Jeff Leve's web site

WINE TALK
21

Agreed with others - I reference it often, actually

22

A very interesting and useful site.

23

Neal why so surprised?? For this is the sworn Berserker Modus Operandi! [wow.gif] [cheers.gif]

24

what Howard said! Very good site, easy to understand.

25

Not everybody - barely half who have posted here. It’s a tremendous reference for anyone into Bordeaux, and particularly effective if you take into account Jeff’s stylistic preferences, which may or may not jive with your own.

26

Hey, I am a fan of the site, and Jeff and I actually like the same wines on occasion. I’m just waiting for Alfert to say what a swell person Rolland is.

27

I’ve never been on the website but put me down in the shitty palate group. I’ve had wines that he’s given big scores to that I’ve poured down the drain.

28

He seems firmly in the Parker camp in regards to his preferred style of Bordeaux, and that’s not the same camp as you, me, or Alfert (and many others), but the site has incredibly helpful reference info on vintages, how well different regions did in different vintages, standouts for certain ‘weak’ vintages, etc. I think the fact that he concentrates so fully on just Bordeaux gives a greater value in information.

29

Let’s play a word associate game, I’ll start:

Ubiquity

30

Sounds like my ex. [wow.gif]

31

FIFY [wink.gif]

32

Jeff Leve is a wonderful Human Being. Even though I have never met him (I almost did once). And even though we have had a few Ding Dongs in the past on BWE, when he operated under the nom de plume of Pomerol Lover. I feel I know him well. His site is just great. The other day I learned from the Wine Cellar Insider that VCC 1998 has no Cabernet Franc in the blend. Not a lot of people knew that. Now that Parker has gracefully retired, Jeff is more relevant than ever.

33

I do reference it for the breakdown on grape blends in each bottle and percentages.
Wine Cellar Insider and Wine Doctor are the two sites to reference for their prolific breadth of knowledge and history.

34

Jeff frequently tastes and provides notes and, in addition concentrates on Bordeaux and so one can follow the evolution of wine in the bottle closely, making it like cellar tracker but with the taster being more of a known quantity.

35

We have to stop promoting WCI b4 Jeff it cuts if off to membership only!!!

36

If I was one who gave that impression, it was not intended. I have tasted with a lot of people over the years and have come across many who are more aligned with his preferences than mine. Some of those people do not appear to have good palates and go for volume, but others know exactly what they are doing and what they are tasting- and just have different things they love in wine.

Reading the notes tells the tale. Jeff’s notes are the notes of a person who has a good palate and knows what he is about. And, to be fair, I am probably in the minority. I well remember one Silver Oak tasting years ago that went back into the 80s where I loved all the Alexander bottlings but thought the mature Napa bottlings had too much raw oak. I was the lone voice at that table (something I am used to :slight_smile:)

37

Apparently I was the one who failed to be clear, not you (or anyone else). I like Jeff, I enjoy and use his site, he and I actually agree on wines sometimes, and I see nothing at all wrong with people who disagree with him on what a “good wine” is from using and praising the site. If my post suggested otherwise, the error was mine. It just struck me as funny that several posts in a row said, essentially, “palate of a yak, but love the site.”

38

I will add to the gushing here. I do not know Jeff, and really have not as of yet compared palates, mostly because I have only caught on to the site over the last couple vintages; so, we will see on that…someday. But, the site is free, reasonably organized and accessible, and he does a pretty thorough review on the en premier. And he also is one of the first out of the blocks on en premier, which gives us insatiables something to read and understand the new vintage. His “recent tasting notes” also give an update to the en premier wines 2 years later, just as they are about to hit the US shores. Timely.

39

As the OP, and someone who really likes and uses his web site, I am a little diffident about expanding on our palate differences. It’s not our palates are at odds, and we don’t always like the same wines. That happens frequently on this board, and one that I think we all acknowledge.
But the usefulness of our tasting note doesn’t necessarily mean that you agree on a wine. What it does require is a consistency of palate, and here is where Jeff and I differ. A tasting note comes in two parts, the descriptors and then the valued judgements that come from them. If the descriptors are correct most of the time, then the tasting note is useful for both parties. It’s completely irrelevant if you like the wine or not, one should be able to correlate those descriptions with other experienced tasters: Dry tannins, black fruit, complexity, tannins, dullness, thin, fat, rich etc. should be as close to objective in an activity as subjective as wine criticism is.

However, on the few occasions I have tasted with Jeff, I found our descriptors were too often different, and sometimes those differences were not even close. Not a problem for either of us, but when you do evaluate a critic, any critic, knowing that his/her descriptors make sense to you is the one area you MUST agree on, otherwise you will end up with a lot of wine that have scored well and you don’t like.

40

Mark you are spot on. While I do happen to like many of the wines Jeff praises, we don’t agree on some. But I can almost always tell which those will be based on his notes. So in addition to his site being a wealth of useful information, his TNs are also useful regardless of whether you like the same wines/styles that he does.