10/16/2023 - MrOctoberfest Likes this wine:

One of my prior notes complained about the “cheap” synthetic cork that closed this wine. After 12 bottles, every single one of these has been wonderful, and if you look at the cork in the mouth of the blue hippo in one of the pictures for this wine, the seal looks like it did back in 2016. Diam is awesome, and hats off to Vallana for being an early adopter.

The wine is still youthful, with flavors and aromas consistent with more expensive wines from Boca and Gattinara. This wine is a QPR champ and should outlast anyone born before the Carter administration.

8/14/2023 - UpfromtheCellar wrote:

A trousseau for the ages! Still fresh, no barnyard stink to blow off, great color (just a hint of orange around the rim), medium bodied, closer to a nebbie than a pinot in terms of acidity and fruit. Not a lot of earthiness, great floral bouquet/aeromatics, nice long clean finish. Very nice. 89+

Current prices for more recent vintages are off the charts but considering the two behind this (Rosenthal/importer and Puffeney/HUGE ego? - "the Pope of Arbois", maybe/maybe not deserved, since retired and his holdings sold to the famed d'Angerville family) and the devoted global following they have achieved, all I can say is that if you want some, open your wallet and prepare to pay up up up! For my part I've moved on to new (cheaper) pastures but certainly enjoy drinking his old wines from my cellar .....

Even better day two. Wow. Changed my rating to a 90. Wish the new stuff wasn't selling for $100 a bottle :-/

7/18/2023 - LoireFan wrote:

Nice but Drink Up.

6/24/2023 - AlinaS Likes this wine:

If this can be my de facto chard I will be happy.
Strong honey scent immediately from the pour.
Lovely body, the oak is not felt although you have the sense that it help make such a nice rounded finish
I get white rocks, tiny amount of salinity, low acidity and melon finish.

Lovely lovely drinking over a few days.

5/24/2023 - Richard P Howden wrote:

Oh my. Beautiful floral nose cram jam with strawberries cherries & violets. Medium weight, good intensity, youthful but showing a bit of herbal complexity. Balanced, energetic. So Chambolle. Off vintage? Hmm no. A beauty.

3/28/2023 - WojteG Likes this wine:

This is my third Musar. 2000 and 2005 got 98pts. from me. Let's see if this one can get the same score.
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First snif, first sip and I knew I have a winner. Unmistakable, unique Musar! Basically I could copy and paste notes from my previous reviews. It's very consistent wine, that's why I could detect it blindly.
Smell - musty cellar, barnyard, earth, forest, toast, tobacco, smoke, all kinds of spice, vanilla and, wait a minute, sweet notes black cherry, tea. Wait a minute, because there's more: ... mesmerizing and hypnotic menthol and eucalyptus aromas.
Taste? I can use thousand of words and I still won't be able to convey the character of this juice. Unique and original. Yes, we have here red cherry, black berry, tea and all kinds of spice ( black pepper, cinnamon, chilly and more). We have perfect acidity and tannins, but this wine has its soul and I won't even try to describe it.
Just drink it if you have a chance.

3/20/2023 - Smooth Jazz wrote:

Drank over five days alongside the 2016 - minimal fruit but olive and minerally light and feminine finish that lasts - just not much going on at the moment and don’t have any experience with this wine to say it would improve. That said, one could keep this a while with little risk of it falling apart. Old school wine making in the Verset and Jacky Truchot mould - just not sure if the underlying material has much to show.

12/6/2022 - WEB,III wrote:

Agree with previous notes. A little stewy. Possibly picked over ripe. Enjoyable enough with wild Mallard and a Chianti Classico reduction sauce. But not top level Bize.

12/7/2022 - EMTAME wrote:

These Istine chiantis are well made and clean, with no rusticity and with good but not overpowering acidity. I have had numerous bottles over the last few years and always like them, but somehow never really get wowed by one. They are nice on their own and are good food companions. They just don’t hit me as “a step above”, which I would expect given the pricing (compared to, say, Monsanto) and the ratings I’ve seen for them.

11/16/2022 - Vino Me wrote:

Opened by Blue Oval at an offline and tried next to the 2011 Tempier Bandol La Migoua. I liked this bottle better. This property was recently purchased by Pax Mahle and others and will go into their estate wines. Deep purple color. Floral nose. Rather fruity and forward with leather and black fruit notes. 93 points.

5/25/2022 - GrandeSerataFuori wrote:

Notes from memory. Last wine in a long birthday celebration day. Wasn’t as oxidized or funky as we’d hoped. More lemon citrus than the expected dried apricot. Still a good wine. Better glasses and a decant may have helped.

4/22/2022 - forceberry wrote:

The fruit is sourced from a 7-acre (3 ha) vineyard, part of which was originally planted in 1945. Fermented spontaneously in small open-top fermentors, macerated with the skins for 2 weeks, aged 18 months in French oak barrels (75% new, 25% once used), bottled unfined and unfiltered. 13% alcohol. Bottle #5786 of total 9504 bottles.

Translucent, luminous brick-red color with a pale, almost colorless rim. The nose feels fragrant, sweetish and somewhat oaky with layered aromas of spicy Pinosity, ripe cherries, some savory wood spice, a little bit of raspberry marmalade, light pomegranate juice tones, sweeter toasty oak hints of mocha and exotic spices and a touch of wild strawberry. The wine is silky, juicy and quite rich on the palate with a moderately full body and rather ripe flavors of sweet black cherries, some spicy notes of peppery spice, light fragrant nuances of resin and coniferous forest, a little bit of strawberry, a toasty hint of sweet oak spice and a touch of pomegranate juice. The overall feel is textural and supple, the overall structure relies mostly on the moderately high acidity, whereas the ripe, soft tannins mainly contribute to the silky texture. The finish is ripe, juicy and somewhat sweet-toned with a long aftertaste of ripe cherries, some sweet oak spice, a little bit of raspberry marmalade, light woody nuances, a hint of pomegranate and a touch of allspice.

A rich, ripe and textural Pinot Noir. The overall feel is pleasant, supple and varietally correct, but also a bit of a crowdpleaser. There is good sense of balance, nuance and depth of flavor, but I prefer my Pinot Noirs with more freshness, zip and less sweet fruit. While thoroughly enjoyable and eminently drinkable, I feel this really isn't my kind of Pinot Noir. That being said, this is still a fine, well-crafted Pinot Noir with nice typicity and sense of complexity. I hope with some age the sweeter fruit notes and oaky tones would recede more into the background, making the wine feel less sweet and more, well, Burgundian.

6/11/2022 - JustBreathe680 wrote:

The wine itself was not flawed but the glass bottle was flawed.

I have enjoyed several bottles of this Rosé over the past few weeks. However, this bottle broke at the neck when extracting the cork. I have never had the neck of a wine bottle snap off while pulling the cork. I did not drink the wine for fear of small shards of glass. However, i could have used a coffee filter if I really wanted to drink the wine but I took the conservative approach and opened a second bottle.

I contacted Hardy Wallace and he has never seen his bottles break in the manner this one did, so hopefully it's chalked up as a very rare occurrence. Luckily, I was not injured but I'm posting so others can be careful when pulling the cork. On a side note, Hardy provided great customer service and was very responsive to my emails. I highly recommend this wine and wine company but unfortunately lost this bottle in an unusual manner.

12/21/2021 - Brian Glas wrote:

Tasted after 1 hour of air. Meh. I've tried the 2020s from Vincent, Evesham Wood, and Longplay. They are bad across the board. Rough on the palate. Masks over the fruit. Big hollow mid palate. No lift. Dead on the finish. Not sure how others gave this good scores.

Tasted again on day 2. There is some red berry fruit here and there is some floral notes and lift on the mid palate. Finish is still short though. Upgrading to 87.

5/21/2021 - ravikalaga Likes this wine:

Glug glug. Great on a summer day, revisit in 5yrs.

10/16/2020 - NickBurwood Likes this wine:

Arrived today so perhaps not in prime condition - but who cares!
Colour tending towards golden. Buttery, significant viscosity. Packed with exotic dense citrus and white stoned fruits, nutty nuances balanced by a saline minerality and core integrated acidity. I - we - love (well made) richer old fashioned Californian chardonnays and this is certainly one!!
Now and for say 3yrs. May well score higher with settling time in my cellar. 92+

8/9/2020 - Fleets Likes this wine:

As noted in the other TN’s , definitely better on the second and third days. Good backbone of tannin and surprisingly fragrant , even wafts of lychee amongst the cherry and other red fruit. Some bitter/liquorice notes at first which mellow over time.

7/26/2020 - slanum wrote:

This vintage has long been a favorite -- one of the last before ripeness levels shot up in response to warmer vineyard temps. Even though the label proclaims 13.5%, the wine is balanced and the fruit (luscious) and acidity (bracing) are à point, in the manner that was once typical of all the best Morgons. This bottle (denoted 'S') has held up well. A real pleasure. (At $35 this cost an order of magnitude less than the current, much riper regular Morgon bottling. Sigh.)

6/3/2020 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine:

Loved this. Much preferred to the carignane and also very different in style. So far most of the Sandlands reds I've had have been fairly intensely and primary fruited but with the acidic energy to stay nimble and light on their feet. This one is different - it still has that energy, along with a super-succulent peppery flavor and snap that also contributes to the spine, but the fruit is very restrained, pale crimson in complexion and while I wouldn't go so far as calling it autumnal it's definitely in that cast that's more winy than fruity. The sheer drinkability of it is off the charts - it's like potato chips the way you can't stop coming back to it. 750ml serves one.

4/24/2020 - Ben Christiansen wrote:

Smells a little woody although I know there is no wood on it. Super pretty on the palate. Light and refreshing. Just opened.

3/4/2020 - msuwine wrote:

I bought this on the recommendation of a sommelier who said it was drinking well right now, and... I think this is just a flawed bottle. (I bought it direct from the winery about a month ago, but I’ve got enough comments below to make me think this is flawed, perhaps heat damaged.) No number, but here are my comments, for what they’re worth.

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This wine is more intriguing than tasty, but it’s an interesting experiment, I guess (if it hadn’t involved actually spending my own money - definitely). Despite the reputation of this wine’s ability to age, we all have a prime - and this nine-year old Chardonnay has past it. You may enjoy this if you are a fan of the more oxidized approach to Chardonnay (such as Marcassin and Kongsgaard, which offer more nuts and less fruit), but I am not one of them.

Bright yellow, almost golden in color; full in body with a nuttiness that would be stultifying if not for the zip of acidity at the finish; somewhat muted nose of pear, toasted almond, and caramel apple. Tastes of lemon curd, vanilla bean, baked banana, and dried mango, with a creamy finish that has just enough lift to let you know the wine isn’t dead yet (though, I think, it is dying). 14.5% alcohol. I bought this hoping for a sense of mystery; instead, I got a taste of mortality. Drink now.

12/31/2017 - Kemo Sabe wrote:

Had high hopes for this as the 64 I had a few months ago was monumental. This was not. Brown in color, cloudy and plenty of sediment even through a strainer. Lots of nuts, almonds with some saddle and leather notes. But also streaks of rotten fruit and taint. Disappointing. OTH for sure.