10/23/2023 - Floris87 Likes this wine:

Great texture and balance, some apricot, orange peel, a hint of parsley, and a nice combination of minerality and light tannins. Not in the best place right now - fruit is starting to fade while tertiary notes haven't really developed yet. Some notes of hazelnut, honey and liqueur(?) on the second day suggest this has potential to improve. Either drink young or keep for longer.

12/18/2022 - Elycohn Likes this wine:

What do we get in Liason that we give up in Basis. How big's the gap? The answer is not huge for personality, a little for complexity, and substantially for cohesiveness.

Basis pours darker wtih a condensed core. Leans heavier on fruit than minerals, more direct, head on. Leaps at you with a teabag of bright red cherries, burnt sugar, wooly musk. The mouth is unpolished but it works, a rawness and some crunch. Sour cherries, macerated yogurt cup strawberries, dried orange peel.

Liason is elegant, Basis is fresh.

12/28/2018 - THECORKDORK Likes this wine:

Fascinating wine. Reminiscent of a great dry muscat from Alsace. Peach skin, white asparagus, quince, wildflower. Fun wine, but one to drink young.

2/20/2022 - Elycohn Likes this wine:

Sensational. In both the literal and traditiional senses. And this is all about senses. Cerebral switch flicker. Vin-neutropic. You can let it breathe for a week at room temp and it won't give an inch.

The aromas are beautifully saturated with oxidized notes. Honey butterscotch, beeswax and Kentucky bourbon. Tropical notes. Papaya apricot. Floral stuff. Violets, white jasmine. And the chemical residue of a new leather handbag.

It tastes hot, but its only 12.5%. Finish powerful and long to completely exhaust your neurons.

3/6/2022 - Elycohn Likes this wine:

RS is raw elegance, not quite the wild spirit of Slatnik. An aromatic trip with two keys, sequential amplitudes, each time you go in, on repeat. The basic level is bing cherries, prune, game, and brown leather. Some chauffeur, maybe alcohol, lifts this to a more interesting, brighter red strawberry, cedar, rose petal, acetone profile. Elegant, concentrated integrated post nasal happenings too. Soft texture wraps and protects against high acid chalky minerals, grippy tannins. Dried strawberry plumb finish

1/9/2022 - Elycohn Likes this wine:

If you drink a lot of pleasant, simple wine (like I do), the first complex wine in a while can wake the sense like a Wim Hoff ice bath. Le Petit Ducru is also a due reminder that I should drink more Bordeaux. Intense, rich, layered. Pours velvet ribbons of violet tinted motor oil. About 100 layers of aromatics - cassis, syrupy blackberries, leather, coffee, milk chocolate. Big juicy grippy tannin. Flavors of dark cherry plum, mocha, laden with minerals and juicy berries. Real symphony on hand.

10/29/2021 - Sourdough Likes this wine:

Bright pale yellow. Lovely nose of white flowers, melon, and some stone fruit. Interesting flavor progression as a peachy/stone fruit start is quickly followed by mineral and acid tones that build and subside to return to stone fruit and melon. Very long finish. Lots of good stuff going on but a touch disjoint to me as it seems to fail to reach its potential. But bought at a clearance at $30 it is a bargain. Better and more integrated as it warms. Best near 60 oF IMO.

9/13/2021 - DugyDog Likes this wine:

This baby needs years to fully come around and show itself. Poured a glass via Coravin and am glad I didn’t pull the cork. Blackberry, some smokiness and earth but this took time to show. Wait 5 years

3/2/2021 - Elycohn Likes this wine:

The wines from Maria Lopez de Heredia are Riojan by the instruction manual and are also completely saturated with the soul of a little fire cracker of a woman so lovable I just want to be friends with her. Can we be friends?

My 2006 is a blend of elegantly restrained moderately extracted Tempranillo, Garnacha, and treated oak - flavors and aromas you can start to connect across the LDH portfolio.

Cherries and dried strawberries, a bed of mint and basil. On the palette, a drawback from fruit to high acid mineral salts. Then into darker cherries, prune, rosemary, mint, and saddle leather. Bravo.

2/8/2021 - Rieslingfan wrote:

One year ago I opened this wine, and found it spiky and rather disjointed. Flash forward exactly one year, and it's evolving into a different animal. Still a bright wine with no shortage of acidity, it also brings forward a depth of savory character, as well as crunchy fruit. Put it alongside fatty food (it was Super Bowl Sunday after all), and the acidity acts as a foil, and cuts through the richness. The only place where it struggled was when there was a notably spicy component, but that's not a real surprise. Time was a friend to the wine. I had initially decanted it due to reports of significant sediment, and the more air the wine took on the more the savory element deepened. The counterpoint of a very savory character and an almost citrusy acidic profile might not be for everyone, but I enjoyed it. This is so much more aggressively bright than the 2016 that it is hard to see them as stablemates.

12/28/2020 - dmccann3 Does not like this wine:

Definitely a controversial wine. I am not a fan. It seemed disjointed and had way too much oak.

11/24/2020 - dkentaustin Likes this wine:

Blackberry, black currant, some smoke and vanilla oak... creating a blackberry cobbler nuisance. Black pepper, rosemary, cigar box, red licorice and black plum. Lighter on the palate than your typical CA Cabernet - possibly due to the elevation and cooler climate/winds on Pritchard Hill. Alcohol and tannins are still robust, but starting to meld into the wine. Really a beautiful wine now, but will easily drink well for 5+ years. Many thanks to David Long for the incredible tours and knowledge of the terroir of all his wines over the years.

p.s. sous vide pork chops, asparagus and spinach salad

5/24/2020 - Jdevans Likes this wine:

Very pleasant on the porch during a DC humid spring evening. A bit of funk, plenty of fruit, easy to drink.

3/16/2018 - Elycohn Likes this wine:

Tasted blind I'm thinking this is a spontaneously fermented sour beer. Has a very hazy pale straw color murky from sediment. Fruity aromas of white flowers, lemon drop candy, white wine vinegar, and sourdough . Slightly weighty with flavors of tart grapefruit, honeysuckle, and strong yeasty bret. Purchased a few times and enjoyed but outside my spectrum.

10/30/2018 - Krassens Does not like this wine:

Second bottle all over the place. Sour, animalistic, milky, unbalanced.

9/12/2018 - Elycohn Likes this wine:

The Trebbiano in Paolo Bea's Arboreus see extended skin contact and are joined in the vat by semi-dried grapes of the same variety. The finished wine is spectacular. Complex, deep, polished. Beautiful copper orange color with mile deep aromas of apricots. peach, orange, and vanilla bourbon. The texture is surreal and nonlinear. At first it's dense and rich but then quickly slips into a medium tannic acidic body. Flavors of sweet honeyed orange, subtle notes of vanilla spice, and creme brûlée stick around for a long welcomed while. Start this at cellar temp and drink slowly as it warms. Where so many Orange wines are a novelty, this is a expertly assembled wine of purpose.

1/23/2017 - Grape_ape Likes this wine:

first off - this bottle had the weirdest sediment I have ever seen.. there was particulate matter suspended in the wine that didn't settle to the bottom. Had my other unopened bottle not also had it, I wouldn't have consumed it, it was so off-putting visually. I screened it out, which caught the larger bits, then consumed. Curious if anyone else experienced this.

high toned red fruit, some earth and little tobacco. Somewhat simple, but light, quaffable and very food friendly.

2/22/2018 - dkentaustin Likes this wine:

Double decanted. Bright color, Blackberry, subtle lily smell, raspberry, Asian, barnyard, leather, graphite, pencil shavings, thyme, very seamless, still youthful, perfectly integrated tannins. Seamless rolling on tongue, incredible aromatics, amazing combination of meat and elegance. Very concentrate with many years to go but incredibly enjoyable now. The Viognier adds a complicity that’s brightens and lifts the wine to a new dimension. Gorgeous. Excited to try this again in 5 years

4/30/2017 - Eudemis Likes this wine:

14% alcohol. Superb long cork and equally long elegant bottle (somewhat inconvenient to store). Bright lightish colour. Fragrant and intense nose of apricots and yellow flowers. The mouth is equally intense, somewhat perfumey, and pretty long, with sufficient acidity to balance the rich flavours.
This may be poor man's Condrieu, but it is excellent nevertheless, way above its station as a Vin de France (exactly why this is not entitled to the Côtes du Rhône AOC, I am not sure, but I would love to know). Mind you the price reflects the quality to some extent, being just above half that of a decent Condrieu.
Certainly a repeat purchase.

12/18/2017 - Elycohn Does not like this wine:

Something is off with my Pian del Ciampolo. Aromas, flavors, and depth are muted. I drank over three nights to see if it would open up and develop a little. No obvious signs of corkage, though strange white pulpy sediment showed up in my last two glasses (like the kind you find in kombucha). Best conclusion I can make is there is some new flaw to me or this wine has seen its best days. I can see how this could have been really good - elegant, light and fruity and more Burgundian than Tuscan. I don't know what to make of the pulp. A rare big miss in the Mad Rose portfolio for me.

11/21/2017 - Finare Vinare wrote:

Probably the most red-berried and "burgundian" nouveau we've had so far. Surprisingly elegant and finessed for this rushed cathegory of wine, and as expected - deliciously fresh and gulpable.

3/2/2017 - dkentaustin Likes this wine:

Big dark fruits coupled with soft voluptuous blueberries. Bright, cassis, pepper and spices with good depth of flavor and hints of white chocolate on the finish. Alcohol levels seem a bit high. Should age well over the next 5 years. Quintessential big Napa cab.

1/5/2017 - kuumies wrote:

There is a perfect word to describe this wine. It is pretty. It is also unmistakably Italian with a dusty and minerally nose of red cherry, cranberry, herbs and graphite. There is something Beaujolais-esque about it, definitely. The mouthfeel is quite lean and linear with expectedly high, uplifting and palate-cleansing acidity. Very juicy and easy-drinking (if you are an acid freak) with a deliciously bitter finish. Massively bright with plenty of crunchy cherry-laden fruit, really excels with food. A wine of real interest and fabulous value at 18 €.

1/29/2017 - Elycohn Likes this wine:

This is a powerful, dense, and complex wine. Fragrances of bitter orange, anise, and jasmine. Richly textured, first creamy then acidic and a seemingly never-ending finish.