Crap Alert! 2016 TJ’s Platinum Reserve Yountville Cabernet

WINE TALK
21

Funny you should post this.

I went to see a friend’s band play at a small club in Berkeley which allows you to bring your own wine so I went around the corner to a TJ’s and saw a big display of this as I walked in.

I asked the guy stocking if he’d tasted it and he said “no”. He asked another guy and he said he hadn’t tried it either. So I told them I would be the guinea pig.

You nailed it - a light fruit bomb with absolutely no backbone or finish and no resemblance to real cabernet. My wife said it tasted like Robitussin. I thought it had more of a Luden’s cherry cough drop thing going on.

Then I had some of a friend’s Cameron Hughes 666 ( [diablo.gif]) Cabernet @ $29. What a difference - a real cabernet with some nice fruit, a little oak and a nice finish. Too bad they’ve already sold it out.

22

Well, he only gave it a 93 on Cellar Tracker.

23

Ah, so he did. 93. The Universal score. As adaptable to any wine as the Zalto Universal glass.

24

Look, have you ever had Charles Shaw wines. All the rage as 2 Buck and 3 Buck Chuck and probably $4 now though don’t look anymore. They brought the public this awful crap and you think they have any better. Very few name brand wines in TJ and those there are their lower quality ones anyhow. Even if you know what you are buying there, it is unlikely to be anything any WB crowd would appreciate.

25

Over the years I’ve found a few gems there but it certainly isn’t a place I regularly go for wine.

Their 2012 Liberte’ cab for $12 won one of our low end cabernet tastings.

And I recall their 2014 Signature Dry Creek zinfandel was really good for $20.

It helps to know their store wine buyer who can alert you to the good ones.

26

I had a TJ Pinot for 11$ that wasn’t bad. Their wines vary.

Mike K. thanks for the thumbs up on CH lot 666. I have 664, 662, 661. Have tried 661 and 662- tasty.

27

Well…I do a fair amount of bottom feeding at TJ’s. I find you have to kiss a lot of (ugly) frogs to find a prince. I find a bit more success in their
imports…generally more interesting. It helps if you can determine the source of the wine, by looking where it was produced/bttld. If it’s a FredFranzia
product, I tend to not bother trying it. But if it’s identified as coming from SantaMaria (the Miller’s CentralCoast Wine Services custom crush facility),
then there’s a good bet that it’ll be decent, or even better. The ComicRevolution white Rhone blend of several yrs ago was outstanding
for about $7. For Paso-sourced wines, it’s a bit more of a gamble.
Tom

28

Sooooooo…I’m not quite sure. Did Barry like the wine?:wink:

29

When our shop was in the same shopping center as TJ’s, a friend would often show up almost every weekend with two or three partial bottles of wine and ask to dump them and leave the bottles in our recycle. One day I asked him where he was getting the wines. He told me he would go to TJ’s once a week and buy two or three bottles of wine he though he might like. He would take them to his car, open and try them. If any were good, he would go back to TJ’s and buy more. If they sucked, he visited our shop to dump them. Now that I think about it, I think he only bought wine from us twice and that was while courting his next ex-wife.

30

At my TJ’s 2012 Montrose is $75…there is also a decent little grand cru St. Emilion for $17.99 Chateau La Grand Faurie '12

31

TJ’s Platinum Reserve Cab…
Whats crap is you even rating this Cab, everyones palate and pocketbook is extremely different. That is the reason their are all different callibers of wine. Whats crap is why a 2016 was even opened in 2018 or 19. It should lay down for another 4-5 yrs befor even tasting.
Go pick on someone of your equal!

32

Wish I’d seen the post before I bought a bottle. See post #21.

think of it as a PSA.

33

Hmmmm, Fiona…that’s a rather strange response to Barry’s OP. His is a palate I thoroughly respect and I’m glad
that he warned me away from this wine. I do a lot of bottom feeding at TJ’s and occasionally find something I really
like (and post a TN here about it). But most of the TJ’s specials, often made by FredFranzia, are maybe not bad or crap wines,
but are utterly boring as hell. And I’m glad that there is a certain audience out there for these boring wines. But you don’t often find those folks here
on WB. They’re content w/ drinking those TJ’s specials day in & day out and I’m glad that TJ’s is there for them.
But to suggest that a TJ’s special Cabernet is in need of age sorta boggles my mind. I’ve yet to try one that even suggested
the need of age. The lack of tannins is one of the reasons they’re so boring.
Tom

34

Welcome to the board Fiona! Just an fyi that if you’re In The Business (i.e. you are the wine buyer for Trader Joe’s, etc) you need to list that in your Signature.

Cheers!

35

So, am I to take it you didn’t like it?

36

You have obviously misread his take on the wine, all he needs to do is lay it down for 4-5 years, as suggested and recommended above, and it will easily masquerade as any Oakville/Yountville area Cab.

Those 500,000 gallon capacity tanks are awfully good at producing world class juice. I’d really love to hear how one produces “Yountville Cab” at $15 MSRP when fruit there starts at $7k per ton and goes higher. And in such quantity, to boot. Looks like TTB may be missing the paperwork here, somehow.

37

[rofl.gif]

38

Babe in the woods. I had a good laugh imagining her allocating space in her closet to TJ “Yountville Cab”.

39

I see what you did there! [rofl.gif]

40

TJs is dead to me.