Notes from day 2. Slightly hazy. Aromas of melon/citrus as Tooch mentions, maybe a touch of vanilla or cotton candy. The flavors are primarily melon with hints of prickly pear cactus, stone fruit and citrus. Light but smooth texture with a fairly long melon finish. Light acidity/minerality add structure. A unique wine that I rather enjoy. Drinking well now but I see no reason it won't last another couple of years.
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Firm, fresh, and delicious. Semillon from D&R is unlike anything else...beautiful combination of fresh melon tones with some lime and lemon. Weightless, although the skin contact gave it really nice texture.
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For me this is more interesting and fun as opposed to real serious complexity, notes of lemon yeast?(certainly orange wine reminessent) and subtle ginger, palate is quite light with medium acidity and not a lot of fruit it is hard to derive any real satisfaction from it
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This will go down as one of the most memorable wines of my wine-drinking life. First off, how I discovered it: inexplicably sitting on a shelf in a little grocery store/market in rural South Carolina during a pit stop on the way back from the beach last summer. How the hell it got there is beyond me. Then there's the look of the wine: cloudy-but-luminescent yellow with small specks of floating detritus, like freshly squeezed lemonade. Then how it smells: like a kaleidoscope of unexpected and compelling aromas. Lemon, yes, but an unmistakable smell of the ocean, like the little crabs washed up on the beach at low tide, with a bit of olive brine thrown in for good measure. Finally, the taste and texture: savory, salty, grippy, and fresh, but with generous fruit just the same, so there was no feeling of austerity or severity. What a strange little marvel this was; completely outside my frame of reference but precisely the kind of wine discovery that makes this hobby so exciting.
cloudy, very aromatic with that natural yeast bretty smell... lots of skin aromas... citrus, very herbal... no new oak... no obvious malo. on the palate very fresh with high acidity, moderate midpalate weight. balanced wine, good length, good intensity, ok complexity. wine has finesse a fine texture, not really very semillon to me. this is a very unique and distinctive wine... it feels underripe and the “natural” fermentation smells are a bit strong for me... people will either love it or hate it i suspect. drink now.
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Much better integrated than a bottle nine months ago. The fruit and the savory herbal phenolics are now much more of a piece, and show best after about an hour and when the bottle has warmed a bit. Remarkably complex but easy to drink, and great with food. Yum.
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Low impact flavors (white peach, nectarine) and persistence. Showing medium freshness, wet stone minerality. Still think I liked this best shortly after release for its fruit.
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Very yeasty on the nose - smells like a Lambic: lemon, herbal-cayenne, beery. Very raw and natural. It's an odd nose but I like it. Again, very Lambic on the palate - lemony, pure, tart, yeasty. Good acid and lift, herbal. Feels thick on the palate w yeast but has a lean quality as well. Nose - 4/6, Palate - 5/6, Finish - 5/6, Je ne Sais Quoi - 1/2 = 15/20.
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Last of my bottles, and really tasty. This has mellowed a bit over time - I'd say mostly the acidity seems a tad blunted - or at least this bottle was a bit more sedate than others.
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Cloudy straw color. On the nose: Leesy, dusty, a bit of ripe lemon, even a touch of sweat-stain. On the pallet much of the same comes through, add dried autumn leaf and perhaps apple core. Dusty pseudo-tannin foreshadows acid structure that never really takes form.
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Nice skin-contact example of Sémillon. Am curious to try their Mourvèdre now. Decanted for an hour and served lightly cool. Quite a bit of complexity and very versatile with food. Also a nice sip on its own.
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My last bottle of the 2012, just in time for the 2013. It's changed quite a bit over the last 6 months, and is less overt about showing its skin-contact nature. The first sip from the fridge could be your basic, crisp semillon. But with time to breathe and warm up it fleshes out and starts exhibiting that sandy texture from the skins. It's also brimming with that oyster-shell freshness, and I love how it delivers all that while still having a lot of oomph, rather than just being one of those generic, juicy white wines.
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A lovely opener with antipasti - especially excellent with the date/onion jam, and not too shabby with a wide variety of cheeses and cured meats. Lively and fresh in an unassuming way, one of those wines that make things better (food, company, children, etc.).
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Cloudy yellow, smells like sea air. There are terrific yeasty and citrusy flavors, even some pepper spice. Great texture on the palate. Energetic and edgy. Decanted a bit, served on the cool side, it was really firing last night. I'm a fan.
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Aha, I enjoyed this quite a bit more than bottle numero uno. I think that was largely about the pairings: it pretty nicely complemented a garam masala-spiced omelet and with green-sauced chicken enchiladas and Mexican chicken soup, and just spectacularly with lima-celery stew (http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/christmas-lima-bean-stew-recipe.html). As this warmed toward room temperature, the cloudiness and mix of savory/yeasty & tangy citric flavors was indeed reminiscent of a Belgian ale. Now I regret that my 2014 census showed one fewer bottle of this in inventory than I expected.
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What a difference a non-TCA bottle makes. Unfortunately this bottle still really doesn't thrill me; I want Keith's experience. This seems to remind me of a hybrid between a Belgian white beer and a dry lager on some level. I'm not seeing the acidity (and thus freshness) I'd hoped for. Quite guzzlable all the same, but ultimately, to my palate, via this bottle on this day, an uninspiring wine. Even if I plowed through nearly 2/3rds of it alone alongside banh mi. Who knows; perhaps storage issues took this to a place where the acid rapier evaporated.
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Skin-fermented and concrete-egg fermented, says the label. It took a long time for me to acquire the taste for skin-fermented whites. But this is one of the most exciting wines I've had in ages and now it feels kind of boring to go back to skinless... But this is not an "orange" wine. It picks up that cloudy cast and those extra layers of flavor and texture from the skin but here the color is actually a very pale yellow, and it has the ripping freshness that the orange types sometimes lack. Practically kinetic in its energy. The complexity is dizzying with vivid briny oyster-shell and crustaceous flavors, a rush of umami, and fresh lemony acidity and snap that gives it a rapier-like spine and makes it guzzlingly drinkable. Drank two of these already and just bought more. I can't wait to have this with shellfish but I've pretty much been craving it with everything.
Birthday dinner at Ink in W. Hollywood. Nice full nose of white fruit and melon. Palate is light bodied with more melon and white fruit noes. Minerals. Waxy profile. Seems to be missing a little acidity and verve. Solid and well made.
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Definitely different than the norm -- unfiltered, cloudy, minerals, tang, citrus on the attack. Develops a bit in the mid-mouth, with some slightly off putting tongue tingling elements and some questionably high acidity. Not much development through the finish. Drank alone and without food -- likely will be better with fish or seafood. Interesting stuff, and kudos for being on the avaunt-garde side in Yountville of all places, but not one of my faves. Perhaps suffering a little bit from hype and anticipation disappointment...
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Drank casually; my first bottle of five in the Le Cache. Good and interesting, but not immediately evident it's equal to the hype. We shall see with the future bottles.
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Another delicious bottle. Great texture and verve. Refreshing but not at all simple. I like how it's a mix of stone fruit, citrus pith, and crushed rocks.
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Cloudy bright gold color. Perfumy aromas of lemon and orange zest, savory spice, earth, and frommage. Bright notes on the palate, adding mineral depth to compliment the melange of flavors. Nice rich feel and presence on the palate, gaining a slight bitterness and salinity on the finish that adds a nice dimension. Gaining complexity with air. Great stuff.
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Fresh citrus, pear, and a little funk on the nose. Opens to lemon lime and slight grapefruit flavors on the palate along with some white peach. Expecting a fiery ball of acid, I was surprised to find it very well balanced and not forced or overwhelming the fruit at all. Instead it shows the character of the warm vintage, and can be served to casual wine drinkers alike. Getting back to the fruit, the purity here is undeniable, and the slight green streak works to its advantage. There's just a whisper of oak supporting this and the finish is a delight, with low to medium intensity, but gliding on with good length. Great stuff. This wasn't decanted, but consumed over two hours between fridge and cellar temp.
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Tasted over the course of several hours. Initially showed notes of white flower, grapefruit, and crushed limestone on the nose with plenty of acidity and a chewy texture on the palate. As it opened up, I started picking up faint whiffs of gooseberry, lemon pith, clover, and stone fruit. Wonderfully skewed towards the acidic end of the spectrum, this semillon is at once complex yet light and fun. Outstanding stuff.
4/8/2018 - Boatdrinker Likes this wine:
Elegant and clean. Wouldn't have guessed skins without the label. A silky plush bablbing brook. Really pretty.
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11/1/2017 - pren wrote: 89 Points
a bit orange wine like.
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10/23/2016 - David_T Likes this wine: 91 Points
Notes from day 2. Slightly hazy. Aromas of melon/citrus as Tooch mentions, maybe a touch of vanilla or cotton candy. The flavors are primarily melon with hints of prickly pear cactus, stone fruit and citrus. Light but smooth texture with a fairly long melon finish. Light acidity/minerality add structure. A unique wine that I rather enjoy. Drinking well now but I see no reason it won't last another couple of years.
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3/11/2015 - tooch wrote: 91 Points
Firm, fresh, and delicious. Semillon from D&R is unlike anything else...beautiful combination of fresh melon tones with some lime and lemon. Weightless, although the skin contact gave it really nice texture.
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1/10/2015 - eoinhharkins wrote:
For me this is more interesting and fun as opposed to real serious complexity, notes of lemon yeast?(certainly orange wine reminessent) and subtle ginger, palate is quite light with medium acidity and not a lot of fruit it is hard to derive any real satisfaction from it
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11/17/2014 - Billigan Likes this wine: 93 Points
This will go down as one of the most memorable wines of my wine-drinking life. First off, how I discovered it: inexplicably sitting on a shelf in a little grocery store/market in rural South Carolina during a pit stop on the way back from the beach last summer. How the hell it got there is beyond me. Then there's the look of the wine: cloudy-but-luminescent yellow with small specks of floating detritus, like freshly squeezed lemonade. Then how it smells: like a kaleidoscope of unexpected and compelling aromas. Lemon, yes, but an unmistakable smell of the ocean, like the little crabs washed up on the beach at low tide, with a bit of olive brine thrown in for good measure. Finally, the taste and texture: savory, salty, grippy, and fresh, but with generous fruit just the same, so there was no feeling of austerity or severity. What a strange little marvel this was; completely outside my frame of reference but precisely the kind of wine discovery that makes this hobby so exciting.
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10/31/2014 - markjanes Likes this wine: 85 Points
cloudy, very aromatic with that natural yeast bretty smell... lots of skin aromas... citrus, very herbal... no new oak... no obvious malo. on the palate very fresh with high acidity, moderate midpalate weight. balanced wine, good length, good intensity, ok complexity. wine has finesse a fine texture, not really very semillon to me. this is a very unique and distinctive wine... it feels underripe and the “natural” fermentation smells are a bit strong for me... people will either love it or hate it i suspect. drink now.
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10/15/2014 - stubbie999 Likes this wine:
Much better integrated than a bottle nine months ago. The fruit and the savory herbal phenolics are now much more of a piece, and show best after about an hour and when the bottle has warmed a bit. Remarkably complex but easy to drink, and great with food. Yum.
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10/15/2014 - Robert Pavlovich wrote:
Low impact flavors (white peach, nectarine) and persistence. Showing medium freshness, wet stone minerality. Still think I liked this best shortly after release for its fruit.
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9/27/2014 - AlphaMikeFoxtrot wrote: 89 Points
Table greats, autolytic year. It almost reminds me of certain craft beers. Dry dry dry. Very complex long finish.
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8/29/2014 - gordoyflaca wrote: 92 Points
This was actually not that crazy. Full, peachy, slight tang, white flowers...salty. but not cidery.
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8/28/2014 - Seth Rosenberg Likes this wine: 90 Points
Very yeasty on the nose - smells like a Lambic: lemon, herbal-cayenne, beery. Very raw and natural. It's an odd nose but I like it. Again, very Lambic on the palate - lemony, pure, tart, yeasty. Good acid and lift, herbal. Feels thick on the palate w yeast but has a lean quality as well. Nose - 4/6, Palate - 5/6, Finish - 5/6, Je ne Sais Quoi - 1/2 = 15/20.
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8/16/2014 - Charlie Pendejo Likes this wine:
Last of my bottles, and really tasty. This has mellowed a bit over time - I'd say mostly the acidity seems a tad blunted - or at least this bottle was a bit more sedate than others.
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8/9/2014 - rocknroller wrote: 90 Points
Annual Wine Group Summer Event (Siggy & Jenny's Place, Mpls, MN): Crisp and fresh, nice citrus notes. Clean and not over done.
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8/8/2014 - Michael Cohen wrote: 84 Points
Cloudy straw color. On the nose: Leesy, dusty, a bit of ripe lemon, even a touch of sweat-stain. On the pallet much of the same comes through, add dried autumn leaf and perhaps apple core. Dusty pseudo-tannin foreshadows acid structure that never really takes form.
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7/27/2014 - MDSomm Likes this wine: 88 Points
Always a favorite. A light touch to the orange wine treatment and it succeeds in bringing out complexity without creating distortion of character.
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6/9/2014 - Nojomoschwa Likes this wine: 89 Points
Nice skin-contact example of Sémillon. Am curious to try their Mourvèdre now. Decanted for an hour and served lightly cool. Quite a bit of complexity and very versatile with food. Also a nice sip on its own.
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5/22/2014 - Keith Levenberg wrote:
My last bottle of the 2012, just in time for the 2013. It's changed quite a bit over the last 6 months, and is less overt about showing its skin-contact nature. The first sip from the fridge could be your basic, crisp semillon. But with time to breathe and warm up it fleshes out and starts exhibiting that sandy texture from the skins. It's also brimming with that oyster-shell freshness, and I love how it delivers all that while still having a lot of oomph, rather than just being one of those generic, juicy white wines.
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4/14/2014 - stubbie999 Likes this wine:
A lovely opener with antipasti - especially excellent with the date/onion jam, and not too shabby with a wide variety of cheeses and cured meats. Lively and fresh in an unassuming way, one of those wines that make things better (food, company, children, etc.).
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3/16/2014 - decaturwinedude wrote:
Cloudy yellow, smells like sea air. There are terrific yeasty and citrusy flavors, even some pepper spice. Great texture on the palate. Energetic and edgy. Decanted a bit, served on the cool side, it was really firing last night. I'm a fan.
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2/4/2014 - Charlie Pendejo Likes this wine:
Aha, I enjoyed this quite a bit more than bottle numero uno. I think that was largely about the pairings: it pretty nicely complemented a garam masala-spiced omelet and with green-sauced chicken enchiladas and Mexican chicken soup, and just spectacularly with lima-celery stew (http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/christmas-lima-bean-stew-recipe.html). As this warmed toward room temperature, the cloudiness and mix of savory/yeasty & tangy citric flavors was indeed reminiscent of a Belgian ale. Now I regret that my 2014 census showed one fewer bottle of this in inventory than I expected.
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1/6/2014 - Robert Pavlovich wrote:
Preferred the first bottle to this. Not sure if it's better fresh or just going through a phase. Will hold my last bottle for a while and see.
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12/20/2013 - Gargantua wrote:
What a difference a non-TCA bottle makes. Unfortunately this bottle still really doesn't thrill me; I want Keith's experience. This seems to remind me of a hybrid between a Belgian white beer and a dry lager on some level. I'm not seeing the acidity (and thus freshness) I'd hoped for. Quite guzzlable all the same, but ultimately, to my palate, via this bottle on this day, an uninspiring wine. Even if I plowed through nearly 2/3rds of it alone alongside banh mi. Who knows; perhaps storage issues took this to a place where the acid rapier evaporated.
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12/16/2013 - Gargantua wrote: flawed
Corkity corked. Wan waaan.
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12/3/2013 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 96 Points
Skin-fermented and concrete-egg fermented, says the label.
It took a long time for me to acquire the taste for skin-fermented whites. But this is one of the most exciting wines I've had in ages and now it feels kind of boring to go back to skinless...
But this is not an "orange" wine. It picks up that cloudy cast and those extra layers of flavor and texture from the skin but here the color is actually a very pale yellow, and it has the ripping freshness that the orange types sometimes lack. Practically kinetic in its energy. The complexity is dizzying with vivid briny oyster-shell and crustaceous flavors, a rush of umami, and fresh lemony acidity and snap that gives it a rapier-like spine and makes it guzzlingly drinkable.
Drank two of these already and just bought more. I can't wait to have this with shellfish but I've pretty much been craving it with everything.
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11/21/2013 - patsox wrote: 91 Points
Delicious and different with that unique, funky semillon flavor profile.
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11/6/2013 - Nanda wrote: 88 Points
Birthday dinner at Ink in W. Hollywood. Nice full nose of white fruit and melon. Palate is light bodied with more melon and white fruit noes. Minerals. Waxy profile. Seems to be missing a little acidity and verve. Solid and well made.
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10/27/2013 - BigChalice wrote: 87 Points
Definitely different than the norm -- unfiltered, cloudy, minerals, tang, citrus on the attack. Develops a bit in the mid-mouth, with some slightly off putting tongue tingling elements and some questionably high acidity. Not much development through the finish. Drank alone and without food -- likely will be better with fish or seafood. Interesting stuff, and kudos for being on the avaunt-garde side in Yountville of all places, but not one of my faves. Perhaps suffering a little bit from hype and anticipation disappointment...
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9/11/2013 - AccaDacca Likes this wine: 90 Points
Sharp, crisp and clean. Beautiful cloudy gold color. Minerality is apparent. Real nice wine.
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8/8/2013 - Charlie Pendejo wrote:
Drank casually; my first bottle of five in the Le Cache. Good and interesting, but not immediately evident it's equal to the hype. We shall see with the future bottles.
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7/29/2013 - ucbeau Likes this wine:
Another delicious bottle. Great texture and verve. Refreshing but not at all simple. I like how it's a mix of stone fruit, citrus pith, and crushed rocks.
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7/2/2013 - MattMauldin Likes this wine: 92 Points
Cloudy bright gold color. Perfumy aromas of lemon and orange zest, savory spice, earth, and frommage. Bright notes on the palate, adding mineral depth to compliment the melange of flavors. Nice rich feel and presence on the palate, gaining a slight bitterness and salinity on the finish that adds a nice dimension. Gaining complexity with air. Great stuff.
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6/30/2013 - Robert Pavlovich Likes this wine: 90 Points
Fresh citrus, pear, and a little funk on the nose. Opens to lemon lime and slight grapefruit flavors on the palate along with some white peach. Expecting a fiery ball of acid, I was surprised to find it very well balanced and not forced or overwhelming the fruit at all. Instead it shows the character of the warm vintage, and can be served to casual wine drinkers alike. Getting back to the fruit, the purity here is undeniable, and the slight green streak works to its advantage. There's just a whisper of oak supporting this and the finish is a delight, with low to medium intensity, but gliding on with good length. Great stuff. This wasn't decanted, but consumed over two hours between fridge and cellar temp.
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6/29/2013 - ucbeau Likes this wine:
Tasted over the course of several hours. Initially showed notes of white flower, grapefruit, and crushed limestone on the nose with plenty of acidity and a chewy texture on the palate. As it opened up, I started picking up faint whiffs of gooseberry, lemon pith, clover, and stone fruit. Wonderfully skewed towards the acidic end of the spectrum, this semillon is at once complex yet light and fun. Outstanding stuff.
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