Jay Hack
Member #7,422 signed up 8/13/2005
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2011 Outpost Petite Sirah The Other
5/3/2024 - Jay Hack Likes this wine: 93 Points
Bought direct from the winery when first offered and stored in my temperature-controlled cellar. Decanted for only about 30 minutes and then followed for a few hours, with a swallow left in the glass for the next morning. I do not have a lot of experience with Petite Sirah. I have been told that it is a 30 year wine and this bottle may confirm that, but I suspect that the source of the story was actually people who confused it with Syrah from the Northern Rhone. There appears to be very little of it being grown in France.
At 13 years, this wine is just starting to open up and display some dark fruit, spices and a meaty roasted component that is very nice. I am not talking roasted as in burnt or smoke taint at all. Roasted as in meaty, with black berries and other brooding fruits, with perhaps some plum. It got better in the glass and had only gone slightly down hill sitting in a glass on a table in the den by the following morning, It probably has 5 more years, at least, to reach its peak, assuming good storage. This is a very enjoyable wine and will stand up to a strong beef-based meal. Just don' drink it with Dover Sole.
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2015 Elusa Cabernet Sauvignon
4/24/2024 - Jay Hack wrote: 95 Points
I first signed up on the Elusa list when a few of my favorites where Thomas Rivers Brown made wine sold out to "The Man," as we used to say. Schrader and Outpost immediately come to mind. TRB makes the wine at Elusa and the vineyard in the Calistoga area seems to be excellent terroir, so it looked like a good trade off when I dropped the others. I had never tasted it and I decided to be patient so I stuck it in the cellar and let it age. Yesterday, I decided to check it out and brought the 2015 to a family Seder to drink with the inevitable brisket. I decanted it at 6 pm and first tasted it at about 7 pm from clunky glasses. I then followed it for another 90-120 minutes.
This wine is in a very nice spot, with sweet tannins and a smooth velvety mouth feel. Approachable with wonderful a red fruit melange. It is developing a fruit-forward flavor profile with miles to go. Oak? No obvious oaky component, perhaps because it is resolved (seems unlikely at this age) or perhaps just neutral oak. Depending on your definition of tertiary flavors [From the Wine Enthusiast website, "The last of the three levels of aromas and flavors is tertiary. These complex components occur when wine is aged in an ideal environment. In red wines, fresh ripe fruit starts to transform into stewed or dried fruit, like raisin or fig. Tertiary aromas of tobacco, earth and mushroom will come about, too."], there are none of those yet, and thank god for that, at least as to stewed fruit and raisins or horse corral dirt, which IMNSHO get in the way of purity. It's fruit to the fore, with some spice.
In April 2007, I posted a thread on the E-bob bulletin board asking how long to decant a 2004 Rivers Marie cab and barely an hour later, TRB, sent me a private message that said, "GO with the decant and pour back for six hours. This wine can't receive too much air. Thomas". That wine was fierce and very good, but no where near as luscious as this one. Maybe it was the extra time in bottle, maybe it was an evolution of TRB's winemaking style, maybe it is a change in my own palate, or maybe just the vintage character (2015 Napa cabs are outstanding), but this Elusa is dramatically different. I recommend that people try it and if your impression is like mine, jump on the list.
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2016 Hammell Wine Alliance El Crue Rosé
3/9/2024 - Jay Hack Likes this wine: 92 Points
This is an outstanding Rose. It's a six grape blend - fairly characterized as a Rose of Chateauneuf. I am not a fan of Rose because it is generally designed to appeal to the AFWE types, but this one has excellent flavors with an almost peach-like aroma and a red fruit, but not sweet strawberry, flavor profile, and some citrus added but without sugar or sweetness. I bought this at auction - it still had a CT bar code label from a prior owner - and I wish there were more. I am not sure whether they just changed the packaging and now it's just "True Believer Rose," but I have my doubts because that's a lot cheaper. I buy a lot of Tercero Mourvedre Rose, which is one of the few Roses that I like, and this is comparable, if not a bit more complex.
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