5/11/2024 - blank blank wrote:

This is flat out one of the best brunellos I’ve ever had, and I collect brunello. Picked up at a local shop that sells auction leftovers at retail, I had no idea this was the private enoteca pitti reserve until I was a glass into the bottle wondering what the hell was going on. Red fruit, herbs, touch of balsamic; full bodied, fruity and ripe but with good Sangiovese acidity to keep it balanced; just a hint of soy/foresty age but mostly fresh; velvet textured with soft, mature tannins. Glorious wine - as good as any Soldera or Lisini Ugolaia or Cerbaiona I’ve ever had, and frankly better.

4/19/2024 - blank blank wrote:

This was a very nice Calistoga cab - ripe fruit but everything else in balance, and the fruit hadn't been hung too long but retained real skin tannin and true cab character. Reminded me of Montelena from 20 years ago. Good wine!

4/16/2024 - blank blank wrote:

Very, very, very ripe and raisin-y; a Bordeaux for modern Napa lovers.

2/11/2024 - blank blank wrote:

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1/17/2024 - blank blank wrote:

Very bretty, with almost a light fizz because of happy yeasts. Unclean and not tasty.

11/9/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Hey - this is really f-ing good. I was worried it might be some weird experiment in green-ass Cabernet, but it’s fully ripe (I wonder how late this was picked?!) with no pyrazine. The fruit is in the redder side of cassis but still full and not shrill; the tannins are fine and ripe; there’s a kiss of new oak but not much. The pH is low - this is mouthwatering - but the surprising ripeness of fruit easily balances it out. Great concentration for a wine that’s so fresh. Very unique. Great QPR, even at a >$50 price.

11/4/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Super burg at early maturity. Still very fresh and tight, but with a gorgeous red fruit / five spice bouquet. Just a hint of tertiary going on, but this is fresher than many 2016s I’ve had this year. Grippy on the finish and good acidity; this will be a distance runner. Touch of brett, but not objectionable. Yum!

11/1/2023 - blank blank wrote:

I don’t remember how I bought this wine, but it’s excellent, and I say that as someone with an old world palate. It has a touch too much alcohol - it’s really best at cellar temp - but it’s no spoof bomb. Reminds me of Clos Rougeard, in that the fruit is dense and ripe but there’s plenty of tobacco and violets and green pepper too; this doesn’t shy completely away from the pyrazine, which I love in my Cab. Cedary and dusty on the finish, nice acid, plenty of tannin but in balance with the fruit. There’s a touch of dark oak but it’s not at all over-bearing. Really great and decidedly gesturing toward the cool side of Cabernet.

10/12/2023 - blank blank wrote:

It's sort of a shame Joel Peterson doesn't make more wines from Bordeaux grapes because he's just as good at those as he is at Zin. This is big and tannic, but the tannins are fine and not, at this age, out of balance with the fruit. It's a touch stewed (and for my palate, pretty much every wine, regardless of varietal, has a bit of that out of Bedrock), but its got good acid, lots of cassis and herbs, no noticeable oak, and is generally just a very good example of a Sonoma bdx blend. Good QPR, too.

10/11/2023 - blank blank wrote:

2021 Oregon Pinots Blind: My 3rd, group's first. Exceptionally well-made. Tart cherry, a hint of stem (but judicious), denser than some of the other wines, fine tannin, good acid. Not exciting for me - a bit simple - but this is a very correct, very enjoyable pinot.

10/11/2023 - blank blank wrote:

2021 Oregon Pinots Blind: My first, group's 5th. I can see why the others didn't like it - this wine had a very strong smoky oolong tea character, incredibly distinctive. One of the naysayers described it as "old books". But as I found many of the wines in this tasting too simple, for me this tea-character added some much needed complexity. Tea, roses and red fruit on the nose, silky finish, less drying tannin than many of the other bottles here, fresh, light to medium bodied but good concentration. Well priced, too.

10/11/2023 - blank blank wrote:

2021 Oregon Pinots Blind: My 2nd, group's T3rd. This was better earlier in the evening, with a waxy red fruit nose, some darker stuff too, that was a little less shrill than the other wines on the table other than the Cameron. This was one of the two wines with a strong "tea" character - are there Coury clones in here? Salty, plenty of tannin - more than the other wines - but it's fine tannin. Good acid. A very nice Pinot! By the end of the evening, this had developed an unappealing cough syrup character on the nose, so a couple of points off for that, but I would be interested in following this as it aged.

10/11/2023 - blank blank wrote:

2021 Oregon Pinots Blind: My 4th, group's T3rd. Like the McKinlay, this is a tick darker fruited than the 'reddest' wines on the table; notably less sweet than them, too. Very savory, better concentration than many other the other wines; though its only medium bodied and has good acid, it has a surprising amount of astringent tannin that I didn't love - a touch rustic on the finish, almost like black tea. Very good nonetheless.

10/11/2023 - blank blank wrote:

2021 Oregon Pinots Blind: My T6th, Groups 2nd. On retasting I think I underrated this. Decidedly a tick darker fruited than most of the wines from grapes grown on Jory; this is more savory and complex than many of the other wines on the table, with good concentration despite its mouthwatering acid. This didn't excite me but it was very well made and exceedingly close in style and value to a Bourgogne at the same price point. Would be a terrific ringer in a value Burgundy tasting.

10/11/2023 - blank blank wrote:

2021 Oregon Pinots Blind: My T6th, Group's 6th. Keep in mind I am a lover of light reds, I drink Trousseau and Poulsard and Rossese regularly so I am not unfamiliar with this sort of wine.

This is the lightest wine I've encountered in years. Its almost, but not quite, a rose. Very very pale and transparent. It's fragrant and has good acid, with tart cherry fruit and the tiniest hint of vanilla, but wow is this dilute. A fun light wine for summer, but I can't imagine aging this and this is outrageously overpriced - its like it's trying to be Chambolle but it missed that Chambolles retain their delicate fruit and florals while packing unexpected length and concentration; that's what makes it special. This by contrast is insubstantial.

10/11/2023 - blank blank wrote:

2021 Oregon Pinots Blind: Group's 7th, my 5th. By FAR the darkest and most opaque wine on the table; I assumed this was the sole willakenzie-grown wine on the table but in retrospect it makes sense this was the Cameron; darker fruit and more ripeness and concentration than the rest of the table; just a hint of brett/reduction but not that noticeable except when first opened; very similar to a high quality Sonoma Coast pinot; quite different from the Cameron SVD bottles I've had over the years, much more overtly New World; a good wine but not to my taste.

10/11/2023 - blank blank wrote:

2021 Oregon Pinots Blind: My 8th, group's 8th. A couple in our group liked this, but the majority had this 7th or 8th. The most candied of the wines and a strong resiny note of green stem - this probably should not have been stemmed as much as it was. Very weird, sugary, chemically. Not a good wine, I would have sent back at a restaurant.

8/25/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Another terrific 2021 - fresh, green, appley, but with tons of dry extract and structure. Judicious oak. Exactly what I like my white burg to taste like.

7/31/2023 - blank blank wrote:

The color and viscosity of motor oil; but when you taste it is remarkably fresh - lemon and dried apricot and overripe peach and salted caramel. It doesn't scream botrytis at all - maybe a touch? - and the acidity is as good as any rieslaner, piercing and mouth watering even at age 37. What. A . Wine. HGS never fucking fails me.

7/23/2023 - blank blank wrote:

While generally a light, lively, red fruited example of a freshly-styled CA Pinot, this suffers from a strong and obvious underripe stem character that tastes of pine resin and mars what would be an otherwise excellent wine.

7/20/2023 - blank blank wrote:

This is excellent; clean of brett; dense, tannic, but still freshly acid, lively, lots of pure red fruit, and tons of tobacco leaf cab franc character with just a hint of pyrazine. A ton of wine for the money!

7/14/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Superb, in an extremely old school way that is damn near extinct. Dark, licorice scented, tannic, gamey, powerful, but with a core of sweet fruit and a floral character that comes out with air. Just a hint of stem at this point; nicely integrated. The oak is fully digested, too. A big bad burgundy the way they used to make ‘em.

6/22/2023 - blank blank Does not like this wine:

This is the fourth time I’ve had this wine and it’s just getting worse with age. Overextracted, dark, monolithic. I’d say it’s shut down but it’s also getting surprisingly tertiary for such a relatively young BDX, with lots of soy / roasted notes. From a nadir in BDX history and it shows. I love GPL but I hate this.

6/6/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Clean, fresh Zin, with textbook dark bramble fruit, Ridge/SCM acidity, and well-seasoned American oak. Much lower alcohol and generally tastes earlier picked than other recent vintages of Ridge Jimso; I think this is the better ripeness level and suspect its closer to what the great Jimsos of the 80s/90s were picked at, based on some bottles over the past few years. Nice wine!

6/5/2023 - blank blank wrote:

like many others i found this wine extremely difficult. A weird combo of high lemony acid but also ripe, almost sur maturite fruit. A textbook example of the problem with zero dosage champagne; this would've been so much better and more transparent if picked a little earlier with fresher fruit.

6/4/2023 - blank blank wrote:

I think this is a bit too extracted and oaked for what the vintage offered, but it’s still a lovely wine.

5/24/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Mature; the fizz is relaxed a bit and this shows some butterscotch; but the acid is great (it is a 2008 after all) and there’s still plenty of lemon and apple; a whiff of oak still; really complex and satisfying champagne - served this at a party and people loved it.

5/24/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Red fruit, distinctly cool and lively, almost like a saumur; tobacco and graphite but no pyrazine; don’t understand how they made a wine so fresh and clean in such a warm vintage but it’s a great result; super QPR.

5/24/2023 - blank blank wrote:

From an immaculate bottle and cork, with perfect color with almost no bricking, this is fantastic stuff and every bit as good as its reputation. Red fruit, medium bodied, lovely and fresh, still has big tannin despite throwing a ton of sediment over the 26 years; classic asphalt PS nose but also roses; reminds me of the very best bottles of Pato Baga I’ve ever had but also a 1974 Napa PS at Berns years ago. Wonderful wine.

4/20/2023 - blank blank wrote:

This remains a marvelous wine; floral and red fruited and with terrific concentration on a light/medium body. Wide open and fresh. Reminds me a bit of a B Mascarello.

4/17/2023 - blank blank wrote:

I thought this was quite excellent. Fresh, red fruited, strongly speaks of Evangelho, good acid, only medium bodied, low alcohol for its ripeness. The American oak works well here and it's sort of similar to a high quality young traditional Rioja. Fair QPR, too. One of the better Ridge ATPs I've had in the last several years - I will be buying more!

4/15/2023 - blank blank wrote:

This was very good, but to my palate a little overripe. It is extremely ripe and lush - remarkably so for a BDX, perhaps as ripe as any I've ever had this side of 1982 PLL, to which it bears a resemblance. It shows a lot of Merlot - again, more than any classified growth I can recall other than, well, 1982 PLL, to which, (reiterating) this bears a resemblance. It is just so fruity - almost California-esque - and the texture is pillowy and gentle. But for my palate, the fruit here is a little muddied because of the ripeness - unlike the clarion cassis character of a Cab Sauv dominated blend, this has lots of black cherry and plum - and while it shows a fair bit of evolution and is clearly just reaching its plateau of maturity, it isn't showing the complexity of, say, 1982 PLL, with its exotic aromatics. This is very much like an exceptionally well-made Napa Merlot - like a Forman Merlot or a Ramey Merlot - but its price and pedigree promises something more.

3/30/2023 - blank blank wrote:

wooo boy this is superb. Red fruit, scorched earth, tobacco, hint of pyrazine. Silky smooth texture; great density without seeming spoofed or overripe. Exactly what I look for in BDX. I once had a terrific 1999 Larrivet (of all vintages) that I never was able to repeat - this is much fresh and more classic than that bottle, but not entirely dissimilar and just as great or better.

3/27/2023 - blank blank wrote:

I thought this was fabulous. This tastes like what I thought Vega Sicilia would taste like, before I had Vega Sicilia. It's unmistakably Tempranillo, but somehow stays two ticks shy of the ripe purpleness that so many RdDs get - maybe its the other stuff in the field blend that cuts the ripeness? It's so fresh and floral and lively, even while being quite ripe and concentrated, and the tannin is fine and ripe without seeming spoofed or oak-derived. Really as good as wine of this level of ripeness can get for me; I have a old world palate and this still blew me away.

3/27/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Extremely nice; at a good balance between butterscotchy age and lemony freshness. Has lost most of the PYCM matchstick but still has the lip smacking tannin. Perhaps a little less concentrated than a wine from better terroir, but this is how aged white burgundy used to taste back in the day.

3/27/2023 - blank blank wrote:

This was fine for a Bourgogne but WOW was it stemmy. Green and resinous! As stemmy as any burg I've ever had. As extreme in its own way as Mollydooker was in its.

3/27/2023 - blank blank wrote:

I've had a lot of excellent experiences with Pataille, but this wasn't one of them. This bottle was marred with a lot of VA - and of the appley, acetaldehyde type, which I loathe. Someone else who was drinking the bottle also found it flawed; a third person, less sensitive to VA, thought it was typically well-made Pataille. Caveat emptor.

3/27/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Too old - raisiny and starting to show heat. Still a fair bit of oak, after all these years. You can see that this would've been excellent a few years ago, but father time is undefeated.

3/23/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Shockingly good - this could easily pass for a tippy top quality viognier. A floral and tropical nose makes you expect a flabby wine, but no! This has tons of acid and dry extract and tastes almost like a Puligny. There’s some oak on this, but the wine easily has the stuffing to stand up to it. Nice!

3/16/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Very nice. Baroloesque, touch of VA but tolerable, softened tannins that still show a touch of Baga rusticity; fruit is still fresh and red. Great QPR.

3/6/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Boy is this fabulous. I seek out this bottling every year, because its one of the last burgundies made in the Jayer style and it punches way, way above its weight; this year is no exception. In the exceedingly capable hands of this producer the 2019 ripeness is tamed; the wine is balanced and fresh and red fruited. Silky tannin, just the right amount of oak for the fruit. Funny how a skilled winemaker can make a fresh, silky wine in a ripe year without stemming the shit out of it! This is what burgundy used to taste like in 1999 and 2002, and it's worth every penny.

3/6/2023 - blank blank wrote:

I'm surprised to see such high scores for this. To me this was a touch unbalanced, with very low acidity for an eiswein. There's some botrytis here too, and the fruit is quite ripe/tropical in profile. For me this registers more like a baby auction auselse or BA than a eiswein; I think eiswein should have laser like acidity and really clear, flute-like fruit. So for my palate this didn't do it; YMMV.

3/6/2023 - blank blank wrote:

This continues to be the Joe's pizza of dessert wines - simple, nothing fancy, but made by an expert and just tasty. Balanced, fresh, lively, gulpable. It gets more complex and interesting than this, but it doesn't get happier.

3/6/2023 - blank blank wrote:

This is exceedingly ripe - frankly overripe - and lacking in acid. Tastes like Russian River pinot, but TBH, Russian River pinot would be holding up better at this age. The regular cuvee - which I have had many times - is so much better at this stage in their development. This, by contrast, is syrupy and atypical. We dumped.

3/6/2023 - blank blank wrote:

On day 1, this was much worse than my first bottle of this, showing a candied quality to the red fruit that made it seem overripe, nearly sweet, even though it wasn't heavy-bodied or overly tannic like some other 2019s. This was much better on day 2 - and more consistent with my first bottle of this - as the fruit receded a bit and the wine came into balance. I'm optimistic this will age OK, but not a great time to open it now.

3/6/2023 - blank blank wrote:

I thought this was sound but just too old. Loads of brown sugar and a whiff of volatility; there's very little fruit left and this was helped enormously by mixing in even a tiny bit of the 2019 Lafarge Beaune-Greves drunk alongside (and a 50/50 mix was much better than either wine alone). Very similar to the handful of other 1978s I've had - I think I just like my burgundy younger and maybe a smidge less ripe than this.

2/20/2023 - blank blank wrote:

Weird wine - a combination of an odd, confected saccharine sweetness with a decidedly green undertone. The black cherry says Howell Mountain, the still-noticeable oak says vaguely modern; but the weird diet soda sweetness is a new one for me. I dumped; my wife gagged; your mileage might vary.

2/13/2023 - blank blank wrote:

I was torn about this wine. It has moments where the dark zinny fruit and the American oak and the herbiness all come together, and it’s really good for those flashes - reminds a bit of, well, Jimsomare from 20 years ago. But there are other moments of a distinctly overripe, stewed fruit character, and in those moments the wine feels tired and jammy, sort of like a too-old carignan from France. We gave the bottle air over a whole evening and it never settled for long in either bucket. In any event, this was monstrously tannic for zin and had excellent acidity, not withstanding a very ripe fruit character. Disappointing, but not uninteresting.

1/31/2023 - blank blank wrote:

This is a weird new-style ripe-climate pinot. Picked early, and heavy on the stems, this is an odd mix of red fruit sweetness, green piney stem resin, and a surprisingly advanced soy character. Kind of unpleasant, TBH.

1/23/2023 - blank blank wrote:

shockingly good compared to past vintages of this I've had. I have no idea what the cepage of this is, but it seems pinot heavy - lots of ginger and cherry. But despite the pinot-esque power, its still chalky and fresh. Some oak here, but not too much.