Browse Tag

red

CdR, stat

Texier 2012 Côtes-du-Rhône (Rhône) — All the classic characteristics dialed down to about 7, without sacrificing anything except unnecessary force. This is why one drinks Texier. (7/16)

Louvau riche

Dashe 2012 Zinfandel Louvau “Old Vines” (Dry Creek Valley) — Big, bold, fruity, young. So very young. Nothings resolved here; it’s just a delicious cacophony. (7/16)

Maréchal law

Maréchal 2002 Chorey-les-Beaune (Burgundy) — Clinging, just, to a post-twilight red haze. More appealing than I make it sound…this is the destiny of a lot of Burgundy…yet certainly not to be held even a day longer. (7/16)

Tony Roches

Lenoir 2001 Chinon “Les Roches” (Loire) — Papillote layers of fine-grained earth, the baritone hum of a pastoral countryside, light grit. A wine you want to chew. And can. (7/16)

Past the Mission

Mission Hill 2012 Pinot Noir “Reserve” (Okanagan Valley) — Slightly weedy/leafy, a few too many pyrazines, but the fruit is friendly and supple, yet braced by a slash of acidity. Nice enough. (7/16)

Issarts love triangle

[gevrey-chambertin 1er cru les issarts]Faiveley 1990 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Issarts (Burgundy) — This is the French bottling, purchased directly from Faiveley at release. A French cousin regularly purchased and cellared a handful of Faiveley’s wines, and a number of years back as his health was failing and his doctors told him to stop drinking wine, he started giving away the last of his collection. I was the lucky recipient of a few bottles, and this is the last of them.

In retrospect, I should have opened it earlier. It’s always hard to judge with Faiveley, because there’s so much structure, but this bottle is in a stage where it’s pretty much all structure (mostly tannin) with dusty, dried-out remnants of fruit. That said, what’s there is muscular and brooding, and I think the wine shows its origins pretty clearly.

What the wine lacks in cohesiveness, however, is more than compensated by memory and gratitude. Thank you, Gaston. (6/16)

Oak Boys

[geyserville]Ridge 1999 Geyserville (Sonoma County) — The second-to-last bottle of what was, once, a mighty two-case stash. This wine rounded into form somewhere between five and ten years ago, but I let the supply linger, ever mindful of the surprising ageability of many of the older Ridge zins and zin blends. There has been no clear pattern to those uncorked since; some were full of energy, others decidedly tired. (We all remain incredibly thankful for the unpredictability and inconsistency of natural cork, right?) This bottle was an interesting statistical outlier in that its structure was as dusty as old tomes in an abandoned library, but its fruit was far less advanced than any bottle of recent memory; plenty of sous bois, yes, but also many-layered wild berries atop that forested baritone. I couldn’t really recommend holding it any longer, but I admit that curiosity urges me to bury the last one for another decade, just to see what happens. (6/16)

You give love a bad name

[dashe zinfandel]Dashe “Les Enfants Terribles” 2014 Zinfandel Heart Arrow Ranch (Mendocino County) — 13.8%, native yeast. I remember the first vintages of this experiment, which were usually tasty, but rather loose and a bit wild…nudging into the natural realm without seeming to feel confident in any particular world. Since then, control (of a sort) as been reasserted. I think it would be fair to call Mike Dashe a structuralist — certainly the rest of his zinfandels are firm, unquestioned candidates for aging — and while this remains unlike the “normal” zins, it adds just enough structure and form to its boisterous (but not explosive) mélange of berries, barks, needles, and dusts that it feels entirely cohesive and self-possessed. Another wine I’d like to have on permanent, free-flowing tap. (6/16)

Evangelho Lilly

[carignane]Dashe “Les Enfants Terribles” 2014 Carignane Evangelho “Old Vines” (Contra Costa County) — 12.9%. Fun, bubbly fruit of the dark-skinned variety. Glou-glou without the irritating volatility and carbonic Beaujolais sameness that pervades the genre. I would like to order several kegs of this, please. (6/16)

Caille win

[blue quail]McFadden Family Estate “Blue Quail” 2014 Pinot Noir (Potter Valley) — Strong, but not dense. A wallop of dark fruit, followed by a few more wallops, with a finishing whap. (5/16)