Community Tasting Note
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Rote Kappelle Likes this wine: 92 points
July 3, 2022 - Clearly this is going to be a lot about your preferences in wine. It is Penfolds, so there will be big fruit and loads of oak. If you don't like 1970's Boogie, don't go there. Ted doesn't play the synth and this brand is all Wang Dang, Sweet Poontang (although I think the race baiting, misogynistic, wacko right wing identity politics are optional). Let's be clear - I love Boogie, I love guitar breaks, I love wah- wah and I am an unreconstructed swine. I love Penfolds, the wine version of true Boogie.
This is a cooler vintage (relatively speaking) and I am not convinced that Penfolds (or Ben Folds, as I like to call them) have got this quite right. The fruit is plummy and avoids jamminess. There's a nice hint of blackberry and blackcurrant. The acid gives a bit more life than is sometimes the case with Penfolds and all of that is great. What isn't so great is the oak. Actually, the oak is fine, it is the oak on top of the oak and then the additional wall of oak, all seemingly at high char and double live gonzo. But this is more a wine that is in the "Together" (from Free For All) vein than the baroque splendour of, say, "Paralysed' or 'Stranglehold". I really wish they had dialed the oak back a bit - had I mentioned the oak? The thing that is distracting to me is that I hate mocca and pencil shaving oak in my wine. I can live with vanilla and even coconut (just).
This wine has years and years ahead of it but after 2 full days open and sampled from both a Shiraz and a Cabernet glass I am sceptical it will ever fully come into balance. Now, that won't matter if the oak doesn't bother you. It is a quality wine - length goers on forever (or the road goes on forever to quote the Triffids), there's all the intensity you could want and if you have steak with this, cook one extra to feed to the wine, because it will just eat it up. I can't do more than a glass at a sitting but if it works for you all power to your arm (and your Gibson ES335 through a Marshall stack). When Penfolds get it right the wines have a strange balance, but in this wine I think it is missing. "I Loved You So I Told You A Lie"?5 people found this helpful 6,217 views
4 Comments
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Bin707LoversDetroit commented:
7/4/22, 12:06 PM - Ahhh, ROTE, what you missed in your brilliant vocals about this decade-beauty vin, it it's all played through the best, high end, A/D/S system ever plugged in. As long as it's racked at least a decade, we hear instruments with Bin 389, not speakers, in its vanilla oak purity.
And loudly. The instrumentality hammers through Black Sabbath's Heaven & Hell, while the acid backbone vibrates like the bass notes supporting the exemplary composition, in that heavy metal piece.
Listen,
Taste,
and
Enjoy.
Noroc! -
Rote Kappelle commented:
7/4/22, 3:05 PM - Happy to converse with anyone from Detroit rock city, from whence hailed (if I recall correctly the magnificent MC5), Grand Funk Railroad (well, close enough), lots of great Motown. I like your ref to Heaven and Hell - anything with Ronnie James is at least OK by me - his Rainbow and Black Sabbath work especially. Enjoyed your response and long may you continue to enjoy the heavy combination of Detroit music and Penfolds!
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arjones commented:
1/26/23, 9:37 PM - Hi Rote, enjoyed your epitaph, though I have to say -
a 389 with this age should be enjoyed shortly after first opening. By day two it's all over. A younger model might still reward the day after. Just my experience with a couple of the older vintages , which are cracking wines at the first sitting.
Cheers! -
Rote Kappelle commented:
1/26/23, 9:49 PM - My note may have misled you Arjones - I started at the wine immediately on opening (I can never help myself) but I drank it over two days. Under screw cap I have found 389 has a much better lifespan than I recall from the days under cork (when a decade saw the wine well into full maturity) and so it was here, where the wine was still surprisingly fresh after 2 days. The fruit was still in the primary phase and the wine has barely begun to develop. I am just not sure it will ever come into balance - at least for my tastes. It is a very high- quality wine though.