Browse Month

July 2007

TN: Janeway

[vineyard]Voyager Estate 2003 Shiraz (Margaret River) – Big and monolithic, with dark, chewy black and blue fruit in tight layers over a leather and concrete foundation. Smooth and modern, but by no means overworked, and in fact quite balanced and drinkable for a massive block of wine. This should age, and the inevitable calming will probably help. (6/07)

TN: Stoner

[label]Medusa 2004 “Old Vine” Zinfandel Lover’s Lane (Mendocino) – This comes with a sporty black extruded synthetic cork, but the wine’s not nearly that ominous. It’s powerfully oaky for the first half-hour or so, but later it relaxes into something more approachable (and in fact, the oak mostly lurks in the deep background), showing juicy red-fruited acidity and freshly-crushed berries with a preserved maraschino topnote. It’s a little herky-jerky right now, and I don’t know if it’s got enough internal integrity to solve itself, but if it does it will always be a higher-acid zin, which isn’t unwelcome in these overheated times. (6/07)

TN: CRiBs

Roussel & Barrouillet “Clos Roche Blanche” 2005 Touraine Sauvignon “No. 2” (Loire) – Dense, palpable chalk in a thickening, sweet-seeming marinade. This is always a triumph of terroir over variety – sauvignon is only represented by a slightly green tinge to the finish…a sharpening and focusing, perhaps, more than an actual grassiness – but there’s more stuffing in this wine than usual, which may be a good or a bad thing depending on one’s tastes; one might legitimately wonder if the wine isn’t slightly overstuffed. There’s not much to dislike, however, and while it’s eminently drinkable and seemingly ready to go (not a typical performance for this wine), it will almost certainly develop more over the medium-short term. (7/07)

TN: Training Prà

[label]Prà 2002 Soave Classico (Veneto) – Showing signs of maturity, as the softly perfumed fruit is stripped away in layers to reveal the soft, mineralized underbelly shot through with streaks of vivacious acidity. It’s not an aggressive wine by any means, but it’s both fuller and sharper than at release. This is at full maturity. (7/07)

TN: Sun branch

Regli 2000 Hallauer Sonnenspross Spätlese “Cuvée” (Hallau) – Painfully light and seemingly stripped (the only sediment is a tiny collection of four long strips of tartrates), but I’m not sure there was all that much here in the first place. Volatile at first, it calms a bit, showing very high-toned and slightly acrid pinkish-lavender fruit, tart and laced with bitter spring greens and a sprinkling of tarragon. Yet there are also toasted, caramelized notes characteristic of an over-aged wine of little initial repute that was dragged, struggling and kicking, into wood it couldn’t handle. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s not something one would seek out either. (7/07)

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