I’ve never seen a good explanation for that candied quality in California - in pinot, cab and syrah – even from cooler climates.
While a few of these had notes of that, none of them hit the cough drop alarm button for me. These were below my (fairly low) candy gag threshold.
Well, I’d have to disagree that top quality Pinot can’t be grown here. As someone who’s highest percentage holding is CA Pinot, I do agree that there’s a huge amount of crap and mediocrity for various reasons. It’s overplanted because it’s en vogue. I can think of some where the climate, viticulture, picking decisions and making are all perfect, but the site has nothing to say. Way too many are clumsily trying too hard: late picked, over-oaked, crudely stemmy, etc. Some producers have been doing it right for a very long time. Back when '05 was getting hyped I stepped outside my comfort zone and tasted a bunch of board and critic darlings and was not rewarded. Mostly $45-80 wines I rated 80-89 pts. My group has completed 16 of a 17 part retrospective series of '05 CA PN. I’d say about 20% are respectable and maybe 30% have fallen apart already. That’s well regarded producers, including board darlings. I do think the state of CA PN has notably improved, but the market is still supporting a sea of sub-par wines. Critics are still rewarding bad winemaking decisions.
agree completely , and I would happily find plenty of Burgs for 75-100 $ that I’d much rather have.
Of course he had an agenda. Everyone who posts a thread (or responds to one) has an agenda. His, in this case, was to document personal tasting notes for “The worst tasting we’ve done in years (CA Pinots)”. Now, even if you ignore or know nothing of his prior posts regarding many CA Pinot wines, his choice of Topic Sentence (or Agenda if you will) leaves little doubt as to the what lies beyond the click of the mouse. You can call it click bait but there is no denying that he delivered the goods in spades. He really, really, really didn’t enjoy any of those wines. Which is 2,000% fine! Plenty of people were perhaps hearing of those wines for the first time, or had similar experiences with some of those wines (myself included!) or maybe even loved all of those wines. I firmly believe that the internet is actually 100% powered by renewable energy and that energy source is people’s opinions. Ra-Ra 1st amendment!
Tasting notes generally serve as a public service announcement for anyone remotely interested in a particular wine and the desire to learn more about it. “What does it taste like? Is it in a “good” place right now? Will my wife forgive me for spending 3 figures on something from France that’s not clothing???” It’s a fantastic way for more people to bushwhack a path through some notoriously difficult terrain and provide guidance beacons for fellow enthusiasts. It doesn’t matter if you’re a paid expert or impoverished enthusiast, publishing tasting notes is an inherently bold, yet humbling, statement. Wine is, in a word, nuts (hat tip to Jura whites). It’s science and magic and it’s totally crazy to attempt to capture it’s essence in three, run-on sentences or less. But it’s also fantastic! However, what’s truly critical for these notes to be meaningful is context.
IMO, tasting notes without seperately stated context lose much, if not all, of their meaning/power. You may not like something (or you may love something!), but try to be objective. Especially if you’re trying to fashion yourself as an expert or call out those who actually make the damn wine. Many tasting note threads on this board carry some sort of disclaimer (“Y’all know I F**** hate this wine but…”) or post script (Tom Hill’s Wee Bloody Pulpit…which is freaking genius), which allow the taster to add color to their (hopefully) clinical tasting notes. Separating fact from fiction is something that is inherently difficult with wine but people generally appreciate the effort when other’s attempt to do so, even if it’s not successful. Same goes for being humble. Asking questions (such as, “What about the wine making process turns me off?”) and stating that upfront is a good way to engender further provocative discussion. Making an outright statement of your own perceived facts isn’t helpful. Even worse is a series of olympic record breaking broad jumps of increasingly aggressive and dubious statements on topics ranging from terroir to a winemakers’ ethics. It’s fine and healthy to go against the grain but to make it your mission to be so freaking negative and routinely try to prove other’s wrong (even those who purportedly are your friends) is just a massive downer. What’s even worse is that it’s not advancing discussions about what should be interesting wine topics.
Maybe all that’s needed here is a decent editor (or as John just provided, translation services). Sure it would put my wine and many others’ wine out of a job, but we may all just actually learn something.
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I love this thread. Classic Berserking!
O.K. - I don’t have a lot of experience here and I don’t recognize a lot of names, but I would be greatful if you could add which vineyards and which wineries are doing it right. I can appreciate fruit and I can appreciate structure and spice from stems. I do not care about the ability to age for greater than 10 years.
The X-Pensive Winos have had some monthly dinners over the past 10 years when the wines just suck. Every group that meets regularly for an extended period of time and likes to try different types of wines from different regions has disappointing nights. If not, the group hasn’t met long enough or hasn’t tried enough types of wines from different places. Early on, we had many California Pinot dinners, more than a few with winemakers who make wines that many here love. We came to the same conclusion as David’s and John’s group, but due to lethargy and sloth, became too lazy to report about them. We haven’t had a California Pinot dinner in years. I’m not sure we could scare up a quorum to have another one.
Maybe increased perception of sweetness is due to potassium in stems buffering acidity?
http://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=988901#p988901
And this statement puzzles me since I personally find the En Haut and En Bas to be far the best and classiest pinots in the Copain stable and showing quite differently from the others and from each other. In a blind tasting some years ago of CA pinots and Burgundies a Kiser En Haut was the only CA wine I was positive was a Burgundy.
This day was bound to come and my only surprise is that it took so long.
No group think, no wave of commonality, but just a decently sized contingent speaking out that a lot of revered Cali pinot is not so good and that the entire category, even among top tier wines, is not so top-tier.
FWIW, I think W-S, Rochioli, Flowers, and Siduri did a lot to foster a huge jump up in quality and style of domestic pinot, but there is an inherent ceiling that seems invisible to many. it’s all subjective (duh) so drink what you like and carry on. Even the group-think exuberance is bound to subside eventually.
It pretty much the flip side of the contingent of folks who feel there is no value to be had in Burgundy.
What sucks for my wallet is that I like both.
I agree that they are vastly better than the Voisins (or the non-estate bottling) and they taste very different from each other (which makes sense given the geography of Kiser), but I find the Copain signature to be VERY strong in all the Pinots. We can argue over whether it’s whole cluster or not whole cluster or what, but they pop out to me.
It pretty much the flip side of the contingent of folks who feel there is no value to be had in Burgundy.
What sucks for my wallet is that I like both.
What sucks for lot of us is that the Burgundies that are qualitatively much better than our domestic counterparts-reaching the ethereal-are not affordable and/or obtainable.
I have made my personal biases and opinions known; I can get laterally equivalent quality pinot and greater satisfaction for less from Burgundy and Oregon. On top of that, there are Cru Bojos and Juras that offer similar taste profiles with far more intellectual interest as pinot at a fraction of the price.
Not to segue (that’s a lie), but at least one of the proprietors of a Board darling product tasted in the OP had a long practice of reviewing/tasting top tier Burgundies on this Board. At least to me, the vibe being put out was that this proprietor wanted all of us to know that he had a Burgundian palate and intended to craft his wines in a similar manner. That was a head scratcher for me. And not. “You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle”.
That isn’t fair. He takes glee in beating the crap out of all wines and most people.
You confuse me thinking that 90% of everything is crap with me being happy that 90% of everything is crap.
Location, location, location. The Kisers are literally a patch of fir/oak trees away from Hein, Abel Henneberg (Les Voisins) and Savoy is 5 miles down valley.
Now this is odd…I think that 90% of everything is crap, but I am happy with my curmudgeonly nature.
At the risk of posting something that could be viewed as unduly confrontational, I have to admit I got a chuckle reading Bobby Gilbane’s treatise this morning on what a good tasting note should be. I mean, I don’t know Mr. Gilbane, but I can see he’s posted 198 times in the last 18 months - if we all waited for Bobby to post his TNs, the grass would be growing pretty high around here.
Despite any perceived agenda’s, I like folks who take the time to post detailed notes - and the bonus in this thread this morning was seeing John expand on the notes with day 2 takes as well - seeing John and David post their thoughts on the same set of wines is like the “Yin & Yang” of a virtual tasting, and getting the day 2 update is just icing on the cake.
Similarly, while they don’t necessarily drink a lot of wines in my wheelhouse, guys like David Bueker (maybe the best at this on the Board) and Mike Pobega are always posting notes on various wines - hard to argue with that kind of consistent/sustained contribution to the overall Board.
I don’t make wine, I just drink the shtuff. And I won’t feel hurt or otherwise personally affronted if someone like Jay Hack posts that the kind of wines I drink and periodically post about are wimpy, watery, flavor-lacking substitutes for the real thing (just like Jay won’t get upset when I comment that the rocket fuel masquerading as wine AKA Saxum James Berry is rated DNPIM by yours truly).
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The only wine I have tasted from this group is the 12 Clos Saron a couple of weeks ago at the winery. Yes it was structured but with lots of potential. We also tasted Gideon’s older PN going back to 1996 which he made at Renaissance and the evolutionary path of the 12 should yield an ageworthy wine in another 10+ years.
George Chadwick was also there, perhaps he will chime in.
Odd - the maps I’ve looked at indicate that the Voisins are maybe 1/3-2/3 b/w Savoy and Kiser (with Bearwallow and an area not under vine b/w the Voisins and Kiser).