Same here, except i opened a 22 berserker cuvee before i realized that i lost my sense of smell due to covid. Bottle sat for a week, and was still in the zone after my smell came back. Longest ive been able to hold off.
I agree, but sometimes big bubbles can be distracting (for me). There are some producers who very low effervescence which can be a positive or negative depending on the customer. It’s all preference, but like mentioned not a sign of quality.
I’m not sure if there has been updated studies, but I have read articles and have had many customers say carbonated beverages are painful. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-science-of-fizz-101449234/#:~:text=There’s%20a%20scientific%20reason%20for,your%20face%2C%20nose%20and%20mouth.
I wonder if a finer bubble mousse would make a difference for this demographic.
Probably helped that wine quite a bit!
I enjoy when bubbles are fine, and quality of mousse is definitely 100% a priority. So far, I would say that the mousse seems fuller when the bottle is first opened and then settles down. I do think that with time in bottle that will settle down.
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Let’s take a nice quality still chardonnay and put it under nitrogen like Guinness.
Maybe @Rick_Allen can help out.
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Nitrogen is not very soluble in liquids like wine (or beer), while CO2 is, relatively speaking, much more soluble. Even Argon is more soluble than Nitrogen.
We have force-carbonated wine before. It was interesting and fun.
And what more could we ask for!
But to your point about Nitrogen, Guinness is my favorite beer in the world and there are other fun nitro beers. Clearly it is effective in making a tasty grog.
I doesn’t take a lot of nitrogen to “fill up” all the available space in beer. I assume that there’s some CO2 in there as well.
Like soda stream or like industrial?
LOL. My wife and I really want to try that with a basic WV Chard. The worst thing that could happen is we laugh some out our noses.
Industrial. We helped John Paul at Cameron make and can a sparkling rose a couple times. We got better as time went on, and it was pretty popular, but he’s more interested in cider these days
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As I read my note it reads more negative than I meant. There’s definitely good wine in the bottle, it’s just not ready yet to present itself.
I actually opened the bottle you said is most backwards on purpose, as its rare to get a chance to try a wine that is so upside down in the bottle. It was more about education than enjoyment.
I just opened a Durant, it will be a fun comparison.
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Don’t apologize for honesty. It was a fair take and your opinion.
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I was also going to say A+ for honesty. I don’t know why Marcus released these wines when he did, but he gave the very clear caveat that they are not ready and should not be opened yet. I can only imagine that this is causing him anxiety to see people who are unable to wait a few months before pulling the corks.
We were over at non-Berserker friend’s house last night and we started with a bottle of Larherte Freres Ultradition that I brought. It was enjoyed by all. They then pull out a Durant sparkler from their first ever BD purchase. Not my choice, but here we go. It was good and interesting, but clearly out of sorts IMO. We drank it down within 30 minutes. The husband made the comment that it was OK, but not as good as the Laherte. I pointed out that the Champagne was disgorged in 2020. I didn’t mention that we were suppose to drink it over 3 to 5 days. 
The Goodfellow was simply put in a very unfair situation. I have had and enjoyed the Durant several times over its production life at the winery and it clearly is in some sort of shock at the moment.
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His cider is really wonderful. I wish I had access to more of it but his UK importer only brought it in once.
I received my bubbles and I will probably wait until the Holidays before I try. Until then, I look forward to the Rose wine to enjoy throughout the summer…
Cheers,
JP
We released these wines when we did because it’s that or stop making them.
Any time you are developing or growing a program, you either need to have cash flow or a large capital investment. 2020 killed that option. We began the bubbles program with the 2019 vintage, and that’s the commitment. With 2023 we had a tremendous opportunity to add to the program, and that meant taking a serious look at releasing wines from the first round.
The bottles we’ve opened for tastings, hand disgorged, show more forwardly than the wines on release do, because we added the traditional 20g SO2 at disgorging. That and bottle shock have the wines wound up tight.
For those who have patience, these wines will offer a really lovely experience. But that isn’t now. It’s literally 5 weeks since they disgorged. Even July 4th is just barely going to be the point to consider opening them, and then they will need a considerable time open. The Durant is reductive on day 1, and better on day 2 and 3, but the first “champagne experience” I’ve seen from it was a bottle I opened for a tasting and then left for 5 days. It’s still an Oregon wine, but at that point it had unwound quite a bit.
The first bottle of 2017 Doyard I opened after buying on pre-order was terrible for about 48 hours. Then it was better, but it’s just getting into a good spot now. But even then I am still holding rather than opening, disregarding the fact that I generally like champagne with some youthful energy.
I’d really love to echo your point of looking at disgorgement dates for the wines you compare these too. Megan and I had a bottle of Tarlant Brut Zero a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t really amazing but it was ready to drink, and disgorged in 2021. The maturity it showed really allowed the wine to show at it’s full potential for enjoyment.
These three cuvees are the first bottles from the program. And again, without releasing them, there isn’t going to be a future program. By hitting Berserker Day, we released them ahead of disgorging and so it may seem like they should be ready. But these wines are only 2 years in bottle, and just disgorged. I don’t fault anyone for opening them, but the notes across the board seem to say the same thing, there are good wines here but they’re not ready yet.
On the sulfur add. Could we have skipped it? I dislike brown wines more than I dislike tightly wound wines. I’m not going to penalize the patient drinker to make the wines seem more appealing up front. I will be deconstructing the evolution of these wines to see if the add we made is correct for our wines and adjusting from there. We also utilized three different closures, and I will keep a close eye on how those affect the wines so that I can try to refine our choices in the next round of disgorging.
I really appreciate the support and massive enthusiasm for these wines. And as we get the program dialed in, I am confident that we’ll be able to release wines that have sat for long enough after disgorging to be out of bottle shock (we are less than half way to the point we suggested that people wait for to even consider opening these wines 
). We also have only two shipping windows in these modern times (one for the south) and perhaps we should have disgorged just after the window closes so everything would have waited until fall
Edit: just noted that the Durant still disappeared in 30 minutes. My grandfather always used to remind me that like isn’t fair. I have expected to see a number of experiences like these to be posted (and I really do view it as a compiment to what people believe we can do with sparkling wines) and for our wines to be compared with Champagne at a way to early point. It’s great that it’s happening now, and in 1-2 years I think we’ll see the playing field level and the posts will shift.
But it’s both blessing and a curse that bottles of bubbles just disappear so quickly. While I really hope that everyone won’t need to cellar the sparkling wines the same way as the Pinot Noirs, these are still Goodfellow wines and they’ll like a few hours at the very least 
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I actually don’t see it as a negative note. You described it pretty much as I see it.
The bubbles are a bit strident in the WV-EB right now, though they do settle down after a bit. Time in bottle should help, and ideally as we get to 3-4 years aging in bottle before disgorging I feel that mousse should really continue to gain in quality.
You noted a great range of aromatics, especially given the tendency for reduction to integrate and add intensity and depth as it folds in over time.
And the wine is drier, and intentionally so. Megan and I both prefer less sweet styles of bubbles and Riesling. These are food wines, though I could drink the non-dosage Whistling Ridge BdB all day long without any food (it says Extra-Brut but we opted for no dosage, after seeing the dose trial wines after labels were printed).
We’re opening these wines in NYC for the get together, but I’ll open the bubbles that morning if possible. And I expect that the results will still be pretty similar to yours (lots of potential, but wait for a more optimal experience).
I hope the Durant was another good experience for you (even if it’s just getting a good data point for when it will be ready).
Thanks for the big and fascinating reply. I’ll emphasize - these are GOODFELLOW wines. In my experience and opinion, just about all of your wines, red or white, need a few years in the bottle, many of them need 5-10 years, and as we all know, Heritage wines are built to develop for 20 years. There have been lots of TNs that suggest Durant and Whistling Ridge Chardonnay really hit their strides in the 7-10 year range. I would guess the bubbles could behave the same.
“You Know You’re a Berserker” when you appropriately age your Goodfellow wines. 
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FIFY
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