Community Tasting Note

• Rick 4 Wine wrote: 90 points

  November 19, 2016 - Disappointing wine. We decanted over two and a half hours, and while the wine started backward, linear tannins, tight red berry fruit and heat. We paired this wine with venison tartar with biltong shavings. That proved to be a terrible pairing as the iron of the game led to highlighting the aluminum flaw in the finish of the wine. After about 80 minutes, the wine went really dumb on the palate and showed mostly soapy fruit with an abundance of camphor on the back palate. Past two hours, the bouquet developed but the body remained mostly dumb. I get the sense that acidity was low. Mouthfeel is quite thin, almost like water. My pairing at two hours was an elk chop, which should have been perfect for a Napa Cab but this wine lacked the mid body fruit and structure to complement any red meat.
  
  Strangely, this wine isn't showing any nuances of forest floor, truffle or mushroom that one would expect after nearly a decade in the bottle.
  
  QPR is awful for this wine.
  
  All in, quite disappointing.

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7 Comments

• ev3rthesame commented:

  12/22/16, 12:29 PM - So disappointing for $200 bottle is what you're saying? You rated it a 90 so your tasting note details versus rating seem confused.

• Rick 4 Wine commented:

  12/22/16, 12:36 PM - Yep, disappointed for "QPR" meaning Quality to Price Ratio

• Rick 4 Wine commented:

  12/23/16, 10:48 AM - ev3rthesame - I don't think the notes versus rating are in disagreement at all. This is a 90 point wine. What's disappointing is the fact that it's 90 points and $200.
  
  Backus should be much better integrated. Fruit should be more opulent and round, or at this age perhaps we can argue that it should show maturity through wet leaves and mushrooms but that wasn't there. Instead the wine was still disjointed and drinking a little hot with botanicals pervading the nose.
  
  90 points was being a little gracious given the fact that perhaps venison tartar was a poor pairing. Normally a wine this disjointed wouldn't score in the 90s at all.
  
  Regardless, 90 points and $200 is a really bad Quality to Price ratio.

• ev3rthesame commented:

  12/23/16, 11:04 AM - I get the price vs quality making it disappointing, but I would disagree with you that a 90pt should be given to a wine that you're comparing to water in any capacity. I love this bottle and am saving my last bottle for a special occasion, so am interested in your tasting note, but find your descriptors of the wine to be negative while yielding it a 90. So not sure why you're giving it a 90 if you feel it deserves less of a rating.

• Rick 4 Wine commented:

  12/23/16, 11:43 AM - My analogy to water was only in the mouthfeel. This wine didn't have the weight or texture I'd expect. Usually if a cab feels this thin then it's got a large particulate base and while the fruit drops off the forest floor, truffles, etc fill in the gaps, especially in the late palate.
  
  For me, I usually think of wine in the 80s as being flawed in some way, meaning there was something objectionable. This wine exhibited an aluminum quality that I think was highlighted by the strong iron in venison tartar. I chose to disregard that "flaw" because it could just be an artifact of the pairing. Sometimes raw game will bring out an iron flavor in younger red wines so this quality was really perplexing to me.
  
  Above 90 points, I expect to find integration in the low 90s and moving to something special in the upper 90s. This wine had none of that. It's not well integrated, but perhaps it was in its youth. I knew I'd get heat for this rating because WA and V score it more highly. I'm the first to think that CT scores are systematically lower than the "experts" at the high end and bumped up for lower scoring wines, which it a shame as it leads to score compression (if 100 pt wines become 94 and 88s become 90s)
  
  Most perplexing to me about this wine is this dumb period it seems to be in. The fruit showed red and tight but airtime delivered subdued fruit with a soapy mid-palate. The fruit darkened, but it didn't round out. That was also strange to me. Picking up camphor on the finish should possibly have pushed me down to an 89, so perhaps I was overly deferential to the cost of the bottle. It is possible this wine has a double peak.
  
  For the same price, I'd much prefer this to a 2010 Meyer Cab, which cost me ~$50 and I scored a 92-93 (at different times) so for $200, I'd much rather have more Bevan, Fairchild or Realm.
  
  Regardless, I have two more bottles. I'll bring one to one of my big red wine dinners and see what the guys think, especially with a different pairing. Then I'll have another note.

• ev3rthesame commented:

  12/23/16, 11:57 AM - Makes complete sense. I am just trying to understand and of course tasting notes are subjective. I did drink this bottle two years ago alongside a 2011 Insignia which was the worst year I have ever tasted for Insignia so perhaps my memory has the '05 Backus weighted much higher than it actually drinks. I'll probably pop it in the next two years, but will look forward to reading your next review on it as well.
  
  I get you on purchasing superior wines at a lesser price point as well. Someone scolded me on here because I found Opus one overrated for the price haha, but it was declicious but other wines are yummy. If you get a chance pick up a Washington wine, L'Ecole No. 41 Apogee Pepper Bridge. I've jotted down your recommendations. Thank you.

• Rick 4 Wine commented:

  12/23/16, 8:13 PM - I know someone with two for sale! ;-)

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