Community Tasting Note

• Motz wrote: 92 points

  January 20, 2019 - Here we go, with a couple of caveats first.
  
  My palate leans heavily to varietally correct, terroir-driven, layered and balanced wines, regardless of provenance. See, for example, my note on the 2016 Bedrock Wine Co. Bedrock Heritage, and the note that proceeds this one, on the 2014 Birichino Grenache Old Vines Besson Vineyard, which I tasted alongside this wine over two days and found more satisfying.
  
  Perfect ripeness, however desirable, can lead to wines that lack depth and structure, as ripeness can take a toll on acid levels. See, for example, my notes on the heady, yet overhyped 2015 Joh. Jos. Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr and Graacher Himmelreich Kabinetts.
  
  Tasted over two days.
  
  The appealing: Heady bouquet of all things ripe berry, blue, purple, and black. Ultra juicy berries, absence of lumber, and medium to medium plus acid.
  
  The less appealing: Other than saturated berriness (Is that a word?), there is very little to this. One might find wafting hints of sarsparilla, sweet pipe tobacco, fruit-flavored milk-chocolate, and spice, but that is about it. Specifically, there is little sense of variety. One might surmise, based upon the juicy fruit, that Zinfandel is present, yet the peppery, sappy, sometimes meaty and smoky pithiness that characterize Zinfandel are all but absent. There is no sense of place, other than New World, and probably California, based upon the crowd-pleasing style. And, other than the aforementioned acid level, Zinfandel usually offers a certain level of powdery tannins, which are not present with this.
  
  The unappealing: The wine features an strong sense of manufacture, or chemical manipulation. One might be able to make something that tastes similar with two parts concord grape juice, one part blueberry juice, one part blackberry juice, articial berry flavors, and grape spirits to equal 15 percent abv.
  
  All this aside, the wine must be judged on its merits: intoxicating perfume, very good structure, shut-the-wine-brain-off tastiness, and for these reasons I cannot score it less than 92 points, however grudgingly. Drink over the near term, as it lacks the substance to improve.
  
  Who knows what the pros were thinking. Perhaps they were seduced by the sirens.

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10 Comments

• Mark1npt commented:

  1/20/19, 8:16 PM - It's a wine tasting, it's not tangential string theory........you lost me at 'here we go'.......

• wilypod commented:

  1/21/19, 10:20 AM - Enjoyed your thoughtful response to this wine and to the Carlisle style. I have not consumed any Carlisle wines older than 2012s. I do not know how well they age. I find them utterly delicious as young, and occasionally complex. For example the 2012 Papera Zin tasted more intriguing and complex on day two. Likewise the 2014 Rosella Syrah and 2015 Palisades Petite Sirah. While Carlisle wines have mostly a hedonistic appeal when young, like other wines (CDP, Bordeaux Classed growths, Côte Rotie, Barolo, etc) that aspire to greatness, I will learn for myself whether aging them pays dividends.
  
  On the other hand, I find Papera has an exceptionally well-defined sense of place, in terms of aromatics, intensity, and mouthfeel.

• Mr.Overhill commented:

  1/23/19, 4:14 AM - By "pros" do you mean one Mr. Fish? Reading his take on Mike's wines over the past few years and his score here, the style you describe seems to be to his liking. And I don't doubt your take on this wine for a minute, but every C Zin I've had over the past six vintages have really settled down wonderfully after those first two or three years in the cellar. Or else Mike has finally gone over to the dark side completely in '16. Only time will tell....

• Motz commented:

  1/23/19, 6:38 AM - Wilypod and Mr.Overhill: Thank you both for reading and understanding the core of my note.
  
  Wilypod: I appreciate the comparison to great French and Italian wines. It may be helpful to explain that I take a traditional (root word) view of terroir: place. The wines you listed feature variety(s) in place (earth) as they evolve, over decades. For this reason, fruit, however aromatically or texturally appealing, especially fruit that conveys hints of manufacture, which in my view is the alpha and omega of this wine, I find difficulty describing as conveying 'sense of place.' If it lasts beyond 2026-2028 I would be surprised. Thank you again for grasping my argument.
  
  Mr.Overhill: The wine boasts scores of 98, 96, 94-97, and 94, all from major publications. I have do doubt that it will be enjoyable over the next several years, perhaps up to ten. In my view, wines that should be drunk within ten to twelve years of the vintage date are short-term agers. One of the great things about wine is that we never quit learning about it. If my assessment of this wine is wrong, I will be happy and thankful for the learning experience. I hope my response answers your questions. Thanks again for your comments.

• Mark1npt commented:

  7/3/19, 7:16 PM - Motz....gotta hand it to you, you nailed it but I went even a step further at 88 pts.....I don't know what the 'experts' were drinking but it wasn't this brett battery acid/tart cranberry concoction. This is my first bottle tonight, my review is posted. Most aren't going to like what they read. I hope my other bottles improve but like you, I don't think they will.

• Motz commented:

  7/4/19, 8:42 AM - This is a fine example of wines in this style, or perhaps better described, wine-like adult beverages. It tastes good and there is some structure. Otherwise, not much else to it.

• wilypod commented:

  7/4/19, 9:03 AM - I live in Virginia where even the best local wines struggle to get "phenolic" ripeness, yet wineries such as Linden produce beautiful wines, certainly lacking the opulence of California fruit, but taste great with food, with redolent fruit, excellent structure, and surprising ability to age gracefully.
  
  That said I recently had a 2013 Carlisle Dupratt Zin, 15.7%, and it was terrific, even elegant, and without a suggestion of being manufactured or concocted in a lab. Still I agree that too many California wines on the market do have a concocted personality. With Papera (the anomaly of high acidity and high alcohol), I think it is worth comparing Bedrock with Carlisle. Bedrock aims for a field blend character with a healthy percentage of Carignane, and there is more initial complexity. Carlisle is almost all Zinfandel, obtaining a liqueur like character at times. I go for both.

• srh commented:

  8/7/21, 4:17 PM - THANK you to ALL for your contributions to this VERY intriguing strand! 🙂 SHOULD any of you be interested, you can peruse info for this vintage at your leisure. 😉

• Mr.Overhill commented:

  11/23/21, 5:42 AM - I just opened up a third bottle of this '16 Paps and three years in I'm starting to think that everything Motz had said almost three years ago is playing itself out with time in bottle. As a comparison I had the '16 Bedrock Vineyard Zin about six weeks ago and it had none of the same issues as this Papera. And I've been drinking Papera now back to '11. While the Bedrock was a beautifully balanced RR Zin at three plus years this one continues to show itself as just "off." I think it's mostly due to the alcohol level and something else that transpired in the fermentation process. The undertones are still promising but everything at the top of the tasting in the mouth is just feeling exactly like Motz said, some unseemly sense of manufacturing. Two bottles of this vintage left for me and I'm REALLY hoping that in another 3-5 years something will have changed in the mix. Time will definitely tell.

• Motz commented:

  11/26/21, 6:15 AM - Thank you for the response, Mr. Overhill. Meaningful to me. Cheers!

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