Has anyone tasted wines from Trump Winery

And also much better.

Agreed.

I have tasted one wine when it was Kluge, then a different one when it was Trump. Both were barely drinkable, with dilution and blandness being the offenses.

A friend of mine who has an international reputation as a vineyard consultant was invited there to consult. She was paid her usual (high) rate for the day. After examining the vineyard, digging soil samples, tasting the wines, and analyzing soils and subsoils back in her lab, she declined to do further work for them. She told them (and told me) that the site was barely suitable for growing vinifera grapes; that the wrong varieties were planted on the wrong rootstocks and that she would recommend either abandoning the project, or replanting from scratch. I believe this was just before Kluge sold the property at a distressed price. I can ask her if anybody is interested.

My friend is semi-retired and now consults only for mid-Atlantic wineries, but in the past she has been employed by dozens of wineries in California, Oregon, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Australia and New Zealand, many of which are very famous. Details available by PM or e-mail.

As far as Chateau Miraval, I imported the wine briefly before it was purchased by celebrities, and know something of the history. The wines were very good then. I had the 2017 Rose in 2018 and it was excellent. The property is now managed by the Perrin family of Chateau Beaucastel in Chateauneuf-du-Pape. They are impeccable winemakers, so I would assume that the wines of Miraval will continue to be excellent.

Dan Kravitz

You can find a better celebrity vineyard within a 30 second drive of the Trump Winery gate.

Built from the ground up, one of the first wineries in Virginia constructed to be gravity fed, and his mom may still live there. Wines are much better too.

Had fun at Blenheim and thought the wines were OK.

As for Trump wines, 5 or 6 years ago we were staying next to a Trump property in Florida and had access to the pool. When we got to the pool, there was a wine tasting. We tasted a few wines and couldn’t take more than a sip of each. The Trump representative was surprised when we didn’t even want to know what we had tasted

Hi Kelly

It’s rare for “celebrity wines” to be taken seriously by the sorts of people who frequent this board. I would be surprised if people here have ever bothered to taste Trump winery wines, nor Greg Norman’s etc. So you may not get any real answers here. That might come off a bit snobby, but I suspect the reality is these sorts of wines are industrialised, mass produced alcoholic beverages, intended to be commercialised based on an association with a celebrity or a brand, rather than based on its merits. This would be despite some sommeliers speaking of rating them highly - it’s all part of the business. It’s a bit like coming to a Kobe Beef forum and asking what people think about “Trump Berder Patties”.

Cheers :slight_smile:!

Correction. That is censorship and denial of First Amendment rights.

[dance-clap.gif]

To answer the original question, I have not tasted this particular celebrity wine and I’m not sure I would care to. We’re sort of hitting on a general celebrity wine trend here. While I generally avoid anything celebrity endorsed in general because I hate making rich a-holes even richer, my specific personal issue with celebrity wine after having tasted the wines of many famous Canadian celebrities (Mike Weir, Wayne Gretzky, Dan Ackroyd, Celine Dion, etc.) is that they seem to be nothing more than tax shelters and masturbatory prestige projects as opposed to actual passion projects. Even more egregious is the insane price they believe a celebrity’s name justifies if it’s on the bottle. For example, selling a $40 CDN bottle of icewine for $100 CDN plus instead. That offends both common and economic sense. The wine is usually no different than any other locally produced non-celebrity wine and on occasion they’ve actually been worse.

I get even more irked when the celebrity claims they put on a lab coat and helped taste and put the blend of their projects together as if that somehow makes them actual winemakers or distillers. Look, I could put on a lab coat, taste several wines that highly skilled growers and winemakers labored over to put together, taste a few and then say they should be sold because they taste good. I would most likely be right with all my tasting experience, but that wouldn’t make me a winemaker and it certainly doesn’t qualify them either.

There’s no “not anymore”. It was put in Eric’s name when they acquired it. When “The Don” was trotting it out as one of hs successful businesses (the only one on the list that actually was an existing business), there was a legal disclaimer on the site saying the winery had nothing to do with him.

There have been some stories of somms at Trump-owned restaurants doing all they can to steer diners away from ordering Trump wines.

Some better celebrity wineries:

Dusty Baker Wines (baseball dude)
Claypool Cellars (musician dude)
Andretti Winery (Indycar, F1, etc. “Driver of the Century”)
Pruett Winery (multi-championship driver)
Lewis Cellars (Indycar dude)

I’m sure there are plenty of other good ones. Actually having a passion for wine and getting their hands dirty helps.

Are you interested in wines or money laundering operations?

If wines, you might try some of the quarterback wines- Passing Time, Doubleback. Much more about wine if you are into that.

There are good wineries owned by celebrities. They tend to be wineries that most folks don’t realize are owned by celebrities.

-Al

Maybe a better bet for a “celebrity winery” is Seaver. I was a big fan of Tom Terrific back in the day.

You said Trump, sorry for what’s about to happen to your perfectly legit post…

I’ve never had a wine from that region so I wouldn’t know what to compare any Trump wines to. Guessing the late harvest/sweet ones might be the more favored. Re: celebrity wines, although I haven’t tried them yet, I am looking forward to at least trying some of Pink’s “Two Wolves” label.

Kelly, I’ve had the Chard and the Cab and did not like them. Little typicity, no complexity, Jay Hack’s note about blandness is accurate. That these wines are receiving medals says more about the meaninglessness of medals than the quality of the wine.

Have you tasted any Trump wines? A legitimate blog post on the winery and its wines should contain at least a few tasting notes and impressions. A description of vineyard and winemaking processes is also an essential component of a good review. For an example of a great wine review blog, check out Jeff Leve’s Wine Cellar Insider. Here’s a link to just one of his many detailed winery reviews. He has extensive tasting notes to accompany them.

Kelly
Wine from the state of Virginia is another topic that was discussed on another thread on this forum.

A number of folks think that these wines in general pale to fine wines made in other regions of the US. Trump and other producers may be challenged from the start by the terroir

Surprised they don’t make an orange wine.

1 Like

As I recall, at their price point Greg Norman’s wines were not all that bad. They tended to fit into the $20.00 Aussie Shiraz slot of lots of upfront fruit, soft tannins, no distinct finish with a wallop of alcohol. Kind of a reasonable supermarket wine. He at least is an actual wine drinker and has an interest in the product. The Don is a teetotaler and could care less what the stuff probably tastes like. But then again his tastes are a little pedestrian…https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+cheeseburgers+white+house&sxsrf=ALeKk00WtcMQlyjcXWKjuCqd8l0HqNUAaw:1590761636073&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=x3GXe0fxS_xdBM%253A%252C-GVSdJ_4GAYs7M%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kSYwQCDA4FgCYiG5HsYatK9-U-MIA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjI0PXxoNnpAhUSG80KHZdzBWIQ9QEwAHoECAkQBA#imgrc=x3GXe0fxS_xdBM: