“Thai White Wine.” That’s all the label said. It was worse than the “Thai Red Wine.”
I tried Bully Hill a few times, actually. Because I’m a glutton for punishment, it seems. Reason was they made a wine from the rare hybrid Verdelet and I’m always interested in weird grapes. Terrible, awful wine. Their Foch red was also undrinkable. But then I also ordered their skin-contact white made from Vidal Blanc grape. And I have to say, if you closed your eyes really hard and channeled your inner Teutonic you, you could almost mistake it for a Riesling. Lots of gasoline up front. It was somehow an interesting experience and I would drink that particular one again, if given to me for almost free. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I also tried a variety of producers making wine out of the Norton grape. This American hybrid grape intrigued me when I started thinking about the winery. But every single one I had had an overly pruny taste and I quickly abandoned that idea.
Color palette.
Bali Hai.
Pinotage has come up twice now. What’s so bad with it? Never tried any even when I was there.
IMO, the wine tastes dirty. And not in a good way.
o
Opolo Zinfandel. Big fat alcoholic mess that was worse than cough syrup.
Yep, walked into that trap myself. Not a nice wine.
A few years ago I would have agreed. But remember, they were working with that grape while under sanctions and a lot of what was produced wasn’t very good. I’m not trying to champion the grape, but post-apartheid they’ve really improved many of the wines, including Pinotage. Brilliant, maybe not, but I’ve had a few that had a nice peppery quality that made me re-think my dismissal of it. Back in the day, Steltzner even made some in his winery in Stags Leap in Napa. Wasn’t too bad.
Daou Pessimist. Oaky, sweet hot mess
A few years back, Sam Balderas [of Talbott] was making a Pinot, called “Samantha Starr”, which was one of the best New World wines I had ever tasted.
It was selling locally for about $14.99.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have continued the project.
Mondavi Bourbon barrel something red. Would make Bob wretch and puke.
Red Schooner Malbec.
And Caymus
Almost anything from Orin Swift. They are oaky hot messes, all of them for me. I don’t buy them but they show up at parties and I try them only to spit every time.
Man, you guys drink pretty low expectation wines and then are shocked when the taste bad? Marechal Foch was a French American Hybrid that is planted in the FL due to cold hardiness and never was really able to lose the foxiness of the American Rootstock. Not really a badly made wine in some places, just an unsuitable grape for dry red production.
A better question would be what commercially made wine, with adequare resources and really good grapes turned out to be a mess. I bought a 6 pack a few years back from Margeaux Singleton (owner of a famous wine shop in Calistoga, formerly limked to Fred Schrader). She had a small run production wine called Amnesia, label was lifted from the Sistene Chapel and the creation of man (shows outstretched hand of God). It was Zinfandel picked from a vineyard in Napa of all places, and ABV was something like 16%. I expected a big Zin ala Turley and was paying something like 45 bucks for this wine. OMG, it was the hottest, unintegrated, sour fruit oakiest mess of a wine I have ever attempted to drink. On tpp of that it still seemed ot have a detectable level of residual sugar!!! Like Welches grape juice flavored with cheap vodka. I thought how could any producer, given the background of a wine shop owner who drinks lots of great wines from around the world, ever dare to sell this abomination?
Anybody else taste this, dare I call it, wine?
So what wine made with some degree of quality effort and costing more than 2 bucks was a major disappointment?
My lowest scored wins on CT is a 2011 Cakebread Cellars Syrah Suscol Spings, at 75
Points.
December 14, 2013 - A friend brought this over for dinner. It was awful - nose and taste was smoky with a bite on the back end (this was not tainted - had just delivered through friend’s wine club). At $50, it’s an embarrassment that Cakebread is selling this wine at this price. POOR.
Erath Pinot. A Costco blow out buy at $10. Should have know better. Watered down mess.
In fact a lot of the really low cost Costco wines I’ve had sucked. I recall an undrinkable Bordeaux for 8.99 and a recent Chianti Riserva for $8.75 that WS gave an 88 to. Thin, watered down juice.
My lowest score in CT is 50 and one beer and one wine have managed to get that:
De Leite Cuvée Jeun’homme:
Best before March 9th, 2019. 6,5% alcohol.
Slightly hazy pale yellow color with subtly peachy-orange highlights. The white head remains small and dissipates rapidly. The nose feels very distinctive, expressive and slightly vinous with aromas of ripe apple, some bathroom-y lambic notes of ammonia, a little bit of acetic VA and a hint of stale bread. At first the beer feels somewhat sour and slightly fruity with flavors of tart lemon, ripe apple and subtle, slightly Rodenbach-like acetic vinegar character, but THEN: a massive tsunami of mousy THP character rises out of nowhere and obliterates all flavors underneath. I didn’t even know that one could taste mousiness on the midpalate! I thought it was only something you could taste in the aftertaste. The finish is slightly sour and overwhelmingly mousy: it feels like there’s a pet shop in my nasal cavity. The unpleasant - no, abhorrent - mousiness persists for remarkably long on the palate, only gaining more intensity as the saliva rises the pH in the mouth.
Before this beer I though THP was something one could taste only in the aftertaste, but this beer was not only the mousiest beverage I’ve ever had the opportunity to taste - it also exhibited mousy THP flavor (rancid nuts, stale bread, old gym socks, moldy Weetabix / Cheerios) already on the midpalate! Live and learn, certainly. By far the most unpleasant brew I’ve ever had the opportunity to taste and the second bottle ever I couldn’t get myself to finish (de Molen Wasabi Saison was the first one). Down the drain it went. Total waste of money at 3,50€ for a 0,33-liter bottle. Avoid.
and
Okro’s Wines Mtsvane 2016:
12% alcohol.
Cloudy, fully opaque yellow color that makes the wine look like Hefeweisse. The nose is open and expressive, but more weird than vinous with aromas of beer (like something between a Belgian Wit and a NEIPA) along with aromas of mushy peach, grated lemon zest, some caramel, a little bit of bretty funk and a hint of stale bread. The wine is dry, medium-bodied and horribly mousy on the palate with revolting, unclean THP flavors of Weetabix, rancid nuts, some oven-fresh bread crust, a little bit of vinegar an a hint of sweaty sports gear. The wine is moderately high in acidity with soft and gentle tannins. The finish is very long, quite acid-driven and ridiculously mousy with repulsive mousy flavors that follow the midpalate quite verbatim.
One of the mousiest wines I’ve ever tasted. Normally THP appears only in the aftertaste, but this wine started to show its mousy flavors already when you were just sloshing the wine around your mouth. Repulsive stuff, you don’t need to keep it in your mouth for much longer than a second or two before you want to spit it out. The neauseating, unclean flavor of THP lingers in your mouth for minutes aftertwards. Horrible. If I ever get to taste this wine again in the future, I heartily hope it would be cleaner in style. Although I do enjoy natural wines a lot, this is really a wine that could’ve used a small dose of SO2.
However, you really don’t seem to be making use of the full potential of CT’s 50-point scale or then you just drink too good wines. I have tasted 53 wines that I’ve rated 75 points and there’s a total of 474 wines that I’ve rated 75 points or lower, totaling to some 6% of the wines I’ve tasted. However, it’s the sub-70 pointers I start to consider wines that are undrinkable. Wines that score 70-85 are drinkable, but perhaps not really worth purchasing.
Worst that wasn’t obviously flawed: 2010 Tenuta di Renieri Chianti Classico. “Rustic” is being kind. No charm whatsoever.
Worst domestic wine for which I had reasonably high hopes: 2007 Arrowood ‘Lasseter Vineyard’ cab. Probably the most bitter tannins I’ve ever encountered. Really unpleasant.