| Wine Type | Vintage Name Variety Locale | Date Posted Score Helpful Comments Comment Date Community Score More... |
|---|---|---|
| Red |
2020 Château Troplong MondotSt. Émilion Grand Cru Red Bordeaux Blend more |
5/4/2024 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: NRSecond time with this wine. The first bottle shortly after it shipped was good but too monolithic to get a handle on. This one is still monolithic and hard to get a handle on, but it's starting to settle in to a more comfortable place. It's rich but not gloppy like the old style, dark-fruited and laced with gravel sensations and a touch of cedary toast. |
| Red |
2012 R. López de Heredia Rioja Reserva Viña BosconiaTempranillo Blend, Tempranillo more |
4/21/2024 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 95 pointsLopez never maps to the vintage charts, does it? This is one of the most pleasurable Bosconias in years. It has all the trademark feminine, Burgundian elegance but the fruit is warm and still halfway between youthful ripeness and its autumnal stage. It also has a smokiness on the back end that made it a remarkably synergistic, even synaesthetic, wine pairing with applewood smoked vegetables.
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| Red |
2017 Domaine Laurent Boussey Volnay 1er Cru TaillepiedsPinot Noir more |
6/1/2023 - Keith Levenberg wrote: 89 pointsWell, everyone loves to talk about how good the 2017s are to drink right now, and this one is fine, but not as good as it was on release. It's juicy and piercing and still holding on to some CO2 gas. Otherwise it's smooth and streamlined without much tannin to speak of. The fruit is dark-toned, all blue and black fruits, with a lightly stony undercurrent.
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| Red |
2019 Château Durfort-VivensMargaux Red Bordeaux Blend more |
3/15/2023 - Keith Levenberg wrote: 97 pointsBest yet in a string of marvelous Durforts in the renaissance that's been going on over there since around 2014 or so. This is the essence of Margaux. I'm not even sure I've had a (Chateau) Margaux or Palmer that came as close to this as the Platonic ideal of the appellation. You will practically have a synaesthetic experience from the pure redness of the fruit and other elements on display here - think strawberries, raspberries, and bright red roses. They leave a vivid impression, but rendered with a light hand - Bordeaux in watercolors. Bright, maybe even bold, but transparent. It hits its zone after maybe an hour or two of air, when it shows firm contours on the entry but then dissolves into silk, and then dissolves further into the realm of the ethereal. And that's ultimately where it seems it wants to be this year. Even the next day, when the fruit turns darker and blacker, it holds on to its finesse. Some of the prior recent vintages have shown earth and grit, and done so in the best way, but this one is pure fruit and perfume. The others might turn out longer-lived, but they'll never be this seductive.
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| Red |
2019 Chapelle St. Theodoric Châteauneuf-du-Pape Le Grand PinGrenache Blend, Grenache more |
10/29/2022 - Keith Levenberg Does not like this wine: NRGushes with sweet, cough-syrupy fruit flavored with kirsch and herbs de Provence. The wine equivalent of trying to stuff 20 clowns in a Volkswagen. It has some redeeming qualities but I can't get past wincing with every sip, like with cough syrup. People who like this kind of thing will find this the kind of thing they like.
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| Red |
1993 Domaine Alain Michelot Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru Les VaucrainsPinot Noir more |
1/2/2021 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 93 pointsThis has ticked nicely into its drinking zone since my last bottle 6 years ago. The aromas offer a nice punch of old-style mature Burgundy with some earthy barnyard funk with a sweet caramelized core. The flavors follow suit on a base of cherry that's held on to enough ripeness to hold off turning dry or autumnal, structured according to the old stereotypes of Nuits and Vaucrains in particular - firm, edgy tannins that will probably always leave this at least a bit rustic but should also give this the strength to keep going many more years.
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| Red |
2016 Ashes & Diamonds Cabernet Sauvignon Mountain Cuvée No. 3 Bates RanchSanta Cruz Mountains more |
11/11/2020 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 95 pointsI'm surprised there isn't more buzz going around about this project. I guess if you're in California and you want anyone to pay attention to you, you need tacky packaging and a waiting list. No such tacky packaging here as the minimalist label could pass for one of the store products in Repo Man. But this wine deserves more attention since we're talking about one of the great CA vineyards with a decades-long track record for producing ageable cabernets of real distinction, and the winemaker here is Diana Snowden Seysses, who oughta know a thing or two about making wine. This has very pure blackberry/black cherry fruit on both nose and palate and whatever oak it received is fully absorbed; with air it reveals some rusty red earth that's very Santa Cruz. But the real draw here is the figure and texture. Cabernet is rarely this svelte (sometimes the Comtesse can pull it off), and the tannins are pure silk. It's put together in that perfectly tailored manner like a suit you can tell from a glance is custom-fitted and not merely a fancy brand off the rack. And the fabric is light enough to wear in summer.
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| Red |
2018 Château Pichon-Longueville BaronPauillac Red Bordeaux Blend more |
11/7/2020 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 93 pointsA surprisingly soft and elegant take on Baron from a vintage I'd have thought would be more inclined towards redlining the dials. But for better or for worse this isn't the powerhouse the 2016 was, and is both lighter weight and lighter-toned. It's red-fruited and cedary with stylish oak, the tannins plush and refined right out of the gate. It's lovely but I must admit with the '16 being one of my WOTVs, I expected a performance a bit more dramatic out of this.
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| Red |
2014 Château Grand-Puy DucassePauillac Red Bordeaux Blend more |
12/21/2017 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 94 pointsThis is not a chateau anybody pays much attention to, but this is really punching above its weight and classification and is one of the serious smart buys of a serious smart-buy vintage. I actually prefer it to the more highly esteemed Grand Puy Lacoste at this point. This is textbook Pauillac all the way (which I guess makes sense since the vineyards are spotted all over Pauillac from the fancy Rothschild neighbors in the north to the St. Julien side in the south) - dark fruit with loads of pencil shavings. It's structured in a very classic way, clenched and tensile, but also not at all hard to drink because it seems to lean on acidity more than tannin for its structure, or at the very least the fruit still has enough gloss that the tannin is smoothed over and doesn't make its presence felt until later on.
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| Red |
1943 Château RougetPomerol Red Bordeaux Blend more |
9/3/2021 - Keith Levenberg wrote: 88 pointsAfter two wines that were light and fading, this was a dramatic change, with explosive scents as soon as you hover your nose near the glass - scents of what, I couldn't tell you, but there was a lot there, some on the austere stony side and some on the sweeter side with even a hint of oatmeal cookie. Just fuller and more dimension to this than there was to its flightmates from '40 and '37. If any one of these wines still has something there that can be called fruit, this one is it. Broadbent's description of '43 is "best of the wartime vintages," "with richness and fruit but short." That makes sense. I've had the 1949 of this from the same cellar and this one wasn't far behind, if at all, though that doesn't say as much as it might because the '49 was not as impressive as a '49 should be. So in several respects it's hard not to grade this on a curve. Next to a pair of fading and airy wines this stood out at as still having some material to it, but compared to the three in the flight to follow it wasn't especially memorable.
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| Red |
1971 Cordero di Montezemolo Barolo MonfallettoNebbiolo more |
1/17/2007 - Keith Levenberg wrote: 78 pointsActually shows younger than the '82, with denser and more primary fruit cabined by bales of furry tannin on all sides. Even the fruit tastes granular. There was an offputting mustiness on the back end that took awhile to blow off and initially seemed corky. We drank it a few hours after a double decant and it needed a few hours more.
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| Red |
2015 Château Brane-CantenacMargaux Red Bordeaux Blend more |
2/12/2019 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 95 pointsSetting aside the Big Two, this has to get my nod as the best Margaux of the vintage, and it's showing even more now than it did last year. For present enjoyment that cuts in both directions because while it's offering more layers of deep, richer flavor it's also flexing quite a lot more tannic muscle, a real wall of structure that you have to get through. But the balance is exquisite, everything is put together just so, with snappy red currant fruit mixed with warmer blueberry flavors and a robust minerality hinting at metal shavings. It's thick-skinned but bursting with inner sweetness, way more than the much mellower showing last year indicated. This is also much more solid and robust than I remember it. There is a whole lot packed in here.
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| Red |
2018 Château Haut-BaillyPessac-Léognan Red Bordeaux Blend more |
8/4/2021 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 94 pointsBy far the most packed and stacked Haut-Bailly I have ever had, which explains the pointgasms you are seeing from certain quarters. If you are accustomed to the lithe, ethereal house style that distinguished Haut-Bailly for, oh, a good century or so until recently, tasting this will make you wistful and maybe even a little bit sad. Still, I can't deny how impressive it is in its own way and under any other label I wouldn't have mixed feelings about it. It opens with plump black fruit that feels as dense as tar with a scorched, charcoal-singed element that screams Pessac. With a little bit of time some crunchier red fruit emerges in the treble band. If the old Haut-Baillys were rendered in gentle watercolor strokes, this one is a big wet splotch of Midnight Black oil paint dripping off the canvas. Well, truth be told it is not as sloppy as it may sound from that description but it definitely struggles to find its contours and hew to them. The tannin is a fine powder but the sheer volume it's infused with to remain proportionate to its fruit concentration imposes some physical limitations on its claims to finesse. If the mood strikes for something deep and intense, this can be enjoyed now for the way it expresses its Graves character in poster-sized boldface but if you want to see it mellow out even a little bit I think you will have to sign up for an aging cycle that might not be entirely compatible with many buyers' actuarial tables.
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| Red |
1996 Dalla Valle Cabernet Franc Casa Dalla ValleOakville more |
5/7/2008 - Keith Levenberg wrote: 75 pointsSweet milk chocolatey/blueberry-pie scents but a very light-bodied palate presence that doesn't match the richness of the nose, not that milk chocolate or blueberry pie is something you want your cabernet franc to smell like. In addition to its vacancy it feels almost completely unstructured without any acid spine at all.
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| Red |
2019 Château Ducru-BeaucaillouSt. Julien Red Bordeaux Blend more |
9/11/2021 - englishman's claret wrote: NRAnother extremely positive experience with this wine, mirroring my prior note.
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| Red |
2016 Quilceda Creek Cabernet SauvignonColumbia Valley more |
2/5/2021 - Keith Levenberg wrote: 88 pointsI have very good news for anybody who really likes this kind of thing. You can buy Ch. La Vieille Cure from Fronsac and get basically the same wine for twenty-five bucks. I honestly had no idea what to expect going into this - I was of course aware it was a TWA darling back in the day, but I can probably count the number of Washington State wines I've had on one hand. Right off the bat, I find myself kind of impressed how Bordeaux-like and NOT California-like it is, complete with the gravely, lead-pencil notes - intensely concentrated fruit to be sure but not far beyond the parameters of many a fine Bordeaux from a rich vintage, and for the most part without the CA-like sucrosity. Well, at least at first. Within about 15 minutes it becomes absolutely dominated by caramelly, brown-sugary oak, really not far off Mollydooker levels, and you can practically visualize the machinery in here that was keeping the fruit sweetness within normal parameters powered by some monkey on a bicycle that's now pedaling furiously trying to keep the whole thing from snapping and it doesn't quite snap, exactly, but it's more like when something goes wrong in your car and you have a few days of, "huh, something smells kinda funny" before you realize you actually have to bring it in to the mechanic and then once you finally bring it in he's just kind of in shock asking you half in pity and half in contempt of your blithe ignorance, "And you were driving it like this for how long?"
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| White - Off-dry |
2019 Stein Alfer Hölle Riesling 1900Mosel Saar Ruwer more |
1/30/2021 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 98 pointsCould be the best-ever vintage for Alfer Holle. A geyser of riesling that hits the palate with the bandwidth of the Keystone XL pipeline (RIP) and blows you back like the guy in the armchair in the Maxell cassette tape ad. The fruit is crisp and citrusy and covers a broad spectrum with lemony elements hitting the high notes and mandarin orange elements striking the deeper chords, the latter of which become more dominant over the next few days. But it's quite full and rounded partially on account of a sweetness level that makes this feel much closer to feinherb than trocken (maybe even past feinherb, even at 12% alcohol) and partially on account of its sheer concentration, which gives it a thick, oily-textured body. While the sweetness smooths over a lot of the edges, it crystallizes back to solids on the back end, leaving a wake of salt and crunchy fruit brittle.
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| Red |
1995 Château Ducru-BeaucaillouSt. Julien Red Bordeaux Blend more |
6/25/2020 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 97 pointsFaded label had me worried this bottle had been mistreated, but pouring it in the decanter reveals an astonishingly youthful, healthy ruby hue and no-doubter, room-filling aromatics heavy on the cedar and cigar-box notes. The fruit comes across more bricked and crimson-toned on the palate than that ruby color indicated, but the real shocker here is the texture, as the tannins on this have been brutish in the past, but this time it was cashmere-like in refinement almost from the starting gate.
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| Red |
2017 Dominus EstateNapa Valley Red Bordeaux Blend more |
11/25/2020 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 95 pointsSomehow I've managed to be at this for a good two decades without ever trying a Dominus, at least not that I can remember. Figured I may as well remedy that. This has a little pop of California sweetness on the entry but from then on it's about as Bordeaux-like a California wine I've ever had. Initially more Pauillac/St.-Estephe like, but by the end more like a Graves with its singed, scorched character. The oak is doing a lot of heavy lifting here but it's as fancy as barrels get, not "oaky" in the sense of having any oak or wood flavors, just the full array of stuff that's derived from the oak (and the toast) - all those smoldering cigar and Graves-like charcoal elements. All of that is in the foreground, I can't say much about the fruit other than it's deep black in tone, mainly on account of that scorched sensation. The 15% alcohol doesn't throw the wine out of balance but does manifest itself when it comes to sip size and sipping pace. It is like it is nine tenths table wine and one tenth after-dinner libation.
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Comment posted by Keith Levenberg:
5/4/2024 2:29:00 PM - I open a bottle of almost everything I buy - I like to know what I'm cellaring. And there's no shame in enjoying young wine