Texier 2005 Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages St-Gervais “Vieilles Vignes des Cadinières” (Rhône) – Above all the detail is an incredible complexity, not often found even in the more interesting of the Villages-designates. The detail? Fine-particulate minerality, full of graphite and ground porcini, with the herbal-bubblicious berry of the region, swirling berries giving more of their skins than their flesh, and an atmospheric uniformity of molecules. A fascinating wine, with an undoubtedly fascinating future. (12/10)
27 January 2011
Cannery Row or Suduiraut?
Suduiraut 1998 Sauternes (Bordeaux) – Grossly insufficient. I bought this for a closeout steal, and it was overpriced even then. At full price? Spare me. Bad bottle? I certainly hope so. (12/10)
Heyden Caulfield
Dr. Heyden 2009 Riesling Oppenheimer Sackträger Riesling Spätlese 12 10 (Rheinhessen) – Nuclear. (Sorry, too easy.) The wine’s also too easy, bringing basic spätlese without much riesling. (12/10)
Cardboard Boxler
Boxler 2004 Riesling “Réserve” (Alsace) – The Chadderdon-imported domestic (U.S.) bottling that carries no letter indicator, and thus I have no idea of what it’s actually made, other than riesling. Of which it tastes. Clean, crisp, minerally, and kinda foursquare. The least interesting bottle from Boxler I’ve ever experienced, but given the producer that’s still a pretty tasty quaff. There’s much better out there, however. Maybe an unrepresentative bottle? (12/10)
Admiral Adami
Adami 2008 Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Vigneto Giardino (Veneto) – Among the best prosecco I’ve tasted (the prime example still being the house pour at Corte Sconta in Venice), with crystallized minerality and chalk swimming about a dryish memory-of-citrus froth. Not so much linear as helixed, but still unidirectional in the four-dimensional plane. (Translation of the previous nonsense: quite good.) (12/10)
La Perlara of the Orient
ca’Rugate 2002 Recioto di Soave “La Perlara” (Veneto) – 500 ml. Pretty much the perfect point for a recioto di Soave, with the smiling white stone fruit laced with makrut lime giving way to coppery minerality and ever-increasing density. Is it marvelously complex and lingering? No. But it’s quite good. (12/10)
Donati or nice?
Donati 2008 Malvasia dell’Emilia (Emilia-Romagna) – Difficult. This is no slickified industrial wine, so variable performance is perhaps to be expected. But this is…difficult. Papery, dusty, wrenched, and odd. I keep peering, waiting for an explanation, and then the bottle’s gone and I’m just as confused as before. (12/10)
Herrenweg the owl
Zind-Humbrecht 2001 Riesling Herrenweg de Turckheim (Alsace) – Indice 1, which means dry. Now featuring: beautiful minerality, the kind that may not be unique to Alsace, but does mark it. What I mean here is the creamed-iron form, salty and free-electron at the surface, but dense and liquid at the core. Intense and vibrant. Perfectly mature. To this known ZH-detractor, Humbrecht does his best work at the extremes of dry and sweet, and it’s the rest that is too often soupy and leaden. (12/10)
Zind-Humbrecht 2001 Riesling Herrenweg de Turckheim (Alsace) – More aged than the previous bottle, with the dusty and salt intact, but a lot of erosion from the foundation. It’s still nice, but other bottles have been better. (1/11)
Da Do Ron Ron Ron
Brugal “Extra Viejo Gran Reserva Familiar” Ron (Dominican Republic) – Holy crap is this awful. I mean, if they made rum in Inuvik, I bet it wouldn’t be this watery and insipid, and yet still full of nasty volatility and turpentine burn. A complete waste of sugar, calories, and alcohol. (12/10)
Michter Sandman
Michter’s Straight Rye Whiskey (Kentucky) – Very full and rich, suggesting at dessert but never getting that sweet…in fact, the aggressive, clove-driven spice and farine texture pretty quickly dismiss sticker notions. As someone whose rye consumption is about 99% restricted to cocktails, I have no idea where this falls in qualitative or stylistic terms, or whether or not I’m “supposed” to like it. But I do. (12/10)
The search for Armenian
Armenia 25 Year Old Armenian Brandy (Armenia) – Nice grab on the brand name (there’s another word in Armenian on the label, which I suspect is the actual name, but we’ll leave that one be for now). As for the spirit? It is brandy, and the toasty character of extended wood aging is indeed there, but alongside a really bitter, pine-like whine. And the alcohol is strident and angry. This is packaged like something upscale, but it has the fierce, dangerous edge of backwoods rotgut. It’s not bad, exactly, but it certainly has some book-learnin’ to do before it can rest easily amongst its international peers. (12/10)
Hawaiian Taluau
Taluau 2006 Bourgueil “Cuvée du Domaine” (Loire) – Juicy. Black-fruity. Some grit and paste-powder texture. But big and a little swaggering, even polished…I might place this in the exurbs of Bordeaux before I got anywhere near the Loire, and while the wine’s quite appealing as a beverage, I can’t say that the preceding is 100% complimentary. (12/10)
Friends, countrymen
The Jizake “Choshu Roman” Tokubetsu Junmai Sake (Japan) – There’s something here…earthy, a little herbal, setting up a vacation home in the realm of umami…that’s unusual in my sake experience. This, though, is a closeout and I wonder if this intriguing character is due to some essential quality or because the bottle’s too old (there’s no apparent lot or date indication on the label, though there are some smudges of something that might once have been same). Whatever the source, there’s a delicacy, quiet nervosity, and balance to this that I haven’t quite experienced before in my extremely neophytical rice-beverage explorations. I really like this, in case it’s not obvious. (12/10)
I gotta Hanna to you
Hanna 2007 Pinot Noir (Russian River Valley) – Starts off a little tentative, but by the end it’s achieved a moderate, medium-weight appeal. Plums and somewhat dried berries, earth, and just enough structure…though that structure is a little prematurely resolved in this bottle, which may have seen some poor treatment along the way. Nonetheless, it’s pleasant. (11/10)
Brancott flakes
Montana “Brancott” 2007 Pinot Grigio (North Island) – Quite sweet, and that’s very nearly the entirety of its character. (11/10)
Jubeale Hershaw
Deschutes “Jubeale” Winter Ale (Oregon) – Despite all the spices and stewish darkness, this is actually a lot more standard than the label and style promise. It’s not all that spicy, for one thing, and the flavor is primarily that of a dark, slightly bitter ale. It’s fine, but unimpressive. (11/10)
Sole Custoza
Corte Gardoni 2006 Custoza (Veneto) – Oxidized. 100% oxidized. Not even useful as cooking wine, at this point. Undoubtedly a closure effect. (11/10)
Francly, my dear...
C&P Breton 2006 Bourgueil “Franc de Pied” (Loire) – Cellar-culling, and here I found a bottle unwisely stashed amongst the ageable Loire reds. No, not with this closure. It is still just barely appealing, with highly aromatic herbal/soil notes dominant, but the fruit is well on its way to complete desiccation and the tannin is harsh and sandpapery. Don’t make my mistake (though if this advice is still useful, I guess you already have). (11/10)
The Villa of the piece
Villa Ponciago 2009 Fleurie “la Réserve” (Beaujolais) – I don’t even know where to start with the name, so let’s do the wine instead. Where the hell is all this mint (peppermint, mostly) coming from? And why is it in my Fleurie? There’s a little sweet violet fruit lurking way in the background, looking like it was jacked in the playground by mint bullies and left to cower behind the jungle gym until just before the next bell rings, after which it will sprint to class and hope to avoid further violence. There’s plenty of tannin, and were this wine at all pleasant, I’d say it’s a candidate for aging. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I sure don’t care for how it tastes now. (11/10)
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