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)
Browse Month
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)
Boillot boy
L. Boillot 2006 Bourgogne (Burgundy) – Corked. (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)