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Red

2015 Château Latour Grand Vin

 Pauillac Red Bordeaux Blend more
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4/13/2024 - bsumoba Likes this wine: 98 points

Super fun to have. 1st growth quality for sure. Very polished, complex and super good finish. Lots of energy in this wine. I’m glad that I know someone with more bottles…

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    4/23/2024 5:07:00 PM - Love to know who has more of these...
Red

2015 Château Latour Grand Vin

 Pauillac Red Bordeaux Blend more
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4/13/2024 - WineBurrowingWombat Likes this wine: 98 points

Eyes Wide Shut - Day 1 (A quiet place): Nose: Clean and fresh raspberries and exciting cranberries, clean new oak, red and purple flowers, clean forest floor with a gentle and exciting spiced tree bark. So aromatic on the nose here with fruits and flowers while maintaining nice elegance.

Palate: Clean all around. So well polished with seamless blending of fruits, minerals, earth and clean oak. A precise strike of light graphite and minerals that lingers nicely in the mid palate and onto the finish, providing a nice savoriness. The crazy part is the build up of the energy as it finishes. Awesome gains on the finish here.. it's like it ramps up the more you keep tasting.

My first Lafleur - I mean Latour - ever and boy, it did not disappoint.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    4/21/2024 12:15:00 PM - We know your didn't just stumble on your words there at the end...watching.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    4/21/2024 10:04:00 PM - Revenge is a dish best served cold. Winter is coming...
Red

2021 Les Cousins Cabernet Sauvignon

 California more
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4/17/2024 - Cristal2000 Likes this wine: 97 points

Very fortunate to experience all 2021 Vice Versa wines blind along with CSIMM1161. The bottles had been open for about 5 hours and all the wines continued to get better with air. I managed to guess half of these correctly, but it’s quite a lift to distinguish them all. This vintage is more serious than 2019, with elevated tension, freshness, and overall complexity. These are not pop and pour, so if drinking in the next 10 years, I suggest a lot of decant time.

1. 2021 Platt Chardonnay: As usual, this wine spans the gap between old and new world styles. Lot of lemon driven character, it’s lively without being linear showing strikingly pure fruit and tons of freshness. 96

2. 2021 Platt Pinot: Very big and serious in this vintage with almost cab-like power. This is not a pinot for the faint of heart and will need some bottle time to come into its own. The more air it received, the more integrated it became, and by the finish its endless depth of flavor was complemented by more nuance and approachability. While it will not be mistaken for a Burgundy, it’s new world charm, focused power, and acidity to keep it crisp make for an excellent offering. 95

3. 2021 Beatrix: Nose is a bit muted with herbal and tobacco notes. Palate is firm displaying red cherries, tilled soil, and mineral driven flavors. Fresh and tight with a medium length finish, this will need some time to come into its own but should round into fine form. The vineyard quality is obvious throughout. 95

4. 2021 To Kalon: My favorite from the start. The power and elegance of this wine is dramatic and only gets more pronounced with time. Epically firm and concentrated, it displays unreal purity, freshness, and length. The class of the vineyard is on display here with its towering presence even amongst other great sites. 100

5. 2021 Cousins: This was more giving than the tightly wound To Kalon offerings. Gorgeous soaring aromatics give way to a generous palate of cherry fruit mixed with tobacco and earth driven flavors. Super well layered with regal tannins this is rich and very long. A wine you can get at a bit earlier than most of the other wines. 97

6. 2021 Spinning Plates: Yep, they snuck this one into the blind as well. Good thing I didn’t pick it as my favorite! As you might expect, this rides a little higher and is slightly rougher around the edges than most of the SVDs, but otherwise there isn’t a large drop-off in quality. It’s dark, fresh, well layered and showing significant tannic backbone at present. The 19 edition has more polish, but this displays more power and potential. 94

7. 2021 GIII: This presented more seriously than I expected from the GIII vineyard. Displays dark cherries, moss, integrated oak, hints of vanilla and a relatively austere mid-palate and finish. A very powerful wine with loads of potential. 96

8. 2021 LPV: This wine was showing the best of the group during the tasting. Everyone had it in their top 2-3 wines. I have a love/hate relationship with LPV, since it will be soaring and beautiful like it was during this tasting, and then shut down for a couple years. Just tremendous fruit intensity, with suave tight knit tannins, an endless core of chocolate and dank earth character with a massive, lingering finish. Can’t go wrong here. 98

9. 2021 Crane: Gorgeous fruit character with wonderful polish and incredible tannin management. This didn’t show the typical purple fruit with violets that comes with Crane, but had the sophistication, suave texture, and overall class to where I wasn’t super surprised it turned out to be Crane. More muted than LPV at this stage, we all know this will round into a near perfect wine. 98

10. 2021 Stelzner: Talk about different! The profile of this wine was about 180 degrees from all the others. We debated back and forth on whether it was Stelzner or Cousins. I ultimately picked Cousins based on half the grapes coming from Paso, but I was wrong! Meat drippings, char, burnt embers that are grainy and savory describe it. The fruit is black and very expessive, but you might think you are drinking a Syrah if you’re not paying attention. Lots of complexity and character, this wine was fun! 96

11. 2021 M7: Oh man, this wine fooled me at the beginning. It’s so utterly compact that I initially thought it didn’t have much to offer. By the second round tasting through the wines, I realized my error as this kept getting incrementally longer on the palate and let some of the amazing fruit quality peek out. It really makes sense that this is the top offering, since it is built for age and will slowly unfurl all those magnificent (yep, said it) layers over time. Epically pure with amazing precision, this may eventually eclipse To Kalon as my favorite. 99

12. 2021 Mysterons: Full bodied, with a generous core of mostly black fruit complimented by notes of tobacco and menthol, this displays a luxurious texture and serious power. More ready to drink than some of the other offerings, this may be a bottle you pop open while sitting on the Beckstoffer and M7 wines. 96

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    4/19/2024 8:11:00 AM - Without a doubt, it was a great vintage for VV. Unlike with the up front and forward 2019's, you just have to give these some time. Cheers!

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    4/20/2024 7:37:00 AM - It did present as pretty tight and tannic. I’d just give it a lot of air and see how it does. Certainly a bit rougher around the edges than most of the SVDs.
Red

2019 Colgin Cariad

 Napa Valley Red Bordeaux Blend more
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3/17/2024 - bsumoba wrote: NR

But, you can buy 5 for the price of 1...: Unfortunately, myself and the rest of the tasters had a similar experience with this wine and was not becoming of the Colgin’s I have had in the past nor did it reflect the high scores seen from critics. This bottle (I am hoping bottle or at minimum, bad phase) had its moments where I thought it might come around, showing lovely red fruit notes right at PnP (which ultimately led me to the 91+ score at the end of this TN), but with air and time, it became a bit bitter and high on the acid. Others mentioned a green note but I did not get that as much as they did and it was mentioned that after 6 hours of slow ox air that green note all but disappeared, giving me hope that this is a phase. If I had to score today, 91-93.

Okay Day 2: Much better. The fruit was much more apparent and more obvious than on Day 1. The bitterness and acid was still a bit elevated. Tannins were a bit more grippy. I think knowing that this is Colgin, I hold them to a higher standard and even though I say things such as elevated acidity and slight bittnerness is that my history with Colgin is that it could be on the ripe side but it is almost always balanced.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    3/18/2024 11:01:00 AM - Almost sounds like you got an off bottle.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    3/18/2024 11:16:00 AM - Colgin that's green, bitter and high acid does not compute. Lol. Certainly something amiss.
Red

2019 Colgin Cariad

 Napa Valley Red Bordeaux Blend more
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1/30/2024 - Cristal2000 Likes this wine: 98 points

This is a brilliant vintage for this wine. Wonderful aromatics, ripe fruit, plush tannins, huge depth of flavor and amazing purity make for one of the better wine experiences I've had in the past six months. For all its up front charm and rounded edges, there is plenty of spine to keep it together, and it doesn't get flabby or unfocused, but rather hones in with more air. Finishes super long and gets longer with more air. If opening now, I suggest 12 hours of decant, since it just kept developing the entire time we had it open, and that was with 5 hours of double decant to start.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    3/13/2024 12:41:00 PM - I wouldn't worry at all about too much air. You're probably fine with 6-8 hours double decant beforehand, but it's not going to start falling apart by any stretch.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    3/13/2024 2:20:00 PM - Not sure which Impensata, but mountain sites are always a bit trickier...
Red

2021 Kinsman Eades Cabernet Sauvignon Aphex Ecotone Vineyard

 Napa Valley more
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11/6/2023 - Cristal2000 Likes this wine: 99 points

Nigel and Shae got their hands on some Ecotone (formerly Thorevilos) fruit, and as you might expect, it doesn't disappoint! This wasn't a structured tasting, and I didn't take notes, but I'll give you the rundown from what I recall.

First, overall the 2021 vintage looks like one to lay down. They are not PnP ready like many 2019's. I had two dozen or so this past weekend and virtually none were open for business. So if you combine that with Nigel's style of making long lived wine, it means if you acquire these, you probably need to give them a decade.

That said, with a long decant, the Ecotone actually opened up quite a bit. This is a BIG wine, dark and brooding, with hints of PV (if I remember correctly) making it show even more seriously than the 2021 Bella Oaks I had alongside. It displays massive depth, with unreal concentration managed impeccably by excellent acidity, fabulous structure and lovely layering. Shows off black/blue fruit with hints of scotched earth and embers, getting earthy right from the start while illustrating the complexity to come. Overall, this is utterly fantastic, and it'll be fun to get some bottles so I can watch them sit in my cellar for 10-20 years. :)

All kidding aside, obviously if you can get this wine, don't hesitate for a moment. Kinsman is just killing it.

This will ship in fall of 2024 like the other 2021 cabs, but not exactly sure when it will be released.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    11/6/2023 1:23:00 PM - Yeah, I needed to create a new wine and forgot to ask Shae if she has a name yet. Certainly a treat to try, and I assume only Coterie will get it first time around but we shall see. Since you are customer #1, you'll probably get 20 mags and 5 3.0L. Lol.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    11/6/2023 1:51:00 PM - Hahaha. Hey, I mean you posted the pic of your wine so...:)

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    11/6/2023 2:40:00 PM - Photo 3: 2018 Kinsman Eades Cabernet Sauvignon La Voleuse Du Chagrin Geeslin Vineyard. Haha. Too bad I can't imbed the picture here.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    2/27/2024 6:23:00 PM - Coterie letters just went out and the rest in a couple weeks from what I understand.
Red

2017 Realm Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard

 Oakville more
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8/2/2020 - Cristal2000 Does not like this wine: NR

Well folks, I brought this to dinner thinking it would be a good comparison to the 2017 MacDonald and it was absolutely destroyed. Here's hoping this was just a bad bottle. Easily the worst wine I had on a trip where I drank over 50 wines. This felt flabby, manipulated and without any character or promise. The most "meh" offering I can ever remember having from Realm, and I typically really enjoy most everything they make, especially the BTK. Some rumors about when this was picked out there - hope they are not true. I will refrain from posting a score on here giving the benefit of the doubt, because it would start with an 8. I see other CT'ers I respect had a good experience, so let's hope it was just this one time. Have a number of bottles left.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    8/6/2020 7:54:00 AM - Hi Winelover - yeah, that is a reasonable description of what it was like. Although, having to next to the MacDonald showed just how lacking it was and there was certainly some question about manipulation etc. All I know is this one was not what I've come to expect from Realm.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    12/22/2023 7:40:00 AM - Hi B&B - I haven't checked back in, but that's because with a few exceptions, I don't have any 2017's in there!
Red

2021 Realm Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard

 Oakville more
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11/27/2023 - Cristal2000 Likes this wine: 99 points

Like the 21 Crane, I gave this 15 hours of slow ox and it still needed more. Suffice it to say it's hard to over do the oxygen on these 2021 wines. They are really built for the long haul. And just like the Crane, once this opened up, it was incredible. It took even a bit longer to come into its own, and I think it probably more age worthy than the Crane, but when it hits, it's stunning.

Nose has TK classic white flowers, creme de cassis and blackberries. It was a little reticent and muted to begin, but slowly emerged with more time in the glass. This is a HUGE wine, with endless depth of mostly dark fruit that shows the most spectacular purity when it peaks out from behind the stiff tannin wall. More earthy elements than the Crane, this gets gritty and grainy in the middle, and just pumps out flavor and intensity while chugging toward a monster finish. At the end of the night, it started giving off cotton candy notes and other really incredible flavors. Going to be a fun ride with these. Another nearly perfect effort.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    11/28/2023 7:20:00 AM - Yeah, 2021 is not like 2019 in my experience. Way more tannic and closed off. I think you have to treat them like 2018 or even 2010/2013. Both Realm TK and Crane were amazing once they hit their stride, but it took a lot of O2. The vintage itself looks strong.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    11/28/2023 2:52:00 PM - I had a 2021 Bard right out of the chute but didn't take notes. It certainly isn't going to be vinegar in 4 hours. I wasn't overly impressed, and it's really trailing these awesome SVDs (not surprising, given the 8000 cases or whatever they make of it), but it was tight and not ready for a PnP. Everyone has their own experiences, but no way it's gonna be dead with 4 hours of O2 unless it is an off bottle.
Red

2021 Bella Oaks Vineyard Proprietary Red

 Rutherford Red Bordeaux Blend more
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11/6/2023 - Cristal2000 Likes this wine: 99 points

Quick note since this is final blend and my first note was a sample. Overall, just a fantastic wine. I didn't take any formal notes, but what stands out is the gorgeous maraschino cherry core, silky texture, crazy layers, firm back end acidity and overall elegance. This personifies "yum" in the most serious wine connoisseur terms. :)

While just about every 2021 I had over the weekend (at least a dozen) were super closed down, this was way more open for business. I think is will have a good shot at being the best of the vintages to date.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    11/6/2023 3:25:00 PM - You should've told me you were there. I am on the wine committee and Shae hosted our table. Thanks for attending!

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    11/6/2023 3:50:00 PM - Extremely worthy cause. Always appreciate the support.
Red

2019 Kinsman Eades Cabernet Sauvignon Rhadamanthus

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11/4/2023 - MJP Hou TX Likes this wine: 98 points

Our groups last night at Blackberry Farms was capped off by two wines in which I had been thinking about for awhile.

19 Kinsman wines I've been told are approachable early so this bottle made the trip to Tennessee. So well in advance of dinner, Rhadamanthus was prepared by the sommeliers with a double splash decant and held at cellar temp along side the 2nd largest private collection in the country.

Rhadamanthus was presented along side another selection, this time off the restaurants list. 2001 Martha's Vineyard.

I got to say I have a love hate relationship with Napa. I love to taste them now but only like to drink them with significant age. I'm fortunate enough to have these in the cellar but "god willing" I'll drink these in a window with secondary and tertiary flavors. Nigel's wines have some of the most compelling fruit from the best terroirs in the Valley. The balance, structure and energy are all there to reward those with the cellar space to store these for the long haul.

As a side note, even the 2001 Martha's was young. In fact AG's recent 2022 review marks the drinking window as 2021-2041 and I totally agree.

98+

19 Bedrock Cuvee Karatas
19 Kinsman Eades Rhadamanthus
01 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard
21 Sadie Family Kokerboom

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    11/6/2023 2:41:00 PM - I see you've been on another rough trip. Not sure how you do it. :)
Red

2019 Keplinger Cabernet Sauvignon Vine Hill Ranch

 Oakville more
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10/25/2023 - MJP Hou TX Likes this wine: 98 points

TXRDW/Lucio's Houston.

Rob was a very generous host and brought some incredible wines to the table from the 2019 vintage. All wines sourced from Vine Hill Ranch.

VHR

Keplinger

Arrow & Branch

Memento Mori

Helen Keplinger's wine is beautiful. Of the wines at the table this was my favorite to drink right now. A friend described this as having elegant power. Fresh, without being overdone, tons of depth with enough acidity to keep things in balance. I totally agree with these notes that never made it onto CT. So I'll write them here!

98+

Drink or hold

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    10/29/2023 7:22:00 AM - Nice lineup MJP! I seem to remember something similar...:)

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    10/29/2023 7:39:00 AM - I'm glad you got some notes up. Work has just taken me out of the game for a bit. Hopefully get back to it soon.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    10/29/2023 12:20:00 PM - Yeah, we have the big charity even this Sat. Shae will be at our table, so should be fun times!
Red

2019 Lail Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Mole Hill

 Napa Valley more
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9/18/2023 - Cristal2000 Likes this wine: 99 points

In a word - spectacular! My first Mole Hill but won't be my last. This is amazingly powerful and age worthy, but still open enough to drink now with a little air. That may be owed to the generous vintage.

Starts with lots of cassis fruit, tilled soil, iron ore and super expressive violet flower notes. The palate is seriously packed with layers of massively concentrated fruit, but like all the greats, it isn't heavy, cloying or overbearing. It handles the size with grace, showing off super well integrated tannins, a suave and silky mouthfeel and a skyscraper like finish that goes on for days. Easily the best wine I've had from Lail, and a superstar in the making. This will age well for a few decades, so you can wait, but it's sure fun to have now. Nearly perfect.

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    9/19/2023 8:47:00 PM - I've got the Georgia. I certainly enjoy it, despite the price.
Red

2020 MacDonald Cabernet Sauvignon

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3/29/2023 - Cristal2000 Likes this wine: 95 points

Macdonald is here to slay the 2020 dragon, and amazingly they pulled it off. Using only old vines, which are less compromised by smoke, they produced 150 cases. That means most list members will get a bottle or two in their allocation.

As we all know, this was a downright miserable vintage, even if you avoided smoke taint. So even with a tremendous effort, this isn't going to be a 16, 18, or 19 vintage. To my palate, it most resembles the 2017, which was another difficult vintage where MacDonald managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

To make things just a wee bit harder on Alex, we had this (CSIMM1161's place) next to a 19 Colgin Tychson Hill and a 12 Araujo Eisele. Nevertheless, the MacDonald held its own. The nose was gorgeous, showing creme de cassis, anise, white flowers, black olive and tilled soil. The palate is firm and rides a bit higher than previous vintages, while displaying some of the hallmark dark chocolate flavors, but errs on the earthy and mineral driven side. With a little less body than other vintages, the 2020 makes up for it with crisp acidity, excellent balance and refined tannins. Finishes medium length on a savory note. Quite an achievement and still the only 2020 Napa Cab I'm buying!

  • Comment posted by Cristal2000:

    4/4/2023 4:05:00 PM - MJP: I didn't get a chance to go to VHR on this trip.

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