5/2/24, 4:12 PM - Well, it might take a while for the Vare wines to come around, but Montecillo is definitely appealing much earlier, and the 19 can be opened. On a different site people are commenting that the 13 is great right now. So the 19 certainly has a long lifetime before it needs to drunk up.
5/3/24, 4:21 PM - Vare is a very different site. Ketan approaches each wine differently. His approach tries to let each site tell its own story. So Vare can be a wine that wants 15 or 20 years to unwind while Montecillo is giving wines that are appealing at a much younger age. To me this is one of the things that makes Ketan a fascinating winemaker. But don’t count on a house signature recognizable in every wine!
4/23/24, 4:45 PM - You are right! I was thinking of 2021. But the wine is just a bit soft and blurry. To me it lacks the knife-edge precision of the best Forge releases.
4/10/24, 10:00 AM - Absolutely -- I've had it twice and the wine was closed in 2020 but by 2022 was singing. Decanting gently two hours early is right plan.
3/18/24, 6:42 AM - It is better not to assign numeric scores to flawed bottles. Sure, if every bottle from some producer shares the identical flaw, score the flaw. But otherwise your single bad bottle drags down the score for the whole production, which seems unfair.
2/24/24, 6:24 AM - I totally agree. People seem intent on idolizing this wine, but for me it doesn’t come close to Graeme’s best vintages.
1/1/24, 1:16 PM - @Chablis28 / Craig, I genuinely think estate is as good as ever, and certainly one of the best in BdM. But they aren’t aiming for the ultraripe, overtly sweet style of Cerbaiona in 2010. So fans of that specific vintage shouldn’t expect to see that style replicated under the Cerbaiona label!
12/30/23, 4:09 AM - Sounds cooked to me! The cough syrup thing is very far from what I’ve tasted, but consistent with a wine that was much too warm for a few weeks or months. For example in a retail store rack with a window in the vicinity… or during shipping, if the FedEx truck got very hot for a few hours.
12/18/23, 4:23 PM - Done. Genuinely exciting for a new wine. I like the style a lot.
12/7/23, 6:38 AM - Well, a leg of lamb should be rare. Not disputing the rareness thing.
5/24/23, 11:26 AM - I'm sure the 2009 has a very long life ahead of it -- Pegau normally has an early peak, then hits its plateau around 12-15 years out, so you could have a bottle that got a tiny bit of heat in shipping, or could be seeing it briefly closed down, but it wouldn't be close to the end of its life. Generally, I would think of Pegau as being a wine that will be quite good through age 25 or so. Your remark is a good one, though. To me there are two categories of high-end CDP (plus a third catch-all category with tons of wines in it, but sort of "less distinctive"). The very pure grenache reds that are brought in less ripe, like Marcoux or Rayas tend to be rather light in color on release, tart, and can be a bit tannic. They soften by age 12-15 and become insanely spicy in the best way possible, overlaid on a kind of liqueur de framboise backdrop. Then you get this more powerful style, like Pegau, Mordoree, Clos des Papes, Janasse VV. Those are blends with way more Syrah and probably also Mourvedre, plus dollops of other stuff. They tend to be a lot darker, you get more of a tobacco and violets note on the nose, and in the case of Pegau there are also bretty aromas (like fresh-cut hay). And this second group doesn't age in the same way -- they hold and do become more integrated and smooth, but you don't see them turn into raspberry-and-spice in that same way. Instead they sort of gain polish, at peak they have you thinking of the NY Times plum torte recipe... but then after a while can brown a bit (as you are describing) and eventually, they can even start to seem a little stewed.Heat in transport adds a wildcard. Mildly cooked bottles might not show leakage or other overt signs, yet tend to turn brown quite early and can seem very flabby rather young.
4/22/23, 5:48 PM - Opened it, no fancy decanting, and drank about 1/4 of the bottle last night. And honestly found it a bit harsh, at first. But around when my wife got home it seemed to be opening up a tiny bit. Call that three hours.Recorked and put it in a cool, dark corner…. Tonight the wine is far better. Tomorrow, I bet it will be even more interesting.
4/22/23, 4:41 PM - I just posted a TN for the 300! What I would say is that perhaps it is drinkable earlier, and in fact is good right now, but a two hour splash decant isn’t remotely enough.When you drink a young Sonoma or Napa mountain cab, open it a whole day in advance, drink enough to leave an air gap or just put a tissue in the neck of the bottle, and leave it in a cool place to breath for at least 24 hours. 48 hours might be even better.People somehow assume that every wine should open up if you shock them with air and give them two hours. Not true, and it isn’t just young Cabernet. Barolo is even slower to open and can need three days.So when you pop and pour this way, they seem closed and harsh, but in fact this way of serving them isn’t fair to the wine. Either wait 15 years or give them days to quietly relax and breathe. I’m not new to this, and I find this again and again with this grape, and with Nebbiolo (well, maybe not Langhe Nebbiolo, but high end stuff).Some varietals are hungry for oxygen and in the bottle are starved for it. You need to give them air, but also time for the chemical reactions to occur. Some things can’t be rushed.
4/1/23, 5:25 PM - I’ve drunk perhaps 50-100 bottles of Célestins. They are pretty mature on release and although they do improve a little in the bottle, none has a very long life after release. People seem to assume that because Bordeaux is best at age 30-40, Chateauneuf must also be best at age 30-40.In fact when you revisit your wine in 2033, it will be long past its prime. My guess is that your bottles haven’t been stored or transported properly and were exposed to, and damaged by, heat. It happens.
4/2/23, 5:28 AM - Yes, fairly recently:2006 Henri Bonneau Châteauneuf-du-Pape Réserve des Célestins Red Rhone Blend. 3/19/2022. 94 pointsMature, deep burgundy with an amber tint on the rim. A soft, gently enveloping nose centered on spicy blackberry fruit, leather, musk, caramel. Tart, with an intensity of flavor but not a hint of overripeness or heat. Leaves an impression of wildness... Really long finish.Since buying this wine, I’ve opened three of my four bottles. The first two were opened at a party and I didn’t have a chance to write real TNs. But they were good. And this third bottle was just last year, a genuinely excellent wine. A shame that after Henri passed away the estate has been managed so inconsistently. The new releases are expensive and I’m nervous about trying such a high priced wine, coming from an unknown team on top of a rocky transition.
4/2/23, 7:14 AM - Yes, some are quite strange -- the 1998 Special Reserve for example was dreadful. In fact I wouldn't have commented had you not urged people to wait quite so long. Grenache is very rarely a varietal for really extended aging. Hard to say "never" and the amount of Syrah or Mourvedre in the blend can make a huge difference for wines from CDP, but it always worries me that some naive owner of a fairly expensive bottle might wait until long past its peak because of a misunderstanding about the aging of this particular varietal (in CDP, Grenache is usually dominant and sometimes the only grape they used). Bonneau, of course, used a field blend and even he never bothered to really figure out what was growing in his parcel. I met him once and liked him instantly -- a very rustic farmer, rather religious, and modest. And his cellars were really strange. Quite dangerous, actually, with holes in the floor where Roman ladders used to go up and down from level to level, covered with thin plywood. I'm not a light guy and one misstep down there could have been quite a dramatic experience. Anyhow, everything about Bonneau's style was idosyncratic and one notable "feature" was that he allowed his wines to get fairly oxidized before bottling them. Those ancient foudres you hear about -- I saw them. Inside they were like concrete from decades of tartaric acid build up, but even so, a wine that sits for four years is going to get exposed to some air. Then in the bottle, they would "re-reduce" and get more normal. Still, this can't really be the best for ultra-long aging.So I was simply anxious that someone owning one of these not sit on it for decades under the mistaken impression that the wine wouldn't come around until 2040 or something. With Bordeaux, that actually can happen... not with CDP. In fact even the syrah they grow in the south really isn't a varietal for long aging. It tends to get too ripe. In contrast, Cote Rotie and Hermitage genuinely do need 20-25 years to show at their best, but those are pure Syrah and from a clone that doesn't ripen as much, and grown in a zone that doesn't get nearly as hot.
4/1/23, 5:26 PM - Your description is very far from the 3 bottles I’ve opened and enjoyed. Heat in transport or poor storage would be my guess.
1/31/23, 9:47 AM - I just would suggest that you taste some wines by these same producers, but without handicapping the wines: your approach to this tasting was unfair to the wines. Try the same wines at maybe two or three years after release, and twelve to fifteen years out — same producer, same bottle designation, but with more age. When serving, let the wine breathe first for an hour. Then do your tasting note. Pop-and-pour tasting of a new release that literally just reached the US wouldn’t really be fair to any wine, but can be especially unfair with low-yield grenache because (like many flowering shrubs) this varietal can be bleached and aromatically very closed at certain PH levels. SO2 from bottling will often provoke that effect, and an unskilled taster might not understand what is happenimg. And yet that very same wine often will just soar when it absorbs that sulfur over a few months… and then again, to even greater heights, as it evolves secondary nuances over the next twelve years or so.
1/11/23, 7:08 PM - I’m not finding any Brett at all here.
1/9/23, 10:41 AM - I didn’t really review it as a “Napa wine”. I just wrote a TN that compared with Napa, an area I know very well.
1/9/23, 10:26 AM - With young Napa cabs, it can make a world of difference if you open the bottle 24 or even 48 hours before serving. No need for double decanting or anything extreme, except for drinking one small glass. It just seems that young (reductive) Cabernet needs time to breath and open up very slowly…
10/26/22, 3:19 PM - Not every wine deserves a 95pt score right after bottling. It should integrate and evolve and I’ll score it higher when that happens!
10/7/22, 4:00 PM - Brun05, I think we need to agree to disagree here. I have almost never run into a Chateauneuf du Pape that could age more than 20-25 years and never, not once, a bottle that was still drinkable after 40. Bonneau wines are special and it will be sad to drink the last bottle, but the 2015 is a wine that can already be enjoyed now at age 7, and I have no doubt will be superb at age 15, but anyone who holds it longer is taking a huge gamble that this will be the very first time that Bonneau made a wine able to hold on longer.To me, your view reflects an assumption that Grenache will age like a Cabernet Sauvignon, and this is just not how the varietal behaves, in my experience (I drink more CDP than anything else, and have probably gone through 5,000 or 7,500 bottles from that region over the past 40 years). I’ve specifically been drinking Bonneau CDP since the mid 1980’s, and I tasted with him once — an incredible day that included a fantastic lunch at La Mere Germaine and a chance to try all sorts of things out of barrels and unlabeled bottles and fermentation tanks. At that time the big debate was centered on the 1998 wines, which were in a weird, funky mood on release and include an Amarone-like special reserve bottle that was, frankly, not a success. Anyhow, I know these wines well.Now, I genuinely don’t mean to disparage your perspective, and you may simply have a different palate or an exceptionally cold storage unit (I keep my cellar at around 53F in the summer, but in the winter with A/C it rises a bit and might reach 57 or 58F). A cooler cellar, or one with zero temperature variation, surely would prolong the window a bit. But how much? Even 57 is pretty chilly! At any rate, good luck with your bottles. Worst case, they will surely be worth a fortune at age 40 in 2055!
8/29/22, 5:15 AM - This was pop and pour. We did make sure to stand the bottle up a few hours before dinner in a cool, dark place. You want the temperature of the wine to be below summer air temperatures. But we didn’t decant or anything, and in fact I wouldn’t recommend doing that unless your bottle was poorly stored and seems funky when you open it. These wines can be fragile as they age, and it is best to be a minimalist, and only intervene for an actual reason. I realize that 15 may not seem all that old, but CDP often isn’t a very long-lived red even though they improve enormously in the cellar, and by 15 you want to treat this the way you would treat a 35-year old red burgundy!
8/29/22, 1:53 PM - 2001 was a fantastic vintage. That bottle should be great!
8/6/22, 12:50 PM - By LOL do you mean that if people follow your advice, they will completely miss the window, and that this would be funny? I knew and tasted with Henri Bonneau, and he would have been sad to see his wines go to waste that way.The wine is drinking quite well now, although I easily see it having a 15-18 year lifetime (counting from the vintage, not from today). But if you lay this down for 30 to 50 years, you will open it and find vinegar, or worse.In fact assuming that Chateauneuf du Pape can age like Cabernet is a misunderstanding, although surprisingly common! Different grapes have different levels of acidity and tannins and hence different aging profiles. Bonneau’s CDP was always centered around grenache with random other grapes tossed in, whatever grows on that parcel — Henri himself said nobody knows (and that he didn’t care). This is not a blend that yields a backwards ultra tannic, high acidity Cabernet of the kind you need to age for 35 years before tasting your first bottle. A thing just is what it is. And this is a wine to drink now and for the next few years!
8/7/22, 2:39 AM - Yes, I enjoy both producers! A great loss to the wine world that Henri passed away!
5/5/22, 4:21 PM - You opened it too early. Sketch develops a rich mouthfeel after a year or two, but on release can be a bit tart and closed.
3/16/22, 5:08 PM - Probably 2013. The two share a kind of intensity and energy, without being at all heavy.
3/16/22, 6:17 PM - This ‘18 certainly isn’t ready!
3/21/22, 5:23 AM - From my small collection, the 2018 Oakville and Rutherford bottlings from Misc are currently the most approachable. But realistically, few high end Napa cabs are vinified for consumption right on release. For sure you could get wines from strong producers that would drink well instantly, like the Blankiet Prince of Hearts, but most cabernet reds need a few years to unwind. Opening them a day or even two days early helps: drink a glass to see how the wine performs initially but then leave the bottle open with a tissue over it to keep flies out. Day two is invariably much better than day one, and often day three is the one to actually serve it on. The aromatics need that long to be coaxed out. In contrast, if you can wait ten years, you don’t need such an elaborate procedure. By fifteen, most are fully mature.So if you want wines to pop and pour, one option is to watch auction sites for older bottles. Another is to just buy some lower end bottles, like the Arnot Roberts Monticello cabernet, which isn’t expensive and is really very good, and open for business. Beta is coming around quickly and should be fun to drink even without a 24 or 48 hour wait soon, although a three hour decant may still be wise.
3/21/22, 10:54 AM - You can buy the Misc wines from DB Wines, if interested. Around $99/bottle
3/3/22, 6:18 PM - I haven’t tried them lineup of vintages side by side, but the ‘17 wines are definitely in a good place now and don’t seem likely to shut down. Just give them a long time to breath. I wasn’t kidding about them being at their best on day two when I came back to the unfinished half of the bottles. I doubt that you can get them to that same point with splash decanting or any kind of very quick aeration — they just want to breath very slowly in a cool place for a day or so.None of these wines needs to be drunk in a hurry. The 17 might already be close to its peak but will hold for a decade. The 15 and 16 probably won’t reach their best until age 12 and might hold for another fifteen years after that.You never know with California, but Ketan is from a winemaking group that does know how to construct wines for very long aging (he worked at Bond winery before going out independently). They often drink well young, but you could forget them in the cellar for ten years and won’t feel that it was a mistake.Keeping them super long might be risky. Bordeaux can often hold or even improve for forty years. Napa rarely has that long a life — at some point they start seeming a bit stewed and any green notes can become prominent. But I don’t see that as a near term risk for these. So if somehow you wanted to hold them for twenty five years, my bet is that they will still have a lot of life. They might pass their peak by then, but even the 2017 should last quite a long time. This said, I would drink it sooner than the others. Those heat spikes may have had an effect that would become more apparent with time.
1/1/22, 4:38 PM - Not on this, but keep in mind that 2017 was a tough vintage. Crazy heat spikes, a drought, and then the fires in the fall, forcing early harvesting. I’m just happy that the wine is delicious… want expecting it to be his best vintage ever. Not a wine I would hold for fifteen years, but it certainly could unwind for a few.
12/12/21, 6:49 PM - Next time I will, for an hour. But even in the glass it really opens up nicely over a half hour or so. Probably would do very well with two or three years in a cool cellar, if you own a few.
12/13/21, 8:03 AM - Great stuff! You won’t regret it.
11/12/21, 6:06 AM - Chave Syrah is never manipulated in any sense at all. His wines are generally light and tart on release, so the comparison to Pinot noir is common. Indeed, this is the origin of the French expression that I can’t type properly on my iPad, but referring to the blending of hermitage Syrah into high end burgundy to increase complexity (hermitage, but used as an adjective and with an accent on the final e). Chave wines only gain their signature spicy complexity with very long aging, certainly ten years and often closer to fifteen or twenty. So, on release, you look for the acidity, the overall balance and the broader vintage character, the polish of the tannins, etc. But you would not expect that meaty beef juice aroma, or the spicy character, both of which only emerge with extended bottle aging.Learning to taste great wines from barrel or immediately on release is challenging and expensive, and you do have these experiences of really needing to hunt for the future character in the young wine quite often. It isn’t easy. But I find the effort worthwhile as long as you carry it forward and revisit the wines at intervals of about five years. Then you can see how they develop and where the more mature aromas and flavors emerge from, and trace them back to properties of the new released bottle in its original state! But it takes a lot of tasting to appreciate the grandeur and immense potential of these young wines, and your group clearly needs to work at this if that ability is something you want to develop.
9/9/21, 8:27 AM - Wish I could help on that, but these are very individual choices. 2016 was a very good vintage for the Montecillo cabernet. I haven't tried the Vare in 2016.
9/13/21, 7:19 PM - Agreed, they are nit much like Realm. But you might enjoy the Montecillo even so.
8/19/21, 3:18 PM - Interesting! The limestone makes all the difference… your writeup of the site is excellent.
8/17/21, 10:05 AM - It opens right up in the glass. In fact like any wine, you find a lot more complexity on the last glass from the bottle than you did on the first, so perhaps pulling the cork half an hour or an hour ahead would be nice if you have a cold place it can sit. Still, it isn't really needed with this sort of white wine.
8/13/21, 3:56 PM - I’m not nearly as enthusiastic about the style, but of course different folks love different styles. Still, on aging, I’ll bet you my other two bottles that at age twenty this will be an unfocused mess showing signs of oxidation…. I really don’t think it has the balance for extended aging. Absolutely, wait a few years. But in my view, by age six or seven it will be at peak, if not sooner. And by twenty, I predict collapse. If not sooner…
8/14/21, 3:15 AM - Ok, we can settle up in, um, 2038!
8/14/21, 3:14 AM - That was a typo… I was drinking the 2018. Thanks for catching it!
7/8/21, 3:01 AM - Very, very few Chateauneuf reds are better at 25 years than at 15. What works for Bordeaux isn’t necessarily a good idea for Grenache/Syrah blends!
7/10/21, 12:39 PM - Makes sense to me. I don’t find acetone on mine (I’ve consumed most of two cases), but as CDP ages it definitely can develop off-putting tertiary aromas. Sounds like I should drink my last three ASAP.
6/22/21, 6:46 PM - Ok, you don't like it. But I think you are inventing the "carbonic" theory here, and your whole TN is insulting -- "is it Gamay"? No it is not beaujolais. Look, nothing stopped you from buying a Zin from Turley. You opted to try this, from a producer known for lighter, crisper styles. And fine, it isn't your taste. But please, don't make up stories that are just fabricated.
4/6/21, 5:14 PM - Drink 3/year for two years, then 2/year for 3 years.
3/9/21, 6:17 PM - Clearly @Grinner and I have different palates.
1/14/21, 2:04 PM - My bottle was purchased directly from Sandlands.
1/5/21, 1:50 PM - You certainly could drink this now. It isn’t bad right from the bottle (I have a Coravin), but I would decant for four or five hours.
1/6/21, 5:07 AM - Honestly, it is hard to give a young Napa Cabernet too much air. Even after decanting I often find that they are better on day two when we finish the leftovers. I always go with a minimum of three hours, but have asked myself if I should just accept the obvious and start opening these bottles a day early!Just the same, they do drink well even if you pop and pour, and that certainly is true for the Misc Rutherford. These wines are fantastic, and priced very well — they are at a level you rarely see (unless you are ready to pay two or three as much, and even then, you never know ...)
11/23/20, 2:11 PM - I'm surprised you didn't ask what "sunstone" meant (it was an ipad-generated typo; I was trying to write "subtle" -- I myself have no idea what a sunstone could be...). I've edited the TN to fix this. Glad you find it useful! I happen to like tasting young Napa reds to understand how they present when newly released (or even in the barrel), and how they evolve, but I don't recommend wasting a bottle unless you share my enthusiasm for wines that are just not at all ready to open!
11/15/20, 5:07 AM - My understanding is that they replanted most of the vineyard when they decided to create the new winery. As for the 100pt wines by Russ, he has made many that earned that score (mostly on Wine Advocate), and I have tried a few of those, and for me, the ones I tried didn’t deserve such high scores. Russ overextracts, for my palate, and ends up with wines that strike me as clumsy and sometimes outright unappealing. A shame because he gets access to great material. But maybe your taste aligns better with the Wine Advocate Napa person than with mine? If so you might love the Tench wines (I myself am dropping from this list).
10/29/20, 1:49 PM - Mark, it certainly is drinkable now, but the nose is still in a very primary (young) state, and the tannins are still fairly firm: they have a soft, velvety texture but still have a bit of a bite. To me it won’t peak until the nose starts to show some mature nuance and those tannins melt a bit. Given that this is a 2010 being tasted after 7 years in the bottle, I would guess that it might peak around 7 years more, which would be 2027 more or less. Nothing bad about drinking it sooner, but I do think it will reward the wait.
7/30/20, 7:20 AM - You can purchase it from the Israel Wine Shop in Tiberius (Galilee) and they will ship it to the US -- I have purchased wines from them a few times, and they are selling this for $38.25 along with all sorts of other amazing "boutique" wines from the whole of Israel -- stuff you could never find in the US and might even have trouble finding in Tel Aviv, like Garage de Papa.
7/28/20, 7:32 PM - Interesting! I fixed the note... in fact I don’t know Sylvaner at all, but I can see how Riesling could give that overly assertive palate (we get a lot of great Riesling here in the Fingerlakes, but sometimes a wine sits on its lees a bit too long and becomes overextracted). Anyhow, served quite cold with spicy food, it works extremely well.
12/19/19, 4:44 PM - Try double decanting it a day before you plan to drink it. Many of these young Napa reds really benefit from the air. But the core tannic structure will still be evident... you need to wait until age 12-15 for the tannins to melt back even a little. So that becomes the choice: drink them young, but tolerate a tannic sternness, or wait!
10/1/19, 3:50 PM - This is a helpful TN but your scoring system is wildly at odds with the prevailing approach. That harms the winery (and I have no affiliation with them). I know that probably you think of the score as being for yourself, or think of this as a kind of statement of independence, and I'm fine with that. Even so, do consider the potential that you are hurting the winemakers.
10/2/19, 8:22 AM - I disagree: as most people use the scoring system, 88 is a pretty poor score, more or less "I didn't pour it out, but would certainly not want to buy it." Wines that are recommended, even weakly, start at 89. 90 is "pretty good" and closer to the tone of your review, but I would have expected 89 or 90. Look, this isn't about how I grade or how you grade. There are simply community behaviors and norms here -- on the whole, professional reviewers and CT scoring sends a negative message with 88 or below. If you didn't like the wine much and think people should steer away from it, 88 or lower is a fine score and also a good way to signal this. But if you intend to say that "not a bad wine to own and cellar" there is just a reality here -- people score such wines 89 or higher.Or write (as I sometimes do): "Score: I'm putting this in as 88 because for me, this number feels right. But many people would probably score this more like 89 or 90, because many people and even many professionals inflate scores way too much."A bit like college grading. You can explain to students that a B- is a fine grade, a passing grade, hard to earn from you. But the bottom line is that convincing them that this isn't a form of F is hard. And yet B really is considered to be a fine grade.
9/25/19, 5:28 PM - Yes, just received them. Should have ordered six!
7/10/19, 7:27 AM - Honestly, I would drink these up. My specific bottle from 2018 may have matured too quickly for some reason, but even so, I wouldn't hold this wine for very long. The style that Clos St Jean favors yields wines that drink best soon after release, and at age 12, they definitely may be at the end of their drinking plateau. Still, if the cellar was colder than mine, your bottle may be in great shape. Mine is an air-conditioned natural cellar and I think sometimes the temperature has been as high as 65, because I don't actually use the a/c in the fall, winter and spring.
6/23/19, 6:02 PM - 63 is very harsh for this wine.... most people only go below 85 for really bad wines.
3/2/19, 6:29 PM - Equally good tonight! (2/2/2019)
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