European Wine Resource has been great in my experience. Even got some shipments with plastic wrapped bottles, which I appreciated - helps preserve the labels if you have metal racks.
I have decided to I have to stop buying Pegau. I have opened more flawed bottles than good ones. It is not worth the price of admission for me anymore- which is a shame because when it is on, this is a wine I really do like a lot.
Even in young wines I have had problems with such things as secondary fermentation (just happened with a 2009 last week) and other bottles that have been flat and flavorless. Lots of bottle variation for me.
I’ll be happy to try your bottles, however.
Which was the point of my semi-joke earlier in the thread. If you’re paying $45 and every bottle is good, that’s a great price. If you have to buy 6 to get 4 good bottles, your real price is now $67.50 per bottle. If you have to buy 6 to get 3 good bottles, your real price is now $90 per bottle. The value proposition may be different at those prices.
I don’t know that thinking about it will help much. Presumably you are suggesting that the problems develop in transit to the US or once here, but that provides little help for people in the US, who can then either accept the problems or not buy. I have never had a bottle I didn’t enjoy, but for those particularly sensitive to brett there seems to be little choice here in the US but to stop buying. Maybe buying direct from the importer would yield cleaner results than bottles that have passed through many hands and many unknown conditions.
I think, like me and others here, you must have at least some tolerance for in pleasure in brett. Pegau’s east coast importer takes good care of the wine in transit. And, in any case, I regularly taste Pegau at Pegau, as you do. I love the wine, but brett-o-phobes would not. This is really a wine that exemplifies the truth about one man’s meat and another’s poison.
I’ve tasted through roughly 2 cases of '12 Pegau at our bar/ with friends and found no bad/ bretty bottles… Not to say I haven’t had some in past vintages… '11 Laurence recently was beautiful but a hint of Brett.
Johnathan,
it is fact that Pegaus style isn´t brilliantly clean like a mirror, everybody who loves the domaine knows it … and usually appreciates it - but the huge amounts of undrinkable brett which are reported here have never come across my palate, neither at the domaine tastings nor elsewhere …
Unfortunately I don´t know the reason either …