Unintentionally funny JS wine review

This just came across the transom in an email today for the 2008 Caymus Special Selection Cabernet Sauvignon:

“This is mind-blowing on the nose with sweet tobacco, chocolate, cedar, cigar box, and licorice. Full-bodied and round with a bright and velvety tannin structure. Starts off slow, but then flies away. This is fabulous. Intense finish. Delicious today, but will be even better after 2013.”

First, I wouldn’t use “blowing” and “nose” in the same sentence. Second, better after 2013? Wow, that’s a real cellar candidate!

Bruce

Suckling used to do this in his WS Bordeaux reviews too - telling people they could start drinking first growths and the like just a few years after release. I never understood why; surely he knows better. I figured maybe that WS realized if it told the truth about typical maturity curves - that those wines take 25 years or more to reward cellaring - they would lose the 95% of their audience that isn’t serious enough to make that commitment. In Caymus’s case I guess his estimate is about right though - funny indeed.

Why would you want a wine that flies away? I prefer my wine to stay in the glass.

And all five descriptors of the wine are oak-derived. The oak needs two years to mature in the bottle, I guess.

Exactly. Surely there’s some fruit in there as well. Buy maybe he only cares about the oak, so he ignores the fruit characteristics?

Or, perhaps, it was intentional? I expect sales of this wine to skyrocket… as it blows flies and is intense.

That is what I found most funny

Licorice is oak-derived? Doubt that.

Snap! except Licorice. But the point is made! Ha!

Aren’t cedar and cigar box and tobacco essentially the same? Cigar boxes are made of cedar, have tobacco in them…

Go toast your pain grille, Buster!

I have some young friends whose wallets are more “developed” than their palates… I know of a retailer selling this for wine for a great price, and even though I import a stupid good barolo that retails for 1/3 of the cost (and even has Suckling pts!), they can’t lap up this juice fast enough… I want to “hrrrummpphhhhh” mind-blowing noses and fruit flying from the glass til the cows come home, too, but I’m so jealous that this is what so many people want to hear/read…

Is “sweet tobacco” preferable to, what, dry tobacco? Sort of like those “sweet tannins” I read about?

Isn’t that redundant? Or do you like your bread double toasted? [wow.gif] [snort.gif]

Absolutely not, Todd. That’s the problem w/ you young squirts…never get to enjoy some of life’s pleasures. Why…why…I just bet you’ve never
got to experience the thrill of running your fingernails down a chalkboard. You ever done see’d a chalkboard, even??

Cedar has a lot of manifestations. There’s the smell of a cedar chest w/ all your Mom’s Victoria’sSecret stash hidden away. There’s
the smell of a cedar plank. Sometimes just after roasting fresh salmon on it. There’s the smell of pencil shavings fresh out of a pencil sharpner, cedar mixed w/ graphite.
There’s the smell of a cedar cigar box, cedar intermixed w/ cigar tobacco. The smell of tobacco in a cardboard tobacco carton. The smell of
tobacco freshly loaded into a pipe. The smell of fresh/moist tobacco inside a RoiTan tin. All very distinct smells from my childhood…which was not all that
long ago I should add.
Tom

The day my wine smells like salmon-cedar, is the day I permanently switch to beer.

The heavy vanilla content contributes to the licorice flavor

rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes rolleyes

[rofl.gif] [rofl.gif]

Do you like medium plus toast toast, or heavy toast toast? [rofl.gif]


grouphug

Ken likes his toasted pain grille at The La Brea Tar Pits