We go through this dance every few months. Someone who doesn’t like Cambie style wines, particularly n hot, sunny years, posts a negative note. This angers defenders of the wine. Jay, I’m a real person, and Cambie’s wines are not to my taste. Peter can assure me that I’m wrong, or I have a heat damaged bottle, or whatever, but I’ve tasted the wines on both sides of the Atlantic. Tastes differ. It’s OK with me if people like them and OK with me if people don’t like wines I do. And they should each feel free to post tasting notes. The arguments over the notes are running around in circles.
No, Jonathan.
That’s not how it is.
I don’t ignore the obvious (that taste is a personal matter), but I just don’t feel propelled to state it when there’s always a Jonathan who will…
I merely mention the fact (that had NOT been addressed before my post) that a lot of people do get spoiled wine (particularly Grenache based ones from Europe), and write totally irrelevant impressions on wines that aren’t proper examples of the respective products.
Not only that, they turn the blind eye to the fact that in blind tastings they’ve been exposed to wines that made them salivate, only to find out that they have been dissing the very same wines before, due to a lack of ability (or will?) to spot a damaged wine.
At least 37 times have I seen this happen.
And by the way, if you ever come to Denmark you may up that number, cause I’ll then gladly serve different vintages of Vieux Donjon for you to see if your here so oft repeated mantra (that Philippe Cambie’s “influence” has ruined the wine), will lead you to correctly tell which vintages were “Cambidized”, and which weren’t.
No matter the outcome of such a friendly encounter, alone taking the challenge will make me change my view on the person behind your posts.
I’ll then also get a chance to read aloud the exact answer Claire (the now winemaker) gave me when I told her how - for you* - her Domaine has ceased to exist after the evil “influence” of said consultant has eracidated your former happiness.
And as to this forum, you of course have all the rights to - once more - enlighten us with your findings and opinions on CdP Past, Present and Future.
Cheers! 
*I did not, of course, mention your name.
I never said that the influence was evil. And I never said the wine ceased to exist. I also have said numbers of times that I haven’t tasted Vieux Donjon since at least 2007, so I make no claims about anything since then. Nor could the test conceivably be a fair one from your viewpoint since the last VD I claimed to like was 2001 and I’d like to think I could distinguish between an 01 and an 05 or 07 even in a wine I adored.
Meanwhile, your post suggests not that I don’t know what I’m tasting, rather than accepting that I might just have a taste different from yours. Its arrogance, therefore, is quite pointed. But such is the way of wine boards.
Please feel free to write here whatever Claire Fabre said. I had a delightful visit with her mother back in 2002. If the daughter is as polite and cultured as the mother, it will certainly not be as vituperative as your response. But, if not, I have been called names before and will be again. And, yes, I know, as I have said before, that Cambie is been the oenologue at VD since 2000 and thus was a consultant for two of the last wines I liked.
Agree with Jon here. Its just a matter of taste and style. Had plenty of 07 CdP’s with a group of friends (mostly French); and the Beaucastel and Vieux Telegraphe were liked while the Clos St Jean La Combe came across as thick and flabby and wasn’t to anyone’s taste…we sourced few bottles to remove bottle variation but the results were the same.
Jay, sorry didnt mean to yuck your yum…but just sharing our notes.
I sold most of my 2007 Chateauneuf as my preferences have shifted away from the uber-ripe style, at least for Grenache. I kept the Beaucastel, Charvin and Vieux Telegraphe. My SQN Grenache will be headed for auction next…
The claim that these wines have been heat damaged in transit to the US is an interesting one, as some of their characteristics are similar to heat-damaged wines. I’m skeptical that so many would be heat damaged in 2007 while wines from other producers and other years would manage the trip unscathed.
I’d be happy to have my mind changed by a side-by-side tasting in France of bottles that had and had not made the trip overseas. Even if true, it wouldn’t make the bottles I bought any better. For now, I remain in the camp that believes the heat “damage” occurred in the vineyard.
I think David is exactly right. And I did as he did.
A perfect example of this is the Usseglio base cuvée. Parker went nuts over it and it was cheap. Yea I bought a case. It was terrible and got worse, total lighter fluid. I tried this cuvée from two other sources as well, no difference. Seems like others on this board had the same experience. Was a climate and vineyard and winemaking issue not a transport issue.
I love it when people feel the need to really emphasize their feelings through the use of BOLD or ITALICS or EVEN BOTH. Otherwise I wouldn’t know what to look at.
I APPRECIATE IT.
Peter, you really need to chill. I agree, as well, with Jonathan and others: it seems to me that it’s merely a matter of taste (and opinion). There’s no possible way you can know whether or not Scott had a damaged bottle. None.
One person’s modern is another’s pruney vodka.
This just goes to show that:
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Two people can taste ‘the same’ wine and react so differently
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We’ll never know if it’s the ‘same’ wine because of the inherent variability in wine
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Does anyone know if they filter? If not, they you can also be dealing with variability due to ‘bottle variation’ from any heat that the wine may be exposed to, leading to bacterial ‘action’.
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Unless there are visible signs of it or you are tracking the temperature of a bottle of wine, you will never know if it was ‘heat damaged’.
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Just because a wine has been exposed to elevated temperatures, and even if there are visible signs, the wine may still drink perfectly.
Cheers!
For the wine I tasted, mild heat damage is a possibility as the muddled fruit profile can fit- Honestly though most of the other mildly heat damaged CdP I have had of similar age were still drinkable, if not as fresh and early mature- this was just an undrinkable mess consistent with overripe wines that don’t age well in the first place.
If you know the WA’s views on CdP (and perhaps delete the word “tannin”), that review is fairly consistent with Scott’s take. 
That’s fine. More for me and it keeps the price down. I have never criticized anyone for not liking Cambie’s or anyone else’s wines, except, of course, for Alfert, who should be criticized for everything. My only issue is the difference between “this wine sucks” and “I hate this wine.” The former is appropriate if the wine is corked, has an overdose of VA, or has a similar flaw. Cat pee in SB and poopy fecal notes in Beaucastel are disgusting to me, but I know people who love that crap, so the wine does not “suck” in some objective measure.
I gave people fair warning about what his wines are like. I like them. I also like Saxum, Sine Qua Non and pretty much everything made by Thomas Rivers Brown, so if anyone wants to calibrate their palate to determine whether they will like Clos St. Jean, there it is. My problem is that I also had really nice bottles of 1970 Beychevelle and 1972 Joseph Drouhin Corton in the past few months. As I have said before, I feel sorry for those of you with narrow palates who only appreciate a small slice of what is available.
If I hate a wine, I naturally think it sucks. So I guess I am not seeing your point. If a wine is flawed (corked e.g.) the wine doesn’t suck but it sucks that the wine was corked.
Jonathan, I believe I quote you better than you quote me:
I wrote Domaine, not wine. But please read my recent answer to your post from 2016…
Claire simply told me that P.Cambie doesn’t take any decisions at all.
His role is merely as an adviser, but she said they listened to what he suggested, but was adamant to stress that the family takes all decisions concerning every single winemaking issue.
When I visit the splendid “Printemps” arrangement every year, I invariably taste the Fabre’s efforts. I urge you to try the red 2014 Vieux Donjon, for me a wine that is quite the opposite of what the so called Cambie style is said to be all about.
And please believe me, I’m not the arrogant type, but sometimes I may admittedly strike a wrong chord when juggling with the English language.
And then there’s the cultural thing about humour, a vastly different creature from country to country.
Would say that some of the posters here come across as pretty blunt in the way they pass judgement and ridicule on others, but on the other hand I was accused of “packing hatred” in the thread referred to above (Vieux Donjon 1998), when in reality I was simply trying to be funny.
British and Danish humour have a lot in common, and we use sarcasm and irony far more freely than Americans do.
Cheers ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Peter
“Jammin…jah-min…I hope you like jammin, too”
I dunno man…pruny vodka sounds pretty disgusting. Unless of course you have a drinking problem and hate Metamucil. In that case it probably fits the bill.
You have taken it to another level with the underline!
I also never said the domaine ceased to exist. Pretty much a difference without a distinction, since if there is no domaine, there is no wine from that domaine.
You are right. I didn’t see the humor in your claim. I still don’t. But I’ll take your word for it.
I don’t doubt that all Cambie properties’ owners ultimately make all decisions themselves unless Cambie has some contractual arrangements with some that make him more than a consultant. Where he is a consultant, that’s just what consultant means. But, really, there is no reason to hire him unless you think his consultation can make your wine better. He does cost money after all. Better entails different, and where differences occur, differences of taste come into play.
Meanwhile, if you really can’t taste the difference between an 03, 04, 05 or 06 VD and a 95, 98, 99, 00 or 01, taking their different ages into account as best you may, I would be very surprised. At the very least–and this has been a general situation, though one Cambie exacerbates with some wines, I think–the alcohol contents in the 90s run between 13.5 and 14. They now run between 14.5 and 15 or even higher. I am in Provence and can’t check on my 95 and 98 VDs to see what they were, but I would be very surprised if the numbers were not higher between 03 and 07. Again, this would be true for Pegau and Charvin, as well. Still, it just is a meaningful difference. Saying these wines are like those older ones just isn’t accurate by the numbers.
You also say VD doesn’t taste like other wines that are said to have the Cambie style. Does that mean that you grant that Clos St. Jean does? If so, the argument between us about VD has nothing to do with this thread and we can let the others get back to talking about that wine.[/quote]
Hey, what did I do! ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Don’t pity me Jay, I have more wine than I need and have been married for 22 years! I’m doing just fine in my narrow, phantasmagorical universe.
You are correct, of course, and my flairing a wine like this probably is not nice, but on the other hand, reflects a very significant degree of annoyance arising from what has happened to wonderful domaines because of the ilk of Cambie, Rolland, et al. SQN, Saxum and others like that have always been that, I never bought or drank them. Chateauneuf du Pape was a much different place 15, 20, 25+ years ago. Just 15 years ago the Southern Rhone was 1/3 of my meager “cellar”; now it is down to a handful of CDPs that I pop only for my 79 year old father who shares your palate. I used to pop Cotes du Rhone 2-4x per week with dinners; now I rarely if every pop one, with the exception of syrah-based Northern CDPs and Chave’s Mon Couer.
But yes, calling it “sucky” is not nice.
PS. The argument that the owners, not Cambie, make the final decision is, respectfully, a bit silly. They hire and pay him for something. And the wines drink like everything else he touches. Ergo, his imprimatur is all over this wine.