2001 Paloma Merlot, 2003 Karl Lawrence

After doing a cellar clean out and expansion, I found these and picked them to bring to dinner out with friends.
Our waiter tried to use a standard corkscrew despite my warning him that the corks would likely break. Both did, but just in two solid pieces so no harm done.
The Paloma has turned into blackberry jam. It is round, voluptuous, and without structure. It is delicious. It smelled nice, but simple, mostly like sweet jam. There was not a shred of detectable oak either on the nose or palate. In sum, a simple but delicious thick viscous wine in no sign of decline.
The KL stood in stark contrast. It had structure, soaring scents of sandalwood, black olive, slight bell pepper (of the pleasant sort) and fully integrated sweet oak. It too was big, not suffering in the least from following the Paloma, and in fact to me it simply eclipsed the Paloma, demonstrating the divide between a good wine and an excellent one. The KL had grip, a full midpalate and a long finish. This is at peak but is not about to go into decline
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Thanks for the update on the '03 KL Mitch, I went rather heavy in that vintage and they’ve all been sleeping ever since. Looks like a good time to check in!

Welcome. Despite the warm vintage, it’s a beautiful wine with no signs of torrefaction, glop, or overripeness.

Was this a regular bottling of Karl Lawrence? If so, then it is an incredible showing in my opinion. I loved those wines (even named my dog Karl as an homage) but found the regular bottlings to age very little beyond 10 years.

I’m still sitting on a 1991 bottling (their first vintage) to open on a special night even though I don’t expect the life left in the bottle to be magical.

Side note: opened two 07 Karl Lawrence Reserves (Herb Lamb and Dr. Crane) last weekend. Both were fantastic with years of life left in it.

I popped an 07 KL base cab last night and found it underwhelming. It had a lot of sediment even after straining and had little grip or fruit. Showed some earth that paired badly with the high sediment
Perhaps bad bottle, so so vintage combo doomed this.

Regular bottling.

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I quite liked the 01 Paloma…but had it much younger…prob at age 10?

Whatever happened to them? They used to be quite the internet wine board darling?

Jim and Barbara died, their son Sheldon took over and no one seems to be discussing them any more
Their website shows nothing more recent than 2016 cab and merlot. It seems that fires and the decision to rip out much of the merlot and replace it with cab franc is hindering things.
Truth be told (well my truth, which means it is not true) is that Jim Pride made the early merlots that had all the juicy oaky style so loved at the time. They had a beautiful label/bottle but that can not sustain $50+ monolithic bottlings. Unless you call it “The Prisioner”.

They’re still out there, doing what they do. I visited with Sheldon a couple of years ago. He’s taken over the operation and his two sons are now on board as well.

They recently gave their website a much-overdue makeover -

nice bike collection

Ha. That is a third of it. My customs include a Landshark, JP Weigle, Doug Fattic, Vanilla-Speedvagen, and Rob English.
Former team issue bikes include a Madone (laid up by hand in Waterloo, not Taiwan), Bianchi Carbon, Torelli Carbon, and Orbea XLRator.
And then there are about six more. Alan Cyclocross, Bianchi track, a Colnago Superisimo and more.
They used to all be in my den upstairs. Then my wife pitched a fit and had my son carry them down to the basement.
I like to think that like DeeDee, they sang, “Oh Daddyo, I dunna wanna go, DOWN to the basement”.
Also, if you doubleclick on the photo and then expand, just beyond the orange box, you can see Alfert’s bike that he asked me to store for him. He says the saddle is not comfy enough and wants a bigger softer one.

I’m on their list and have a bit of an on/off relationship with their wine. Some are beautiful, some not as much. Lots of variation in recent history, more variation than a wine should have, IMO.
Had a beautiful visit with Barbara during the 2013 harvest and briefly met Sheldon, who was knee-deep in the harvest and getting more involved at that point (IIRC).
We drank the 2008 Merlot on site looking down over Spring Mountain and it was magical! But none of the ordered 2008’s seemed to meet that raised bar during the visit. I break out one of those 2008 Merlots every couple of years to see if it’s coming into it’s own and am usually disappointed. Improves with decant time, but there’s a sharpness, lack of fruit purity and shorter finish. I’ve wondered if my 2008s got cooked somewhere along their travels?

My 2009’s & 10’s were better, but wasn’t so excited I wanted to keep purchasing. I passed on the 2011’s and never got back to them until just recently.
I opened an '09 & '10 side by side for a friend last summer during an outside get-together after not touching them for few years and thought they were quite engaging and really improved over the evening. They finally had something that made me think back to the winery visit. This prompted me to go to their web site and order the 2016 Merlot and Cab, which is their current release. Paloma sits on bottles longer than most.

I haven’t opened a 2016 Merlot, but have gotten into the Cab. Perhaps it’s just the vintage, but I was impressed with their 2016 to the point that I’ve got the merlot queued up for drinking as the situation arises. Depending on that tasting, I’ll decide on purchasing additional or not. Back to the '16 Cab, it more than holds its own in the $65/bottle segment. After 2 hours of air, the young oak subsides and leaves some beautiful fruit and dark chocolate all in very nice balance. I felt that something might have improved over that last few years making Paloma worthwhile again. Might be wishful thinking, but it was enough to get me excited and look forward to drinking Paloma again. Sometimes that’s all I need out of a wine in this hobby.

FYI- Sheldon’s son, Caston, posted updates during the Spring Mtn fire this last fall that were pretty impressive and a bit harrowing. I think on their FB page? Somewhere there’s a picture that shows the burn right up to the edge of their vines. Paloma was very lucky the fire didn’t make the 15-20 foot jump into their vineyards. I’ll see if I can find that pic.

Here’s the Paloma picture I mentioned.
From late September (9/29/20, I think).
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