Double Lucky #8 (2020) - No Girls

WINE TALK
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Opening the first of my No Girls wines. Don’t have much experience here. This is 2020.

Pnp - the nose is unique and super assertive…rough leather, manure, red fruit, funk, something unique (the “rocks” terroir people mention?). Mouth is light weight, but rough flavored. In wide mouthed Barolo glass. Rest going immediately into a wide decanter.

6:05 - It’s like the wine is angry at my mouth. The finish reminds me more of dark spirits than wine.

6:22 - Black olive and salt. It’s like a hot rock after a brief rain combined with a salted reduction of barn muck.

6:43 - The raw shit on the nose is mellowing…a little. I’m not sure what is behind it, but the curtain is moving a bit. Mouth - beginning is finally approaching wine, but mid and end are harsh.

7:30 - Tar. That’s what I’ve been failing to put my finger on. The note of superhot fresh tar.

8:20 - Finally, some fruit is sprouting from the manure pile. Red fruit. Heaps of black pepper. Heaps! Mouth is milder, some fig, iron and blood. Finish less hot.

9:13 - Nose now is muddled or perhaps I just can’t smell anymore - maybe some blueberry? dirt. some milk chocolate. Finish is bitter olive and leather.

10 - Smoke, olive, light bacon fat, rocks. Under scent of red fruit. Still not the most pleasant.
Mouth is black forest gateau, good structure and acidity. The taste is actually pleasant now.

Day 2 @ 8am - I wake with the phantom flavor of this still haunting me

Day 2 @ 3pm - quick check in before dumping. Could this have continued it’s opening trend and ended somewhere nice? No. No it has not. Pleasure has fled the field and the initial experience of hot tar, manure, blood, iron and a bitter finish have taken back control.

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What vintage is #8? Sounds like a recent vintage.

All Christophe Baron wines really benefit from 5-6 years of age! Not so aggressive!

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Love your note, thanks for the effort!

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I had a few bottles of the 2017 at 5 - 6 years of age and thought it was ready to go, and wasn’t much point in aging it further. Already very complex and not a ton of fruit. Pretty great wine (but far from his more expensive wines) and great value.

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Note finished! That was an experience! Fascinating wine, not pleasent, but very enjoyable to track.

@JDutko - Good catch. It was 2020. Added to note.

@Anton_D - thank you! I used to do these longer form notes on a lazy weekend day fairly regularly but got out of the habit. It’s a blast to see the wines evolve over longer time frames.

@J_Rock - that’s helpful. I think my take away is to check back (I have 2 more of Double Lucky 2020) in a couple years. I do worry that with this already not having enough fruit, for my taste, to balance these out, that the fruit diminishes more and it fall s even more out of balance. We’ll see!

Looking forward to cracking some of the higher level bottles to see how they go, but given this, will wait there as well.

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2020 was overall a “down” vintage in WA State due to fires. 2018, 2019 and 2021 were all great. 2020, not so much.

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In general, I consider Christoph’s wines to be earthy/umami bombs, give or take, and the fruit typically plays second (or third) fiddle. I don’t expect these wines to show as much balance between the fruit and umami as Cote Rotie, for example.

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I had never had any of the CB wines prior to last year. I tried the Horsepower wines and really liked them. Bought some more this year and threw in a few of the 2020 Double Lucky #8. I found it coarser than the Horsepower wines, didn’t get the manure elements, but think the other descriptors lined up with my impressions pretty well. I followed it for 3ish hours and thought it was approachable after the first 20 minutes. I don’t see a repurchase based upon this experience, but will be following the development of the Horsepower stable.

Cheers,
fred

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Talk about wine being polarizing.

I traded @gavin.f my spare bottle of a J.M. Guillon Gevrey 1er for one of his remaining 2020 Double Lucky. He asked me twice if this was in fact what I wanted. I think he felt bad about it afterwards and threw in a nice bottle of Schafer-Frohlich riesling “as a baby shower gift” (which I opened on a different day and enjoyed tremendously).

The nose combines notes that I did not expect to see in one wine. Raspberry, heaps and heaps of flower petals, soy sauce, manure, clove, and creosote. A high-toned, spicy sort of grenache nose with a twist. The floral aspect is very seductive and poses a contradiction to the threatening aura of funk emanating from the wine.

There’s some fizz on the palate, as well as a distinct brininess on the attack. It’s like I’m sucking on saltwater taffy rolled in fruit-flavored candy dust, or what the Brits call “sherbet”. I’ve had white wines that have a saline mineral character on the back end, but for this sweaty saltiness to be so upfront, and in a red wine, just feels strange. The tannin structure is noticeable by its absence. In its place you have umami savoriness and volcanic minerality. Again, this is a bizarre sensation.

After a couple of hours, the wine calms down. The spritz is gone, and along with it recedes the bubble gum gloss on the fruit, revealing a more brooding and darker layer underneath. I’m getting wet coffee grounds, sour Hershey’s chocolate, and campfire now, and the fruit has transitioned to more black cherries.

Is this a flawed wine? I don’t think so. Now that I think about it, this didn’t even leave me as traumatized as my first encounter with the Bionic Frog. But still this is just such a weird animal, like encountering a platypus in the wild with zero prior knowledge. I must say I have quite enjoyed the process of following this through its evolution, more so than deriving purely sensory pleasure from it. Certainly this is not everyone’s cup of tea. My wife took one sip and immediately dumped the remainder of her glass. “This smells like toilet, why would you drink this?” she said.

Perhaps given that my favorite region for Scotch is Islay, I might just be more predisposed than others to like this sort of funky smoke bomb. I am intrigued, however, in that I know Gavin has fairly high tolerance for merde, so why such different reactions? The fizziness when opened does lead me to believe that this may be a wine highly susceptible to massive bottle variation. Or maybe this is just where palates diverge, which is a perfectly acceptable conclusion too.

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I had a bottle of this in late February, and while I didn’t take anything approaching the detailed notes here, I can say I had a somewhat different impression. Got none of the brett/barnyard/poo components (and I’m fairly brett-sensitive, not a fan) or fizz. Agree there isn’t much in the way of tannic structure. But overall it came off as a fruit-forward, Grenache dominant wine. I don’t think there’s any Mourvedre in this but tasting blind, I would probably have guessed there was some in this due to the underlying savory/sauvage aspect. Overall it seemed like an ‘easy drinker’, not glou glou but certainly intended for near term (4-5 years) consumption upon release.

My wife also immediately rejected it as ‘not her cup of tea’ although she didn’t elaborate on what the objectionable aspects were.

TL/DR; I thought it was fine but this cuvee is not a rebuy for me.

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I think this has some tempranillo in it that is where you are getting the not-quite-GSM, but sorta experience from. I had a couple of these - donated one and drank the second…had no fizz and no brett that I detected but I tolerate a bit of brett before I tilt in Rhone-ish wines. I have one more and will be getting it out of the cellar soon. Not a rebuy for me either, fwiw and good on you @gavin.f for adding the Schaefer-Frolich.

Cheers,
fred

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Can’t take any credit there - that was a trade between @gavin.f and @Sam_Kwak

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I think you just inspired a new wine night name (or theme?)

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