Brad Coelho's Unidentified Appellation Blog Post on HdR

WINE TALK
41

WetRock. I don’t think he is quite bright enough to work on weapon designs yet…just a GPS engineer monkey.

42

Fair enough…I had never read any of his blog posts, but they are tough to read…here is what he said about Arnot Roberts.

Again, this is all one paragraph…

"Wineries like Arnot Roberts stir the pot so beautifully, ablating objective truths with each spin & flicker. Brewer Clifton, a winery which I unabashedly admire and regularly inflame my hepatic organ w/, primarily achieves such high alcohol levels to allow the stems enough hang-time to lignify (turn woody), as the wines are all whole cluster. From a whole cluster apprehension-o-meter standpoint- bitter, vegetal stems are as much of a bummer as goopy cream in tepid coffee. Arnot Roberts, who also goes the whole cluster route, takes a paradoxically different approach, throwing the concept of lignification right through a UC Davis grade wood chipper. Their wines are so low in alcohol that producers in Cote Rotie might even tease them for it (just imagine a European encouraging a California producer to chaptalize their wine to increase the alcohol; the bizzaro-world indeed). The Clary Ranch, Hudson North Block, Griffins Lair ’08 Syrahs range in alcohol from 11.5% to 12.2% to a titanic 13.4% (the Alder Springs vineyard apparently has done a bit of heaving lifting). Ironically enough, the winery almost uses the alcohol levels as a selling point, perhaps hinting that the counter-cultural de-alcoholization revolution is afoot. Super-sized foods, biceps, mammary glands, buildings, bank rolls, cinema budgets, viscera, waist bands, blood sugar, etcetera have all become so disgustingly stereotypical that they’re inching they’re way to taboo, is alcohol too far behind? While I can hardly imagine a plastic surgeon’s pile of breast augmentation charts to be surpassed by reduction requests for said organs anytime soon, I do look at low alcohol California reds as a bit of a groping towards equilibrium. All that conjecture aside, the wines from Arnot Roberts seemed to have no problem achieving phenolic ripeness, regardless of their weenie alcohols. The wines are intensely bright, littered in aromatic complexity so varied & vivid that they seem to be originating from multiple species. The Green Island & Bea Ranch North Coast Chardonnay, a bootlegged bottle in-HDR-cognito, had all the tang of green tea, backed by lemon candy, bitter chalk dust, sea salt & honeydew notes. It was refreshing enough to be named as the honorary palate cleanser of the event- just what the nurse practitioner ordered after sampling all ‘em inky Rhones. I joked that you could measure how far away you could smell the wine from the glass as an alternative to counting seconds on the finish (ie: ‘I could smell the wine 20 feet away’ instead of ‘it had a 45 second finish’), that should keep the numbers geeks in check. As for the Syrahs, they are not short on beloved funk & arguably have enough range to match up to anything from fish to filet. I found the Clary Ranch to be the most compelling, so light in weight yet dense in flavor, packing enough zip to please even the most jaded lover of Muscadet. As the wines progressed to Hudson & Griffin’s bottlings I found that the more alcohol they had, the less distinctive they were. Less is more- perhaps reverse osmosis isn’t far behind? Research the anatomy of a wine long enough and you’ll be left w/ more questions than answers. "

So, I have a ton of questions for him like what do the following phrases mean?

“I found the Clary Ranch (syrah) to be the most compelling, so light in weight yet dense in flavor, packing enough zip to please even the most jaded lover of Muscadet.”

“I do look at low alcohol California reds as a bit of a groping towards equilibrium”

“From a whole cluster apprehension-o-meter standpoint- bitter, vegetal stems are as much of a bummer as goopy cream in tepid coffee.”

Maybe it’s just me and I’m not that smart…

43

Well one thing Brad can do is generate controversy as evidenced by the amount of feedback on this topic, so props to him. I dont know Brad, but I appreciate his passion for his hobby. However when it comes to his writing stylings I just cannot stomach them, over the top is being polite.Each piece appears to be an audition for Robert Parker or Marvin Shanken and leaves me wondering if the wine he just described was the same one we just drank the night before.His descriptors are so dramatic that at times I wonder if he even knows what he’s talking about. He is a very " confident " young man who appears to have years and years of expierence beyond his age.On the Parker forum he once gave me his advise on how to drink a certain wine that I have been drinking since he was in diapers, which I thought was just a little bit to much.If I was a newby to wine and was looking for advise and had to read his notes I would rush to the beer isle and forget the wine.

44

Unidentifieds word count mention of Tercero: 665
Todds Palatepress article word count for Tercero: 0
Hmmmmm
newhere [thankyou.gif] [wink.gif] [basic-smile.gif]
(enough smileys?)

45

Yep, Mike, you know me . . . . shallow as can be . . . tis the way I’ve always been . . . .

46

Great Avatar Mike, our personal favorite.

47

+1

48

Plus he can beat your ass to a pulp.

49

I’ve heard nothing but good things about Brad as a person, but I find his tasting notes difficult, if not impossible, to read. He gets in his own way–it seems as if he’s trying too hard to impress or entertain the reader–and someone needs to take the parenthesis away from him.

Bruce

50

I am not a fan of Brad’s prose, and I have never met him but, as this thread proves, he always causes threads to go on forever. I do admire the fact that I have never seen him go off on any of his critics, and people can be quite rude to him. Great attitude about the whole thing.

51

Do what you love and love what you do…

52

Absolutely. And I wish him great success if this is what he wants to do.

53

I’m with Larry on this one. Brad’s writing is entertaining and he’s a good dude. The world would be a very boring place indeed if we all stayed tight within a little box (oops, I think I just committed a Parker faux pas! :wink:)

54

Attached to every piece of clothing from the Life Is Good line is that quote and I quite like it.