Taking one for the team, I cracked last night:
- Forlorn-Hope Ost-Intrigen St.Laurent RicciVnyd/Carneros (11.06; 142 cs) Murphys 2014: Med.dark color w/ light bricking; strong earthy/loamy/compost pile/forest floor light pencilly/oak some plummy/Pinotish/St.L somewhat rustic interesting/complex nose; wquite tart/tangy rather lean/hard quite earthy/loamy/compost pile/decaying leaves light plummy/St.L/licorice rustic bit Carneros Pinotish flavor w/ light smooth tannins; med.long rather earthy/loamy/compost pile light St.L/plummy/Pinotish bit pencilly/oak rather rustic finish w/ light tangy tannins; shows some/a lot of the earthy/loamy character you find some in Burgenland St.L but not as high-toned/Pinotish as those tend to be; dominated by the gout de terroir & not particularly attractive, only interesting in the sense of Quasimodo; would like more fruit & richness; a bit on the anemic side but speaks of St.L with a whisper.
A wee BloodyPulpit:
- Terroir: Back in the days in which I was learning about wine, the British writers often used the term “gout de terroir”…the taste of the earth. It was not particularly a complimentary term. It meant that earthy/loamy character that was displayed in this F-H in spades. Not a site-specific earthiness, but a composty taste of earth & loam.
Then, back in the ‘80’s-‘90’s, the term “terroir” was high-jacked by all these high-falutin’ wine snobs to mean the taste in a wine that comes from a specific site, a combination of the soil, the climate, the location, and the interpretation of the winemaker. Now these high-falutin’ folks like to babble on & on about “terroir”, ad naseaum, and it means something totally different from “gout de terroir” that I learned about back in the days of yore.
Tom