perhaps a bit arbitrary re: DRC specifically, but not inherently bullshit. if i was getting an opinion on burgundy, i wouldn’t value it much if that person doesn’t have a good amount of experience drinking burgundy. if DRC is a benchmark (among several, but a small cohort), then having experience with DRC would increase that value. it’s a spectrum for sure; more experience = more relevant opinions.
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Just arbitrarily picking one producer, yes. But as I’ve had more and more experience with benchmark Burgs across the range and across vintages and producers, I’ve learned a lot and it’s made me feel more confident and daresay qualified to opine on any single bottle. That said, I’ve had very little Leroy and none of the top bottlings, so if someone said then I don’t know anything, I think he would be incorrect.
This sums it up perfectly for me. 
Vietti’s new Monvigliero is quite similar to Burlotto’s, in part because they’ve followed a very similar philosophy for it (other than crushing the grapes by foot), so it’s all relative, I suppose 
What does CdP taste like? It’s 3,200 hectares, with a wide variety of soils, expositions, grape varieties, etc… Montrachet, by contrast, is eight hectares.
Rayas clearly tastes more like Fonsalette and des Tours, both from way outside the appellation, than it does any wine in CdP.
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i really hate that the market figured out that the des tours wines are better than most of all “proper” cdps, but it happens.
Important to distinguish between enjoyment and appreciation. You can enjoy Haut Brion with a base understanding of wine. It could blow your socks off. You might think it’s the best wine you’ve ever had, and better than any wine could ever be. A revelatory moment, and on your very first bordeaux (or at least the first one you’ve had that cost more than $20). Could you appreciate that, relative to other bordeaux, even other bordeaux that are truly excellent, it is among the very best? No. You have no real body against which to compare it to. You don’t actually know by comparison where even you would place it in the hierarchy of bordeaux. You may have had a Rol Valentin and thought it was the finest wine you’d ever had in your entire life. Even if that was the case, you’re talking about enjoyment, not appreciation. You don’t know if the Haut Brion is even typical of other vintages of Haut Brion. You don’t know whether you’d find it the best or worst ever made. Or even the worst of the vintage among better producers. I would posit that comparative analysis fosters appreciation and can affect enjoyment, though comparative analysis is not required for enjoyment.
The catch, for me, is when appreciation outpaces enjoyment. I’ll re-rile some goons on here with my post from months ago about just not really loving many Italian wines. I have had a bunch of baroli and brunellos and chiantis and super tuscans and aglianicos and montepulcianos and blah blah blah. Enough that I feel like I can really appreciate an excellent bottle. But most of the time even when I can step back and say, that’s a very lovely, very well made barolo, I’m also wondering why I didn’t open a rhone, or burgundy or, per usual, a good bottle of champagne.
As ever, my advice is to try everything and drink what you enjoy, not just wines you feel like you should appreciate.
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For a myriad of reasons I have had wines up and down the quality ladder in numerous regions. That broad sampling has lent an understanding of what can be done in a given place, and sometimes what perhaps should not be done. All that within the confines of my palate preferences of course. I value that range of experiences that did in fact provide context.
I go way back to when my wife and I had a bottle of 1979 Champagne from a middling producer and adored it. That wine launched our love of Champagne. It didn’t matter that it was not Krug or Dom. It struck a spark that caused a fire that has never been extinguished. Who knows if a different wine would have struck us quite the same way. Probably, but who knows. Exploration of the category, even to some of the very top end (e.g., Bollinger VVF) has given us an appreciation of the category, and broadened what we enjoy in Champagne, rather than narrowed it. I am very happy for that exploration, and the broad understanding it has provided. That’s context for me.
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I don’t need context to determine if X wine is (to me) delicious and excellent; I may need context to decide whether to buy other wines of the same varietal/region/producer based on loving X wine.
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And what about the converse? Is your opinion of DRC worth anything unless you’ve already tasted a bunch of PN?
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1)A well aged Quintarelli Valpolicello in good shape tastes wonderful even to a non-wine geek, or at least the non-wine geeks (all of whom like good wine) who were at my last dinner party. The bottle you served might have been too young or off in some other way.
2)Contra William Kelley, although great Rayas tastes like an otherworldly CdP, it does taste recognizably like a CdP from the north of the appellation, even moreso those from sandy soils. Beaucastel does not taste to me like a typical CdP because of its high mourvedre content and also, perhaps because its vineyards a like a bubble extending out of the northern border of the appellation. But typicity is also a matter of taste, to an extent, and, since there’s no disputing, probably I ought not to have.
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In film, someone might see the original Blade Runner and enjoy it without ever having seen a traditional noir genre film. Others might be bothered or enjoy it more because of their expectations from other genre films. Is it wrong to be bothered by something you might otherwise like because of your own preconceptions? Is the person’s judgement with a deeper knowledge of film theory and history any more correct or valuable? Perhaps in criticism and to others, but not to one’s self.
If you are on a quest to find the most comfortable chair in all the land, you might find a mighty comfy chair right away. It helps to have been in a few other chairs to understand just how comfortable the chair really is, but that doesn’t discount that you are sitting in the most comfortable chair you’ve ever been in before. It’s a golden stage of enjoyment, too, when you aren’t disappointed by various frames and upholstery, cushions and dimensions. But it’s also fun to really know that stuff (not about chairs for me, though 
).
I’ve certainly been jealous of my less informed self and some of the things I got to try or enjoy before I had more knowledge, but I wouldn’t trade the way it happened at all. I was buying original release E.H. Taylor Warehouse C “Tornado Surviving” bourbon off the shelf for MSRP, and now it’s nearly unobtanium. I would understand a ton more about it today and have a lot more context, but I really liked it when I tried it. The fact that I wasn’t swooning over it’s price and rarity was a good thing! In many ways, it was a foundational moment for the context that I now have for finer bourbons. I also have plenty of things I used to love that I now laugh about. I wouldn’t view lack of context as the inability to see true greatness, but as an opportunity to collect more data points and find what is important to you. Winefluencers be d@%^ed 
!
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Context for me only comes from trying the similar wines side by side. If you can try a multiple of them at the same time you can really start to get the context of what it is you are looking for, region/grape/style. I find trying them separately the differences in the wines is not as apparent. The Quintarelli you had may not of been what you are into but if it was side by side with a Dal Forno and I would say a few other lower priced Valpolicella you would have more context on those types of wines. Could be you just aren’t into these types of wines. I like to have the ability to go back and forth between the wines to compare at the same time and over the course of a few hours. Drinking one this day and another a few days or weeks later doesn’t give that experience, no “context”.
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Context is very important. I have an example of context (well the lack thereof) that illustrates why I reckon it is so important
Some wine friends decided to starting buying red burgundy. They started with the 2011 vintage and kept buying 1s and 2s from a range of domaines mostly village and premier cru for about five years. By 2017 they decided to start drinking them. They soon decided that they “did not like red burgundy” and sold off the entire collection (more than 200 bottles). Too tannic, too angular, not enough fruit etc.
They lacked context. The vintages they started with (2011 thru 2014) were not riper fruitier vintages and they drank them at the worst time e.g. 6-10 years from vintage. I asked them to keep some of the nicer wines at the back of the cellar for 10 years and revisit. But NO. They did not like red burgundy! It was not like they drank a decent amount of very good wines from top vintages which were mature before deciding “we don’t like red burgundy”
To really enjoy and appreciate red burgundy (as in this example) you do need context. You do need to understand vintage variation, typically ageing profiles, domaine styles etc etc.
I find context enhances wine enjoyment significantly. When you know what is going on and you kind of know what to expect, the wine has more interest and (usually) more enjoyment.
Brodie
The bottle I opened was a 2006 Valpolicella Classico Superiore. Given what I’ve read, 15-20 years should be a good age for a bottle like this. I know enough about wine to know that this was not flawed. Visually, the bottle was perfect, cork in good shape, wine appeared a vibrant purple/red withjust the tiniest hint of bricking. No oxidation, cork taint, VA, brett, any of it. I thought the was delicious, I just didn’t understand what made these GREAT, hence the post.
This is the proper way to do it. I may need to take you up on that offer!
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Very much in agreement here.
Context, to me, is always helpful. How or why a region came to produce the wines it does. But I rarely use it to confine a wine. In many regions there are still special producers who rise above and need to be viewed in their own context.
I don’t think it can be better stated than this. Well thought out, easily digestible, and is (IMHO) spot-on.
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Definitely let me know.
A few wineries/wines I recommend
- Brigaldara (Their entry level Valpolicella is very affordable and fantastic, revisit it over a couple of days… Brigaldara leans on the drier side in general)
- Le Ragose
- Tomasso Bussola (recioto specifically but I like their other wines as well)
- Masi (Mazzano and Campolongo di Torbe… Costasera in better years)
- Dal Forno (very much on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to Quintarelli’s style)
- Buglioni
This resonates but with a caveat - the benchmarks must still conform in some way to the type. I think it’s important that one would pair Rayas with fare which with one would usually pair Chateauneuf.
I jumped on the Kosta Browne bandwagon back in the day. I liked their 2004 Pinots but after tasting just one realized that they should be paired as I would a syrah or cab, not as I would a pinot. This to me would remove them from being considered a benchmark pinot (even if they otherwise qualified!).
Grain of salt - I’ve not had the privilege to taste either DRC or Rayas.
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