While out on a day trip on LI today, I found myself driving past Wolffer. Couldn’t resist stopping in to taste.
2014 Rose - Oy. Touch sweet, touch flabby. My wife finds it undrinkable; I find it merely cynical, but drinkable. The waitress explains that the production for this is in the tens of thousands of cases, and that they’re buying grapes from everywhere on the island to meet demand. I believe it - every restaurant we looked at had it on its menu. There’s no accounting for bad taste.
2011 Noblesse Oblige Brut Rose - Innocuous, not bad - tastes clean, a touch yeasty, and with some apples and something red. For what rose methode champenoise sparklers go for these days, the QPR is fair. I wouldn’t seek out but I’d drink it if a restaurant was pouring it BTG.
2012 White Mischief Chardonnay - horrendously volatile. Weird, exotic aromas of melon, papaya. Sweet, short, bright. Limited oak, doesn’t taste like it went through malo. This is Chardonnay? Really weird and unpleasant.
2014 Dry Riesling - acid, acid, my kingdom for acid. The logic of leaving in this much RS in an already too-low-acid “dry” Riesling escapes me. This is verging on halbtrocken. My wife likes this but thinks it needs an ice cube and a strawberry. Not especially good wine.
2012 Lambardo Merlot - Well this is interesting. There’s a strong green streak running through this, but it’s rather charming - it’s green pepper rather than green bean, and it cuts the anise/black fruit nicely. Spoofy, powdery/plush tannin, low acid, but they didn’t over oak this, and the wine is actually in decent balance right now and has some complexity. Reminded me a bit of a 2004 St Emillon I had the other night. Not a long ager, but not bad, if overpriced at $35.
2012 Diosa Late Harvest - a cryoextracted ice wine. The first ice wine I’ve had that was flabby. Cloyingly sweet, undrinkable. The website says that the titratable acidity for this wine was 9g/L and RS was 225 g/L - as I recall, that acidity number is too low for a balanced wine. It shows.