10/21/2016 - Big Texas Likes this wine:

This was very nice but the cork creep issue is a real one. This was our last bottle and I opened it because of all the cork reports. Mine was 90% traveled, so just in time it appears. It's a shame because there is a ripping spine of acidity that portends a long aging life if only the cork were not flawed. Drink up and enjoy with a 90 min+ decant. It's not quite in the sweet spot yet, but it's getting there.

8/20/2016 - thomasvin wrote:

Puhh. Bottle was OK. Cork shows no sign of leacking. After reading several notes here, about bad bottles, i was affraid i was sitting on five bottles of bad wine... Bought eight in 2012, and have drunk about a bottle a year. Color is now turning quite brownish, and transparabel. Nose is nice with lots of spices, herbs, cedar wood, vanilla, and also some dark Fruits. Taste opens up over half an hour. Great sangiovese, like th smell, lots of spices, quite thin in the mouth. The fruit is turning into plums. Drank on its own, and with crackers, brie and blueberry jam. Think i will continue with a bottle a year the next four years. Do not think there is enough fruit for the longer run, but i do not have that long experience in picking wines for long time cellaring.

4/6/2016 - SchlaepDog Likes this wine:

Bottle # 017695. Shopping at my regular wine retailer (wine club SF), they still had bottles of this wine that I purchased and drank a couple weeks ago. You can read that note below for the full summary, but the quick story is that bottle was very disappointing (sweet and syrupy, oxidized) compared to what I tasted about 3 years ago when I bought the supply for my cellar which was great. The bad bottle was 300000 something, much higher number, and other tasters have noted bad bottles at similar ranges.

So of course I wasn't thinking about buying another bottle, but picked one up anyway shaking my head in frustration when I noticed it was a low bottle number. In the bin was a mix of very high and low number bottles, and the merchant said they all came arrived in a single 3 case shipment. So I bought a low number bottle for $32 theorizing that it would be great based on my low sample size experiment.
Day 1: first taste and I immediately knew it was a completely different wine from 2 weeks ago. Poured half into 375 ml screwcap for next day, then drank with smoked chicken thighs. Very intense and primary upon opening and for the first couple of hours, then mellowed a bit with some tart cherry and raspberry working through the tannins, but never really opened up before it was drunk.
Day 2: finally opened up into an elegant and refined wine. Not sweet or syrupy at all like the last bottle. Cherry, leather, earth, a nice dose of acidity to keep it fresh, not oxidized at all. Earthy red fruit lingers on the finish, still some tannins to be resolved. Beautiful wine.
Overall, completely different experience from just a couple weeks ago and lends some credence that lower number bottles are better with higher number bottles completely different and not as good. I will hold my 2 bottles that are in the same bottle # range as this one until at least 2021-2031 and drink the one around 100000 sooner. Cheers.