KPB
Posts: 4654
Joined: 11/25/2012 From: Ithaca, New York Status: offline
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I was thinking that in 2018 or 2019, I might do a side by side tasting of Bond Vecina and Vine Hill Ranch VHR, which is from the identical vineyards and to my taste can definitely outperform its much more famous cousin. Another example is MacDonald, which is from the same vineyard that sources the fruit for Mondavi reserve. I’ve always liked the Mondavi, which is also one of the few Napa wines you can reliably find in Europe. But MacDonald makes a better wine. In this case it may be a function of harvest policy: Mondavi seems to prefer that the grapes be harvested a bit early, and the wine tends to be leaner and more structured, maybe even a bit too structured and lean. The MacDonald wines I’ve tried have been fairly rich and riper. (Similar price point, if you can get the MacDonald wine directly off the mailing list, but MacDonald runs more like $450 on the secondary market) So this had me thinking: how many examples can people come up with of a very famous wine sourced from a vineyard that also produces an equally exciting wine of its own? Not a second wine, but a legitimate first-class wine that isn’t as known, but in a qualitative sense, could win a comparison.
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Ken Birman The Professor of Brettology
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