96 points - James Suckling said, “This is the first year made of this wine with wonderful blackberries, rose leaves and blueberries. Wildly floral. Stems. Full body and round and fine tannins. Juicy and intense. Shows an eccentric style. All large oak. A new nature and personality. Drink now or hold.”
20 bucks per bottle, 229 per case.
Never had it, never heard of it, dubious of some reviewers’ scores.
It’s presented by Chateau St. Michelle, who is fine by me.
K&L has been pushing this one. So far I have taken a “too good to be true” position. Isn’t that the way these things usually go? Still, I would be interested in reading about others impressions - those that have actually tasted it. Cheers!
I had it. Not a bad wine but I gave it 88 points. 96 points is a joke. Suckling has completely destroyed the credibility he had when he left Spectator.
Picked up some from Wine Exchange, and probably will get more. Great bargain for $20, nice story for Realm fans (I am a big one), and has been a good crowd pleaser. Pretty nice bottle and label for the price.
An easy try for me at $20.
It’s way too good to be true. It’s not bad wine, by any means, and it is drier than Intrinsic, which I believe is also from CSM, but that score is hilarious.
Suckling 96 on a New world wine is pretty much an 85-88-and-run-the-other-way proposition. Maybe wines taste better out of his branded stemware, but I can’t imagine anyone whose palate seems to subsume more fresh oak like it wasn’t there.
Although Spectator does not always match the palates of the beserkers community or the cellartracker assesment opinions, here they are pretty close. The average on CT is 88.9 over 16 reviews which jibes well with WS. Of course I trust my own palate, but without tasting find the CT community more accurate than critics whose job it is to support the wine business. Suckling is so gratuitous with 100 point scores, that he makes Parker, Dunnuck and others look totally stingy. Occasionally his scores are fair but I only trust them when I see a general consensus from other more conservative critics.
I remember that, bought some Modus, drank one, gave the rest as gifts and never seriously considered a James Suckling score again. That’s not hyperbole.
I haven’t had this wine, but Suckling scores are unreliable. It’s not that a high score from him is always “wrong,” but he also gives out 95+ scores to a lot of wines that I would
score in the mid to upper 80’s if you put a gun to my head. More importantly, I find the verbiage in his wine reviews often unreliable.
