Wine Berserkers - international wine social media, online community, and discussion

Thanks Otto, really interesting, detailed, and honest posting. I visited the Baden region a couple of years ago, curious about German Pinot Noir/Spatburgunder. Tasted at a bunch of producers, and my overall impressions were similar to yours. Highly varying quality, with some pretty good wines mixed ...

I picked up lucky 7 (mostly my fave - Occidental) and WL a Platt. Beautiful wines. Rich, how would you describe the Occidental Ridge? I ordered some based on previously liking the other RM sonoma coast bottlings and because I've had general luck with pinots with "Occidental" in the name (...

I picked up lucky 7 (mostly my fave - Occidental) and WL a Platt. Beautiful wines.

I’m also in agreement with your plan (robust reds). I don’t think bottle shock (hmm, if it exists at all) is a major issue if you’re driving and will have the wine in a box in the back of your car. I live in San Francisco and have driven up to Tahoe with wine quite a few times and haven’t had any pr...

Manipulation of wine is to be abhorred as an overly modern way to make the wine something it is not, obliterating terroir, typicity, vintage interest. My favored producers’ wine making activities are not manipulation but entirely normal/required steps in the wine making process. Rich, I hear you - ...

Manipulation of wine is to be abhorred as an overly modern way to make the wine something it is not, obliterating terroir, typicity, vintage interest. My favored producers’ wine making activities are not manipulation but entirely normal/required steps in the wine making process.

Y'all are making it very hard for me to downsize my order for the next release. They are making it difficult for me to drop any mailing lists. Last week I dropped Carlisle into the trash folder, only to retrieve it two days later and order eight bottles. Jeff you are not the only one who’s done thi...

Great thread! I’ve only tasted Craig’s Trevallon and was duly impressed.

Nick - what was a tasting visit like?

They have to generate interest, mystery, excitement somehow. This is especially hard when the primary sales model - in person tasting and tipsy decision making - is nearly turned off completely. FWIW I agree that I want more info rather than less. And now the dirty little secret (ssshhhhhh) of these...

c fu wrote: ↑January 13th, 2021, 9:32 pm I am actively hiding away my RM pinots so I don’t touch them. They are so damn good with a decade on em

Also so damn good right off the UPS truck. A real dilemma.

Rivers-Marie (Pinots) and Littorai as well next week.

What a wonderful post and story. Thank you both — giver and recipient. As many have said, I’ve been stunned and inspired by the generosity of the wine and WB community. The sharing is so wonderful - to show up in a random city and to be taken to dinner with amazing wines, or even welcomed into peopl...

D@vid Bu3ker wrote: ↑January 9th, 2021, 9:38 am Sort of preferred the mystery.

Honestly with all these varietals it’s still a mystery. Black Muscat? Mondeuse? Colombard? My imagination is failing me.

Running Fence is a relatively new vineyard - on the ridge with the winery. Apparently they started planting it in 2012. More info here.

https://occidentalwines.com/vineyards/r ... -vineyard/

Occidental is Jan. 12. That's Steve Kistler's new winery focused on Pinots.

Fascinating thread, thank you all for your perspectives. I got in the Bordeaux game decades (3 to be exact!) after 1982 and so haven’t had many. The few I’ve had have been lovely (LLC was amazing) but prices now are prohibitive, especially relative to, say, 1985, 1989, 1996. I’m happy to hear the co...

Leonard was a regular at SF offlines. He will be missed.

My condolences to his family.

My consumption was almost exactly at my 5 year average. However the mix has changed significantly, with German Riesling way up - about 1/3 of bottles consumed in 2020. That’s a big change - was 12% in 2019 and 5% in 2018. Reflects an overall trend to drink less red. Red was about 50% in 2020, trendi...

Heck yea. 37 hours in and no buying. I might make it to Monday. 2019 Burgundy is going to break me though.

My largest categories are Piedmont Nebbiolo and Red Burgundy (about a quarter each of my collection). At this stage I'd say Nebbiolo is my greatest strength - quite a few bottles are ready to drink and will be good for the next decade. 5 or 10 years out as my younger Burgundy collection climbs the r...

... I don’t think of diversity as an end. It’s an end to a means. I eat quite diversely, so diverse wines are needed. I enjoy different tastes, which leads to diverse choices in the cellar. I like how David said this - it expresses a lot of how I feel about diversity. My cellar’s diversity reflects...

Lots of good advice here. I'd add that you should start getting used to using Cellar Tracker. Bordeaux in particular, with its high volume, has lots and lots of tasting notes. If people are saying that a wine is closed, tight, or tannic, then waiting might be a good idea! There is no more valuable t...

2004 Jacquesson Avize Champ Cain before dinner with my small group. A spectacular aperitif wine, a few drank it all through the meal. Champagne with prime rib? Yes! 1989 La Conseillante was sadly dead - failed cork is my guess, flat and thin. After six hours no improvement. 1996 Pape Clement - a ver...

Can anyone clarify the Leroy Narbanton vineyard ownership? Does she make a Domain and a Negociant wine? Or just one? Or varies by year? Between her web site and Cellar Tracker things aren’t very clear.

I was thinking of making a comment about how amazingly diverse France and Italy are. Does country diversity really mean something important? These historical boundaries have become a side issue to a global wine making culture that is open, integrated, and very deeply committed to sharing what to do ...

France 50.3%
Italy 26.5%
USA 13.5%
Germany 9.7%

Got me curious about consumption vs cellar, so this is my 2020 consumption.

France 35.6%
Germany 33.9%
Italy 17.0%
USA 13.5%

Been buying lots of German wine and drinking it!

My comments are based on Dunn (both Howell and Napa bottlings) from the 90s and early 2000s. I think the youngest one I've had is 2002 so I can't comment on more recent changes. I've had a wider range of MB from late '80s to a 2017 I opened last month. Oak isn't as much an issue for me as others. Ye...

I’ve had more Dunn than MB but have indeed had both. Dunn is, to my palate, a more pure expression of Cabernet. It tends to be more structured and less rich. As a mountain (Howell) Napa Cabernet, it is expressive of California sunshine but to my mind represents a middle of the road between overblown...

I think super seconds or their equivalent in right bank wines are probably the right bet. First growths in weak vintages can be very good, but the starting price is usually more like $350-400 and I don’t think they’re worth it unless you really want a first growth. For example in the last few years...

Plenty of good ideas here. My last hat to throw in the ring is to try an ‘85, a ‘96, and a ‘05. These are all ‘aged’ but will be very different. Figure out what you like before buying a ton.

Already quite good advice here, but if you like Bordeaux with age I would recommend dabbling fairly far down the scale in really good years (e.g. 1985, 1989, 1990, 1996) that are drinking fabulously now. Take a look at Winebid - they have 1996 Talbot, Gruaud Larose, Grand Puy Lacoste, and Calon Segu...

Ah, of course, that makes sense.

Mark, that ‘96 is truly excellent. Sadly mine are all gone but still have a handful of other 90s Sandrone. There is some odd hating here on this producer but I’m a fan. But ... 60 cases??? That’s one a week for nearly 14 years. If you get tired of this wine let me know, I’ll take a case off your han...

I don’t mean to start a debate, but I wouldn’t bother with the slow-o (which means to pull the cork but otherwise do nothing). I don’t think this does much of anything for the wine. Otherwise, decant them all an hour or two before the tasting and you’ll be good to go. Longer is better - you can’t hu...

Genius. Hilarious. I literally laughed until I cried.

I decided that I'd just add a flat fee of $20 for all shippings below a case, and include shipping with full case buys, and just eat the difference myself. It's painful, but I think it results in less abandoned carts. A case to NY or CT is $55+, so I end up eating that for a case. A single bottle i...

Fascinating report Otto thanks for sharing the results. Of the disappointments, I’m more saddened and surprised by the young failures. My experience with older Italian bottles from auction/retail is similar. For reasons discussed in many threads here, pre-mid-90s Italian wines were just not stored w...

Happy to support this good cause.

Reasonable response by Winebid. I think it would be great if Vig were included in wine-searcher results. It’s a real cost for buyers that changes pretty rarely. Sure I can calculate it in my head, but in a sorting algorithm why not use all fixed available data? You could go one step further and inst...

My experience is that the top Chiantis behave a lot like some of the top, but less structured, Brunellos. In other words, they can age beautifully. I have in fact tested this hypothesis with Isole e Olena. I find the Cepparello a bit tight and intense when young (I tried the 2013 and 2015) but give ...

I had one of these a few weeks back. The occasion wasn’t conducive to detailed note taking but I was really impressed by the bottle - it had a lovely combination of sweetness richness and lightness in balance. Definitely not the super-acidic side of Riesling but not at all overly heavy or sweet for ...

What’s the difference between the two? I find profundity very pleasing.

Kelly, I bow before you as the True Epitome of Impracticality. I have nothing remotely worthy of the conversation.

I believe Kevin Harvey said here that there would be no Santa Cruz Mountains Pinots.

Also Beta.

As a subsequent add on question......Do you trust the wine makers notes that you buy from over a wine rater? All tasting notes have human subjective biases. Wine makers’ biases about the products they they have worked so hard to produce are perhaps a little more obvious than a reviewer’s. But their...

RyanC wrote: ↑November 19th, 2020, 7:12 pm I just got offered the ‘07 for $98. I get that it’s not as good. But also a pretty stark contrast.

I would like to be offered the ‘07 for $98. Amazing price. In the context of other sparklers at this price point this would be an absolute steal. Hmmm, I wonder what the ‘09 CdC will sell for?

Thanks Fred - this sounds excellent and also delightfully familiar. Fuligni was the highlight of several Montalcino visits in the summer of 2019. This included tasting their 2017 Ginestreto and I found it absolutely charming, though probably not as long an ager as this '13. Still, for the price thes...

The core issue for this post is not about the ideal age to drink wine - I think we are all fairly in agreement about that. Instead it's how to deal with group think. I've been thinking a lot about this as I've been following this thread. Group think for wine consumption is an odd form of perceived p...

Certainly I agree that the most important factor in wine age preference is your own palate. And that requires lots of testing tasting and note taking to figure out what you really like. Early in my wine journey I bought things I liked with a a wide variety of age (yay K&L and Winebid for the one...

I got the same offer - from Morrell. Will be curious to see if this holds up. I passed.

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