Clos du Mont-Olivet 2007 Côtes-du-Rhône Montueil-la-Levade (Rhône) – Is there a hefty mourvèdre component here? (I suppose I could just check the web, but it’s more fun guessing.) The delicious, sweaty meativore component is just too evocative, no matter the source. This tastes far more mature than its vintage would indicate, but it’s still so structured and masculine that I think more age wouldn’t hurt. On the other hand, why wait. It’s absolutely compelling now. (11/10)
Browse Month
January 2011
Zabaco noir
Rancho Zabaco 2007 Zinfandel “Sonoma Heritage Vines” (Sonoma County) – 14.9%. Very simplistic and bearing the hallmarks of confection…very primary and singular dark berries with no complexity or life. It’s entirely competent wine, but entirely uninteresting as a result. (11/10)
Arran’t
The Arran 10 Year Scotch Whisky (Arran) – Unchillfiltered, as the nomenclature goes. Peaty but with a stong core of brandied apricots and sweet barrel notes. Very, very easy to drink. (11/10)
Bullock
Pojer e Sandri Traminer Grappa (Trentino) – Sweaty and fetid, but in a “good” way that’s actually more or less expected from this grape, I think. Very rough-and-tumble, rolling earthy aromatics and decaying flowers around in a constant swirl, and so forceful in this motion that a sense of the grappa’s alcoholic heat is nearly absent. (11/10)
Kenievel
Real Companhia Velha “Evel” 2006 Douro Branco (Douro) – Heat-damaged, I think, which hasn’t entirely killed the wine, but has certainly pummeled it about the face and body. (11/10)
Aloha + New Hampshire???
White Birch “Aloha” Belgian Style Ale (New Hampshire) – Awful. Just awful. Not flawed, just as watery as any mass-market brew…except, of course, higher in alcohol. I’ve come to expect a lot more from this brewer. (11/10)
Trim the sails
Trimbach 2004 Riesling (Alsace) – More advanced than other bottles from the same source (me), and were the others not in full song I’d say this is a little past ready. Probably just cork variation. Dryer than dry, showing unadorned raw iron and not a whole lot else. Well, acid, but that’s a given here. (11/10)
Tenrazan to date my daughter
Igarashi Syuzo “Tenrazan” Junmai Daiginjyo Sake (Japan) – 500 ml. “Medium-dry” says the bottle, and it certainly is, but as is somewhat typical (at least in my limited experience with sake) there’s as much of a textural feeling of sweetness from the alcohol as there is from any residual sugar. What’s nice here is that the alcohol, so often an incessant bagpipe drone in sake, is completely integrated and well-balanced; you’ll know it not by the taste, but by the headache the next morning. So, what else? White peaches and syrup-infused pears, and rather a lot of both. Almost overwhelmingly fruity, in fact. There’s also…well, this is a little on the obscure and dated side, but a long while ago there was a sugar-substitute (made from ever-beloved saccharine) that came in the form of a clear liquid. This tastes like that. And I suspect it’s not lost on anyone, whether or not they’ve tried the long-forgotten product of which I’m speaking, that to make this comparison isn’t exactly a compliment. I want to like this more than I do, due to its supple form, but I feel like I’m drinking a simulacrum of sweetened fruit. (11/10)
While Rome burns
Renwood 2001 Zinfandel (Fiddletown) – 15%. I’d say this is approaching the end of its useful life, but inherent in that would be the suggestion that the wine has changed since release. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t. It’s always been on the raw side, which is not an unusual thing for a Fiddletown zin to be, bringing pine and concentrated boysenberry syrup into a tight cylinder of slightly mean fruit and then surrounding it with some sort of fruit liqueur. For all I know, this will age…or, perhaps more accurately, last…for another decade. Or two. Or ten. I dunno. Anyway, drinking it now brings me one step closer to ridding my cellar of Renwood, for reasons mostly (though not entirely) unrelated to wine quality, and that’s a good thing. (11/10)
Nera word
Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – I’m trying to drink up what is rather a quantity of this, given the lurid neon white closure. Absent that abomination, I’d be aging this. Who wouldn’t age nebbiolo, even if it’s white and nearly unrecognizable? It might be a disaster, but the experiment would have been fun. Alas, not under plastic dildo. And so: a little more tropical in flavor while less tropical in form, if that makes sense. The wine, in other words, has faded just a touch. Maybe my imagination. In any case, it’s still crisp, aromatic, zippy, and appealing. (10/10)
Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – The most nebbiolo-like bottle yet, by which I almost certainly mean that I am fooling myself into thinking so and would never even approach the word “nebbiolo” were it not on the label. But the aromatics are, with the benefit of knowledge, turning rose-ish. Otherwise, there’s the vibrant peach honey fruit and lively acidity. And yes, there’s just a little bit of fraying, for which I blame the closure rather than the wine. But it’s still quite good. (10/10)