I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.
They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), and are presented links to help you find them, so that you can try them out for yourself. Cheers!
- NV Party Favor Pinot Grigio (California): Fun it has in spades; balance it has in… a lot less than spades. $19 C+
- 2013 Fiddlehead Cellars ‘Cuvee Seven Twenty Eight’ Fiddlestix Pinot Noir (Sta Rita Hills): You’ll only really be saying “ah, fiddlesticks!” when the bottle is (all to quickly) emptied. $44 A-
- 2016 McIntyre Vineyards Estate Chardonnay (Santa Lucia Highlands): The California accent is lusciously, sexily thick when this one speaks up. $30 B+
- 2016 ZD Wines Founder’s Reserve Pinot Noir (Carneros): About as polar opposite to shy and small as Carneros fruit can reasonably get. $82 A-
- 2015 Venge Vineyards “Silencieux” Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley): Not a proper namesake when it comes to its abundant fruitiness. Luckily for us. $55 A-
- 2016 Raul Perez Muti Albarino (Rias Baixas): Mineral, pithy, substantial, and glorious; white lovers, rejoice, for your Autumn sipper hath arrived. $36 A-
- 2016 Mastroberardino Lacrimarosa Irpinia Rosato (Irpinia): A small glass of pure joy, masterfully poured and dutifully considered. $20 B+
- 2013 Künstler Pinot Noir Dry (Rheingau): The real art here is how they managed to get Pinot from Germany this good out of the country before the Germans drank it all fore themselves… $30 A-
- 2016 Concha y Toro Gran Reserva Serie Riberas Malbec (Central Valley): Caught somewhere between South America, Western Europe, and an entire oak forest. $20 B
- 2016 Mt. Beautiful Sauvignon Blanc (North Canterbury): Pungent and pretty coexisting quite happily, if a bit enthusiastically. $17 B+
Dude!
For this month’s edition of the Wine Product Review Roundup, I’m taking a break from the not-really-getting-any-smaller pile of yet-to-be-reviewed wine books, and instead tackling the wears of wine products that don’t come with bindings and covers.
First up is a customized, 1WD-themed package of goodies sent to me by Personal Wine, longtime purveyors of personalized wine labels and etchings. The PW folks decided to take the 1WD logo and work some of their magic on a wine box, as well as four bottles showcasing the possibilities with their labels and bottle etching.
PW has a fairly wide assortment of wines available at multiple price tiers, from $14 all the way up to about a grand (labeling is included, etching runs ab out $15 extra per bottle); from my sample package, I enjoyed the Wildcatter Cab (think dark and silky) and the Conde Laurel Cava Brut (admirably piquant for the price). The box is, well, basically a standard wooden wine box, but the etching is clean and the wood quality quite good. Overall, PW seems like a solid option if you’re considering personalized gifts for the wine-obsessed this holiday season….
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I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.
They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), and are presented links to help you find them, so that you can try them out for yourself. Cheers!
- NV Domaines Vinsmoselle Poll-Fabaire “Lux” Cremant de Luxembourg Cuvee Brut (Luxembourg): Will put almost as bright a smile on your face as the white lilies and fresh citrus zest that it invokes. $39 B+
- NV Bruno Paillard Premiere Cuvee Rose Brut (Champagne): Basically everything that’s nearly perfect about Champers, only with a cherry on top. $60 A-
- 1990 Caves Sao Joao Reserva Particular (Bairrada): Dark, tart, toasty, woody, smoky, and like a great grunge riff, adept at taking you back in time, for a time. $45 A-
- 2012 Noble & Murat LBV (Porto): Packing hefty punches, you’ll need some serious dark chocolate dessert feint action to go toe-to-toe with this fighter. $NA B+
- NV Pago de Tharsys Conde Laurel Brut (Cava): A decent amount of invigorating poise, for not a lot of coinage. $10 B-
- 2013 Martin Codax Vinas e Adegas Galegas ‘El Cayado Roble’ Mencia (Bierzo): Come for the enticing raspberry richness, stay for the refreshing sense of spicy zing. $27 B+
- 2015 Plunder Pinot Noir (California): Think velvet being aggressive, and you’ll get the sense of the mouthfeel of this crowd-pleaser. $NA B-
- 2014 Wildcatter Mount Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon (Mount Veeder): Violets and cassis growing on scraggly, rugged hillsides in the dark of night. $79 A-
- 2016 Riverbench Estate Pinot Noir (Santa Maria Valley): A lithe and lovely delight from herbal, bright berry start to spicy, chiseled finish. $30 B+
- 2016 Talley Vineyards Estate Chardonnay (Arroyo Grande Valley): Fruity complexity and delicious structure make for a very soon to be empty bottle… $28 B+
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who founded the farming practices now known under the certification of Biodynamics, was largely full of sh*t.
For example, Steiner was all about making wild claims based on anonymous sources long before it became the new standard of presidential tweeting in the U.S.; just check out a handful of the claims he made in his The Submerged Continents of Atlantis and Lemuria:
“As to the sources of the information to be given here, I am for the present obliged to be silent. He who knows anything at all about such sources will understand why this must be so…”
“…it was only in the course of time that the forms of man and woman arose from an earlier, original form in which the human being was neither the one nor the other, but both at the same time.”
Working the good sh*t at Troon in Oregon
“Just as we have contrivances for transforming the latent force of coal into the power to propel our engines, so had the Atlanteans devices for heating by the use of plant-seeds in which the life-force was changed into a power applicable to technical purposes. In this way were propelled the air-ships of the Atlanteans, which soared a little above the earth. These air-ships sailed at a height rather below that of the mountains of Atlantean times, and they had steering appliances, by means of which they could be raised above these mountains.”
So we’ve got, with literally no evidence, Steiner on the record challenging how humans evolved, and claiming that ancient Atlanteans had airplanes powered by seed oil. So if you’re not at least a little bit skeptical of the guy’s take on farming, then you have deep issues with how you handle facts, logic, and the scientific method.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that with Biodynamics he didn’t stumble upon something incredibly useful for coalescing several centuries-old, tried-and-true farming practices that turned out to be great for fine wine vineyards. But it does mean that we need to approach anything that Steiner wrote with healthy (and probably substantial) levels of skepticism. We’ve tackled this topic before on these virtual pages, giving equal “air time” to both prominent Pro and Con voices regarding BioD, and more or less ended up not that much farther from our starting point (or, at least, I didn’t).
And so it was with a sort of mixed fascination and trepidation that I recently observed firsthand Troon Vineyard‘s Biodynamic compost preparations (#502-507) in the gorgeous (but, at the time, quite smokey) Applegate Valley, to literally see “the good sh*t”…
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