most of us have had similar transgressions. Time for confession.

  1. I visited Martinelli in the late 1990s or early 2000s and bought their wines for a couple of years. Thought their Chardonnay was pretty good and their pinot was tasty young, but did not age. After a couple of years of so, I decided I would rather buy more burgundy and stopped buying this.

  2. I used to go every year to Bassin’s California Barrel Sample tasting. On year, I really liked a Peter Michael les Pavots 1997 and bought some. After finding zero signs of maturation in the wine over time, I eventually got rid of what I had left.

I also was buying Phelps Insignia in the 1990s but I put this in a different class. I used to love the way Phelps Cabs from the 1970s and 1980s aged. Until I saw it for myself, I was surprised that changes they made in how they made the wines meant that the wines just stayed in suspended animation over time and no longer aged.

Other confessions?

I admit to being flavor curious.

It’s a dotted line, not a brick wall for me. Michel Rolland is not the anti-christ.

Last night a glass of Pepiere Muscadet was the perfect foil for my appetizer. If I had been grilling a ribeye the choice could have been a Pride Reserve Cabernet.

I eat more food that suits Baudry, Selbach-Oster, Dirty & Rowdy and Idlewild (to name a few), but with a few notable exceptions, I won’t turn my nose up at a big, rich wine.

Funny that my wife and I stopped at Martinelli on this trip. We are driving from the coast to Ovid, that stupid Tesla sucking battery charge like crazy, and the winery actually had a Tesla charger. So we hooked up, went into the tasting room to kill some time, and experienced some of the most horrid wines of my life. All of the Zins were over 16%. This puppy was a milkshake in the true definition of the word - well, milkshake with about 7 shots of rum:

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And of course - yes, blame it on the wife - we grabbed a bottle for shi*ts and giggles. It was not cheap for a Zin, either. $58. So that EV charge cost me $100 with tasting fee, bottle and tax! To get like 15 extra miles on the battery. And I needed all of it to get to Ovid Mountain to experience my faux epiphany.

Martinelli Guiseppe & Luisa weaned me off of “Big Reds” for good circa 2006. I was pretty infatuated with muscle wines in the late 90s and early 2000s. The sight of that label gives me the willies.

RT

The thought of the Alferts hooking up in the Martinelli parking lot gives me the willies.

What did you expect, chugging up the mountains with all of those cases of Martinelli and Ovid in the trunks.

WT

PS. Just checked the scale. Rolland made me gain 3 pounds. No wonder that Tesla sucked battery. This increases my h8!

Never tasted any of their zins

Went to Martinelli on my first trip through Sonoma years ago. Had come highly recommended from some friends who “knew wine” and I really knew nothing at all at the time. Really, really didn’t like them and didn’t know if it was just me, or the wines. Figured out my tastes quite a few years later and it all made sense in retrospect.

Horrid glop.

Funny sidenote, the tasting room attendant felt compelled to break out the recent Robert Parker scores on all of their single vineyard zinfandel bottles. It did not appear that he knew Robert Parker had retired, but he was very proud of all the scores ranging between 94 and 98 points. Of course, all of the zinfandels with those scores, had been sold. The 98-pointer was $98 bucks!

Last year I visited DC to go to a good friend’s Halloween party (he posts here on occasion). To celebrate, he popped a bottle of 2009 Pavie and told me it was a Robert Owlfert wine. When I explained that Bobby hates on Pavie, he said without a trace of irony, “yeah, but if you read his tasting notes, you’d see he secretly likes big, oaky wines.”

True story.

I’ll play, for some reason I have some ‘06 Caymus. Looks like I bought 4 and currently have…4.

Ha! Check my cellar. Two-thirds is Loire, Geeky Northern Rhône and Beaujolais.

When I visited, you asked me to come see your fishtank and there was no fishtank. I’m not falling for that twice.

That was the lake. I was trying to push you in.

I confess
I love Napa Cab.
And I’m on the Saxum list.

Pretty AFWE in the rest of my cellar.

I could make a long list of confessions from my early days of wine hobbying. But I would also like to point out that this isn’t about Alf sharing embarrassing moments from his early wine days. This is about him falling off the wagon - hard. I mean, the guy went full NorCal yuppie on us, driving a Tesla, buying $300 bottles of Napa Cab (I mean, just entering the county should be enough to revoke his AFWE credentials, right?). No, we can’t let him off the hook this easily. It will take time. Maybe years. Maybe never…

Bordeaux? Like Sociando? Cantemerle? [scratch.gif]

I know, it’s embarrassing.

I transformed from a modest, humble, simple wine drinker, to some corporate, pretentious yuppie scum in Teslas and Porsches asking Ovid why they don’t do 200% new French oak and use mega-purple to add some heft! Quoting Parker, calling Michel, “Uncle Rollo”. And showing up in pink shorts, untucked slim-fit floral shirt, designer loafers sans socks, and no shave for the extra gravistas (well, legs fully shaved to accentuated the chiseled calf muscles - a cycling thing) . . . . I mean, really. The height of poser. I did not, however, ask about a helicopter landing pad. That would have been a bit much.

[cheers.gif]