| Wine Type | Vintage Name Variety Locale | Date Posted Score Helpful Comments Comment Date Community Score More... |
|---|---|---|
| White |
2014 Tantalus Vineyards Riesling Old VinesOkanagan Valley VQA more |
4/29/2019 - KillerJones Likes this wine: 93 pointsThis is big, powerful Riesling from a great B.C. producer - it is riveting stuff! |
| Red |
2014 Fairview Pinotage PrimoPaarl more |
3/26/2020 - Cabernetdialectic Likes this wine: 90 pointsThe nose initially punches out with ripe opulent blackberry and black cherry fruit (fresh and jam), Mission fig, sweet and sour sauce, and black currant wine gums, and although all this is to be expected, hold fast because this is not a simple wine. A cherry lozenge note curls in around the edges, like a mentholated fruit roll-up, and pouches of sweet tobacco start to pile up amidst subtle twinges of candy cap mushroom, fresh asphalt, rooibos, tamarind pods, and flourishes of red fruits poking up from amongst the black bedrock (red cherry, cranberry even). The volatile acidity is there, yet it’s not shrieking but rather calm on a rather tight leash. This does not get tiresome for me. It’s flashing enough freshness to stifle any fatigue that could set in, yet no one will mistake this for cool climate. The spike of cherry NyQuil and chocolate/açai berry right down the middle provides a stable base from which to explore the tarry, dates and raisins in a bazaar, honeybush, and just flat out quirky aspects of what Pinotage has to offer.
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| Red |
2015 Adelina MataroClare Valley more |
10/24/2018 - Cabernetdialectic Likes this wine: 90 pointsMajor points for the label. This is a 2015 Adelina Wines Mataro, the name used in Portugal for Mourvèdre... So naturally this hails from the Clare Valley, Australia, a region much better known for Riesling. This is quite nuts: Mourvèdre is notorious for needing a lot of heat to ripen, and Clare is known for aromatic whites precisely because of its cooler weather (at least in the Aussie context). How can this work? Well, it does. The style is lighter, almost a Beaujolais-like hue with a bright fruity nose to match. The vines are 80 years old, and the grapes spend 97 days on skins! The wine sees neutral wood for 12 months. The wine is not particularly meaty, as are many classic hot climate Mourvèdres. However, the varietal character is a slam dunk: blackberry, blueberry, black plums, bramble/dewberry, and some herbal notes that recall pipe tobacco and black liquorice. Although the wine is fruity, the black liquorice note, somewhere between anise seeds and salted Dutch candy, is hugely prominent and makes you realize that you are NOT in fact drinking Beaujolais. There is some red fruit in here too, again plums and maybe a whisper of pie cherry. As I keep sniffing I get more violets, a pinch of black pepper, potting soil, a curious and increasingly salient confected cacao note like instant hot chocolate mix. Medium acidity with round, powdery, ripe tannins. This is not underripe like you might worry. In fact, I feel the fruits are flashing some Mediterranean flair. Hey, Clare can do Shiraz rather well, and apparently this style of Mourvèdre ain’t such a stretch.
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| White |
2016 Gramercy Cellars ViognierColumbia Valley more |
5/27/2018 - Cabernetdialectic Likes this wine: 90 pointsThis is a Viognier?! There is some floral honeysuckle and fresh orange peel on the nose. But the wine is lean and mean on the palate, with high acidity for this grape and flavours of Asian and green pears, Navel orange, sour tangerine, green banana, orange blossom, honeydew melon, nectarine, pineapple skin, green mango, Rockets candy. What the heck is going on here? The fruits are underripe and the wine is taut, rather nervy. Powdery mouthfeel on a Viognier? Now I’ve seen it all.
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| Red |
2017 BK Wines Cabernet Sauvignon Weikay Blewitt SpringsMcLaren Vale more |
3/10/2018 - Cabernetdialectic wrote: 92 pointsBack of the bottle says “please decant me”. Nah. Oh, OK, fine. What a juicy, bright, laser beam of a Cab. Nose has that classic blackcurrant thing going on, with accents of balsamic, pencil wood/lead, violets, vanilla, lily of the valley, menthol, creme brûlée, wet gravel, and well-hung venison/jerky. On the palate this is fruit-toward, approachable, and largely devoid of pungent pyrazine-driven “bell pepper” notes, although there’s a whisper of that if you go looking. My initial thought is “where are the tannins?”... But they show up in the form of a few brambly pokes, a pleasant tickle of a thicket, and then you are through and greeted with lush blackberries, currants, black cherries, and blueberries, all drizzled with cream. Cherries reign supreme, trumping the other fruits (pardon the expression). The resinous and game notes make a reappearance but rapidly meld with the fruit to yield a buzz of tobacco and homemade preserves. This is an intriguing juxtaposition of rusticity and accessibility, fruit and (tasteful) oak, domestic and wild.
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Comment posted by Cabernetdialectic:
10/17/2020 2:33:00 PM - You do a brilliant job capturing my experience with this!