4/17/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

13% abv. AP 56. 65° F. This bottle arrived from germania only today. (Normally I would wait, but hey.) EYE: It pours thickly with dissolved gas and an aluminum/lemon peel color. NOSE: entrenched, muscular roots of green and calcium. A very transparent and fresh front advances delirious little suggestions of broiled dirt, and that one intersection of cinnamon and mint that you must know, and a rather more familiar complex of cassis / red delicious / ginger / strawberry / lime. MOUTH: very dry and chippy (though I can imagine that tension relaxing intermediately, leaving something more heavy and sweet someday, like in 2026-2029.) I like this.

4/15/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Provence (Mexicantown): This pour is the fifth and final in a flight of Provençal rosé wines across two domaines and seven years.
Four years ago, this tasted of punch bowl—sticky and alcoholic. Now, desiccated, the elegance of its skeleton is bare. TASTE: impacted, stained glass vibrant fruit and scented sap. This is more remote than its 2020 sibling, sealed as it is under a glaze of biological time. Subtle eruptions of strawberry cured with brown spices and leather; dried lemon peel; orange seed; nutrient soil; marmalade; adhesive tannins. Notice spirited, sticky shades of eucalyptus. It's boozy, and intensely yielding of flavor; spined skin; lime, mint, lingonberry; marsh; driftwood; charcoal. I could be persuaded this bottle has seen its peak, with a caveat: this cuvée is licensed to suprise in that regard. 91 points at 45° F. 94 points at 60° F. At 80° F, 100.
________
24 hours later, it has paced through the usual compression and blooming familiar to table wines of its age and stature. There's lots of text here, and beckoning reservation. It exemplifies certain virtues I associate with Bordeaux and Burgundy. (Is it's relationship to those storied references schizoid, or synthetic? Anyway, that's the contest that animates the dialog.)

4/13/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

EYE^ Perfect clarity to look at. This is one increment lighter in color than a Chablis 2018 Bel Air et Clardy immediately preceding.
NOSE^ The smell is a suggestively savage instrument. I gather a brew of almonds and roots, roiled with mint and twine. Cinnamon/chili; mussels; steaming southern biscuits; gravel.
MOUTH^ The first liquid drink is confrontational. Properly vitigenic and searing acidity triggers a saline response. Muscular white fruit of pristine clarity reverberates fossil bone structure. The event aims deliberately toward a finish of bitterly appetizing vegetal scar—iodine, marble grit, mentholated lemon smash. It's big, yet grippy and austere in texture.
TIME^ Development: clarity and sweetness gather as the bottle yields. The bouquet digs its heels in, to offer blanched resins, birch bark, greengage, and Champagne.
STANCE (Cressbeckler style)^ I opened this bottle, vintage 2018, in 2024, well before it obtained its most accomplished expression. The wildness it exemplified four years ago is *almost* modulated enough now to appeal to an unmotivated, broad-minded, and discriminating observer. Naive bliss, stomping baby goat energy: 92-100. Appointed manners and precision: 90. Weighted avg. 91.

3/22/2024 - Putnam Weekley wrote:

Some wines are chosen for 6-week parallax. This is an example. I found local stocks, shared some bottles, and so this is 2/12. I'm surprised by the plain, raw and grape-flavored youth here. It's as if carbonic maceration-adjacent Cornas Syrah blended with stubborn, rocky cru-extracted—foot trod, MOG-replete, dank pulp. As I drink it—passively cellar chilled, and directly, *PnP-style*—it blooms at every opportunity. Notice the red-raspberry cast to the fruit complex. It ranges to the sour red berry end of the Cornas Syrah spectrum. As the temperature passes through 60° F, it animates, becoming a different wine ...
________
... gathering, in the way that voluntary people sometimes do, a congress appears of draped coffee oil, radish, chocolate, black currant, camphor, licorice, salted fat, menthol, and cordial pipe tobacco. Underneath, it's still juice. Shocking rich Colombian coffee (if not Corinthian leather) permeates every encounter with the cup.

if this is frankenterroir, it's 91. If it's insight and trust, it's 95.

10/8/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

2/10. after reviewing my last note for this vintage, I began this bottle with a tall, agitating decant into a jar. The weather is chill. I want more such dual purpose selections around here—either 1) a glass goes with steak dinner with leftover drink for tomorrow, or 2) something more relevant happens, leading to depletion more immediate!

It's grapey,* at least on fleeting first contact, before vertical surfaces glide through the frame, tasting of mint, brittle blue stone, wildberry reposado, and sticky earth. Crushably serious. Tannins are there, more illuminating than restraining. I can't help but notice there is none of that vegetal flavor that pervades commercial exports from this amazing region. Seriously good. Aerate tf out of it!

*

4/3/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

2/12. Startling entry! I'm struck with lemon oil, menthol, prune and strawberry before very quickly, accretions of licorice and slate appear. Mannered and decisively aromatic. Eerie bouquet of forest stone and salt cataract. Curiously floral (magenta/violet.) Relaxed, confident grip—flavored of impacted erosion, rose, porcini, chervil/mint. I'm happy to speculate on the 9-month delta in the comments.

10/15/2022 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Feinherb. 11.5% abv. AP 02. Aromatic at arm's length. A cataclysm of apricot, almond, tangerine, chamomile, and molten salt. Senses adjust and elucidate delicate threads, of lemon zest, basil, chalk, green strawberry, and mirabelle plum. A mouthful begins broadly glycerin, before a campaign of systemic acidity seizes control of the event. Sharpness closes from all sides, seeping from the pores of its mineral fabric, roasted and hissing. Some of this energy is a blur of action; some is fluid as glass block. Pull away to admire the composure. Blanched bedrock extract. Amusing bud break, mocking iron truffle. Brittle to chew (al dente.) Perfumed of savory, scrabbled earth. Needs time. Drink 2024-2034.
93+

10/14/2023 - kateloveswine Likes this wine:

(Realized I never made my note) At first sip, felt like it would only pair well with food but it opened up after 20-30 min. Cherry cola and truffle/wet forest is what I remember most. Will definitely look for this wine again?

5/18/2023 - Alex Barbera Likes this wine:

Fassprobe macht Lust und erzeugt Vorfreude, deutliche Reduktion

3/5/2024 - etherknitter Likes this wine:

Stunning wine. Less glycerol body than previously when young. Fruit and acidity in perfect balance. Stone fruits. Perfect despite slightly protruding cork with mold. 34 yeas old! Lots of life ahead but my last bottle alas.

11/3/2022 - Orange Tsian wrote:

非常迷人又精细的香气，丝丝缕缕黄柠檬、接骨木花、橙花开启了雨后的晴空，细细的石灰矿物感和粉胡椒带来了磨砂的质地和厚度，像是透过玻璃看向莫奈的花园。黄桃、白桃、葡萄柚、轻微的蜜瓜等各种果味，慢慢汇聚，像梭子一样穿过鼻腔，而后复归印象派，白花香朦胧地停驻着，未曾走远。入口先是一点隐约，随后起势，变得饱满，酒液伴随着萃取感（类似成熟黄柠檬皮带来的质地）扩散整个和包裹口腔，带来紧致和张力感，和石灰等矿物感共同构成结构，在余味留下一点刺激感。酸度高，有主线，能扩散，持续力强，整个口腔都在冒口水。花果味清晰透亮，轻盈中有复杂度，橙花、金银花等小白花萦绕周遭，包裹着葡萄柚、白桃、油桃、柠檬之类的果味，收尾有些许粉胡椒和香草的轻微辛辣，收尾长。

瓶醒一个小时，果味更加盛放，出来些许酸菠萝汁味，柠檬奶昔，甜橙，酸奶油，矿物粉末很是飘渺，轻微的磨砂质地，慢慢随风飞散，夹着白花凝露（甚至还有些茉莉花）和柠檬精油的味道。口感更加活跃且有刺激性，浓中带着一丝轻描淡写的意味，后段的矿物修长且有金属感。两个小时后香气中出现了一些绿茶雪糕味。三个小时后，薄纱般的花香包裹着一点点南瓜子、鲜奶、清晰的西柚、轻微的绿豆沙香气，喝起来曲线有致，线条修长，微微的茶味，标志性的矿物感充斥整体，出现些许铿锵之音。四个小时，口感收尾有轻微鲜奶味。

第三天仍然口感强劲，在口中含上一两秒，光滑而略带酥麻感的萃取爬满口腔，矿物金属衔接，果味集中充沛，颇有一些荡气回肠的意味，触感持久。回味有一丝欧芹味。96/100

3/7/2024 - DBdeParis Likes this wine:

This bottle was a bit unbalanced. Lots of expected Tours elements but they seemed to exaggerate themselves one by one instead of being merged into a transcendent whole.

3/11/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Bonus 2/7 found on the shelf at my Riesling shop. 10.5% abv. AP 18. 55°F.
Angelica, celery, rhubarb, cardoon, goji; oil; glycerin; green fraise/pineapple vigor, recently lost, hushed over salt/scree; rigid structure molten psychoactively. The finish lifts, lithic slabs appear weightless somehow.

3/11/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Freshly open—confusing, grape-flavored simplicity. 88-89
24 hours later—tannins marshal, bringing a suggestion of gravel. 89-90
Now, 45 hours later—this almost-full bottle produces something more interesting. Cedar mulch, black berry, and mint are joined by affirmative St. Estephe build and action. A tall scaffolding of inky, articulated tannin enables cooling, botanical respiration. There's plenty of mineral; and nothing remotely salty or glutamic.

Pairing this wine with thoroughly rested Montgomery cheddar is beautiful, and a triumph of gastronomic scripture. It's been so long since I drank 1989 Haut Marbuzet that I couldn't insist this vintage is inferior to it (though I suspect it is.) I could, however, more confidently differentiate the "style." 2020 tastes more typical of the appellation when compared to 1989 at a similar age. Someday one of us look under the hood for clues about that, beginning with çepage. 90+ ... really on the cusp of 91. Let's see how it tastes by memory tomorrow.

3/8/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

12.5% abv. AP 11. Recently purchased from imperfect retail storage. EYE: color is good!—barely sepiated, brilliant, bright and clear. NOSE: incredibly satisfying "old Riesling" bouquet; there's nothing else like it. It's like stone mocking maillard pastry stacked flakes and salted, dripping pome (apfelstrudel? but savory—with cardamom, coriander, and salt caper.) Ponderously deep; a surrounding sensation. MOUTH: in the first 5-10 minutes it's clouded in sleepy gauze. At this point, the question of acidity is paramount. That emerges from the earthy base gradually. At all points there is an embraceable balance, of bitterness (slate/mint/chicory/licorice) and shrunken fruit (peach/pear/apricot/apple/lemon/orange berries); fluently irrigated with Assam tea and spring radish. SUM: this needs to be served on the cool side, 45-55° F, to boost the freshness. A perfectly stored bottle will taste better. Lastly, why did all remaining stocks of this vintage, apparently, come to Detroit in 2018? Did someone think they were unloading it?! HA!

3/6/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

2:1 Côt to Gamay. 11.51% abv. 65° F. Plum colored. Classic Tue-Boeuf nose of clay mortar holding discrete bladders of black fruit glycerin. Dense with flavor; pruneaux/pepper/strawberry root; smoldering sage pulp; bounded underneath by crumbled pavement. Shocking juice-tonic with the promise to age well. Drink 2023-2035.

2/29/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Decanted clear at 7:30. Striking, savage bouquet. Muddled and sharply woody. Almost obscene macerations of laurel/pine, mustard oil, and unfathomable impacted heaps of tamarind/cinnamon/cacao.
First pecking drink at 7:40. sappy hemp, laden with drupe saccharide. The drink sets up a renewed aromatic experience: thick and racy cataract of ripe berry mass. The renewed aroma sets up a renewed drink: trouble, perhaps.
By 8:00 I'm pairing it with peppered and seared strip steak of beef. This is the opening for surges of raspberry. Here it claims stickiness of fruit, and amusing arches of brittle mint in strands, and vividly salted plumes of roasted persimmon road dust.
8:15—the governing character—curiously sticky and bright—is fixed now. It's like sweet lemon peels packed in chambers smoldering with raspberry and green burrs. Glutamate, too.
By 8:20 my implanted script insists on interrogations of tannin and acidity, and so forth. All of that is replete, reserved, and lively. If the sour mountain wildflowers weren't so expressive I might pay more attention to all of tha t.

2/26/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Aromas hold back for a minute before pulsing with ruptured wild strawberries and poultry pan drippings. A drink is drenched with fallen black fruit sugar before gathering around a cool front of tannins; dialing through cola, chicory root, and mulled citrus peel (orange, grapefruit.) I grapple with the dryly sweet and bitter mass for an hour before the second act starts. Gradually, a translucent haze of chalk and acid seep from the fabric to bring an element of fresh drinkability. During this phase, a statement forms midpalate—adhesive, aranciata fuel oil—and it carries on politely to extend the finish; this elicits salt. Here is where another wine might veer into a direction *less organized.* However, in this instance, a hoarse breeze of weighty, shearing action imposes dry order—mineral.
(2 hours open, half depleted, this bottle can be set aside for updates.)
________
24 hours later; remaining half resealed in the fridge 38°F; windows-open, breezy sunshine afternoon. The taste of the drink is now tilting in the direction of: voiceless structure; grip; bitter raspberry; crumbled pavement. The finish is elongated with tire skid and scree. As it warms to 55-60°F there is a benign influx of plum, framboise, and tea—translucent at first; always quenching and fluid.
SUMMARY: 2016 Rosé de Saignée Les Maillons, today, is more impressive than it is pleasurable. It has power, complexity, and purity. I can appreciate the involving, aesthetic benefits of restricted access, but there are moments when I wonder if drinking this is a chore. This bottle was purchased on release and stored carefully.
TIME:I liked it better when I drank it three years ago.

12/22/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

grappa-scented of smoldering white rocks, before tension develops with glutamate and almond plum mash. Vast, organized and disciplined interiors of gauzy pastels. Filigreed spine. Latent sappy adhesive. Seashell acidity. Glycerin pointed in a maze of detail. Steel coffee urn. Marzipan. Please comment with your clues about where I can buy this in the usa.

2/24/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

this bottle was first opened ~6 months ago.
strawberry glare, oyster nougat, indian ocean.
certainly ridiculous.
sticky with dirt road summertime
almond and pie plum
conferences of williams and bartletts, cult-sober
leveraged now

11/12/2023 - SteveK52 Likes this wine:

I removed the cork ~90 minutes before drinking. Immediately recognizable as Pineau d'Aunis to my drinking partner. Luxurious fragrance, medium weight, sleek tannins. This wine would be allotted to a trusted manager at a medieval castle at Christmas, while the Lord would drink it during the rest of the year. Drink and hold. Seems like an excellent vintage for this wine. I have two bottles left; perhaps I should buy 1-2 more. Huzzah to Bellivière for not changing their magnificent label art.

1/30/2024 - JohnMcIlwain Likes this wine:

Pretty and high-toned. Good freshness. Maybe not as “gutsy” as other vintages, but fine flair and bright acidity. Excellent with a roast chicken with salsa verde (the Tuscan kind) and a salad of arugula with a chicken fat and sherry vinaigrette. A useful wine for the table and at this stage that’s a virtue. I’ll look for a couple more bottles. Very good if not the ultimate in complexity.

8/18/2020 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Stainless steel and lees, at first. Triangular stance. Devastating uppercuts of mythical Veltliner apples. All of this is washed away by the tide of keenly knit pulp acid. The color of its flavor is sand and green.
Vastly energetic. It’s the kind of energy that might be considered impolite in certain contexts. But any kind of clue will grant access to its confidence. It is silken texture, not particularly salty, and green only to the extent of evoking hard, spring herbs.

9/7/2023 - Putnam Weekley Does not like this wine:

I voluntarily flogged this cuvée in the aughts. I enjoyed it then for its appeal, concentration, professionalism, and value. And I selected this bottle, and paid for it—I mention this because those are factors that ordinarily enhance charitable analysis. But this is disappointing. Suggestions of techno yeast fruit, thin texture, generalized grape flavor, steeped in bitter green seeds. ... canned brown bread (w/out butter.) Tastes like embalmed, fresh, international ten-dollar wine—I might have guessed Malbec.
24 hours later, my notes are consistent. Bitter greens morphed to burnt rubber.
70 hours later, as it wears out, dark, oily green flavors predominate. Sugar is all that buffers it at this point.

2/10/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Only now (after 'an hour') is it truly blooming—a delirium of violets, pea soil, and orchard blossom. I should mention that it is not particularly "ink colored," though it is clad in phatic gestures of pencil and bay leaf. The drink is like very hard well water (though hardly watery!) A bracing, oblique suggestion volunteers of berry marmalade, from a basket, on a lawn, by a cobbled brook; very pretty and patiently perfumed. Hoisting the panoramic frame is old, filigreed iron, buried in antique concrete. More: freshly printed newspaper; tweed kept in cedar; blackcurrant/licorice extract; mint; cassis. The finish is a topic of deliberation: it is very reserved, arguably pinched, some might say "short." I sense it—the finish—to be a contrite, tasseled string section, obsessively organized. I'm eager to drink this wine in its second or third decade. (bonus text wall is included in the comment)

2/10/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

7.5% abv. AP 18. What a mark it is to observe the continuity of work between Richters Dirk and Constantine. The latter achieves maximums of flavor, both in amplitude and detail, where the former in effect was a bit more passive and romantic. Mind you, this is a subtle, inward difference, surely undetectable to the criterati and vintelligentsia (not we!)
NOSE/MOUTH: whole mashed limes and roses. Chalky, pointed acids seem to overrule the sugar/body, at first. Later there is a citrus-syrup sensation familiar to anyone who prematurely opens JJ Prüm wines—I only mention it as a familiar reference; there are others. Insistent surges of wildly fresh grapefruit, lemon, (etc.,) burst through an illuminated tissue of ginger and mint. Incredibly detailed and directed. Geologically transparent. Thick with nutrient potential. Bright, illuminated, racy, hasty in action.
SUM: though I prefer this at 40-50° F, it survives the passive warming test in style. It's fit to drink through 60°. Anyone with access and cellar ambition would write this on a shopping list in ink. After 2031 it will be obvious.

2/8/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

11.5% abv. AP 06. How can I be angry at the gods of hidden bottles? I am damned to rebellion. My heart lights up though, blinded, when I see a strategically placed bottle of this 2018 at my local Riesling shop. Exotic, lean, yoga-toned body lines (this wine, the taste of it) lead in scrupulous distance to savage Pouilly-Fuisse, feral Chigny, and heckin' Clos Allées. Why am I wading in a quarry of melon cobbles? What curious species of mint apple is this? Thanks to all my friends who forgot to sell this bottle.

2/10/2023 - NoahCap wrote:

Following this wine over the course of a few hours was a weird wild ride. I don’t know how to even being writing a tasting note. So, let’s call this a tasting narrative. It’s like the story of my evening with a bottle I took a random flier on. The probability that you'll find this bottle yourself is nearly zero, the probably that you'll have this same experience, exactly zero. Read on if you must.

I found this at a local shop; apparently this bottle has been sitting in their basement for the better part of a half century. Bottle caked in grime, label all scuffed up, but the fill level was excellent, color looked vibrant, no signs of seepage, and the price was $55. Not cheap, but tempting nonetheless. I wasn’t familiar with the 1983 vintage in Burgundy, but a quick google shows that Decanter rates it 4/5 and says that Cote Beaune is more reliable than Cote de Nuits. Worth the gamble??? I decide that it is. It sat in my home cellar for 2 wks, but today was a tough day at work, so it’s as good an excuse as any to pop the cork.

What a roller coaster! Pulling off the lead capsule reveals a decent looking cork: a good sign. Extracts beautifully with Durand. I’m immediately excited; delicate red fruit aromas come pouring out of the bottleneck. There is a significant amount of sediment, so I decant most of the wine into a narrow necked decanter with a little going into a big Burgundy stem.

From that first glass: Color is pale garnet, looks like a dark rosé. Wow does this smell great! Earth-driven with freshly turned soil and deep dark leathery catcher’s-mitt aromas perfectly balanced with wonderful fruit; concentrated cherries, raspberries, the memory of a sweet red syrup poured over Japanese-style shaved ice from when I was a kid. This is way better than I ever could have hoped for. Light body and medium acidity on the palate. Tannins are nearly gone. Core of sweet red fruit along with savory, mushroomy, earthy flavors. Very tasty, complex, long finish.

It self-destructs after about 15 minutes in the glass. The remaining wine turns metallic, harsh, thoroughly undrinkable; it tastes like poison. Down the drain the remainder goes. I refresh my glass out of the decanter and am rewarded with a repeat performance: a wonderful few minutes and then the wine falls off a cliff into vinegar and dirty pennies.

This is game is repeated over and over: small pour, drink quickly, another small pour, drink quickly, and on and on. Once I realized the fragility of this wine, I squirt a little argon into the decanter after each pour to limit oxygen exposure. Did it help? Who knows.

In general, I try to treat old bottles with respect, contemplation, patience, meditation, etc etc. But the experience of this bottle was like chasing a ghost. I’ve heard old Burgundies can fade fast, but this is ridiculous. What an experience! I usually don’t give points, but if I were to rate this, it would be somewhere between 65 and 97. It was well worth 55 bucks.

5/3/2020 - AlphaMikeFoxtrot wrote:

Fresh apples, pears, peaches. Some of the petrol/TBN flavors starting to form. There will be more in a couple years. The label says “off-dry.” I would go medium dry. Drinking nice now but will benefit from further aging.

4/16/2019 - Dale M wrote:

"A prime example of what I call “hidden sweetness” – residual sugar playing a supportive and catalytic role while not engendering any overt sense of sweetness – this will perform brilliantly at table as well as in your cellar.” David Schildknecht - I pasted this last part of DS's review on this same wine that perfectly encapsulates the perception of how the sweetness translates to the drinking experience; not troken nor Kabinett, it was very unique and damn tasty. Almost clear in color, I loved the smoky peach notes with biting grip. My first Halbtroken, my first Merkelbach, they won’t be me last. Yowzers.

1/21/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

nine days, nine years in reverse; 1/19/2024-1/27/2024 (lake erie basin): 8% abv. AP 14. A most kind gift from the meadmaker—thank you!
NOSE: a gentle, active spring rinse over worn stone; a clever combination of peach, piña, and strawberry coulis; nutrient salt crust on iron; wry, smoky levitations of wildflower perfume. All of this moves steadily in elegant appeal—bright, clean, and weightless. I catch glimpses of marine breeze in the background and decide it plays some kind of role in the impulsion of the object. MOUTH: forget trying to isolate viscera from structure here. At no point is it sweet or weighty. However, the transparent juiciness is something familiar in much older prädikat Rieslings in top form. Allowing it to warm up to >60° only summons determined, savory acidity; it's sticky—the acid is—and it entrains various cured mints, cockle shell, worn brass, and blueberry.

1/20/2024 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

nine days, nine years in reverse; 1/19/2024-1/27/2024 (lake erie basin): 4/6. 12% abv. AP 33. This wine is settling nicely into a slack state of beauty and utility. Vivid perfumes (red delicious apple, cassis, pear, eucalyptus, meyer lemon) meander at a browsing pace. A sovereign's assembly of texture and punctuation manifest in acid and stone. It's oathbound dry with impulsive generosity—flagrant in fragrance; easy to grasp. Enduring bedrock sap finishes it and demands quenching with another drink (of all things!) Let me distract it with some food—the end.

6/8/2023 - NickA Likes this wine:

Pretty, translucent cherry-red. Delicate on the nose, with some green foliage and some faint florality, like smelling the wrong part of a bunch of roses. More impact on the neat, sleek palate, but it's mostly bitterness, though there's some sweet fruit underneath; it could only be Italian. I liked this, but I wanted more from it.

11/11/2020 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

“Manseng” appears on the back label in large type. So does concise verbiage about terroir, and to please aerate the wine for 30 minutes. This bottle was imported by Weygandt-Metzler.

By taste, this is not an exemplar of long, complex elevage. Invasive wood cultures are absent. There is a note of hay, from the field, like a packing material for tall silhouettes of fruit. Mix every fruit in the produce department until you can’t isolate any one of them. Add sandalwood, basil, fenugreek, lime seed, and humid wetland breezes. Sweetness is roughly half Sauternes, or double Kabinett. If I have one more bottle, it can wait another decade for all I care.

UPDATE: the last 6 oz. in the bottle were resealed and literally lost in the fridge for 20 days. The drinking experience is all still there. Fruit cocktail from a primordial can. Williams pear. Pineapple. A whiff of Dijon mustard. Chalk.

1/9/2024 - oxidatif wrote:

Damn why are all the 21 Bourgogne rouges so reductive. This has a way more savory plum thing going on (comparing with Lavallee Ma Pierre) but still pretttttty flinty. I really wish I knew if this was gonna age out, I love this fruit and the acid is perfect. Gonna sit on my other bottle for a few years

7/8/2020 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Legend has it there is some Merlot in this field blend. 2015’s roasty character is not only evident, it’s naturally exaggerated. That walnut resin, blood iron, and licorice juice intrinsic to cru Côtes du Rhône is amplified. This is an exciting drink, and challenging. It’s clearly a relic of an advanced civilization. The tannins swell with bitter confidence, roiling and seething in the large interior provinces of the taste. Outwardly there is a shockwave of mulling spices following behind another pressurized front of smooshed berries. One more drink confirms a rather more interior sensation of coffee oil and angry roses.

Put the roses in the tobacco jar. It’ll calm them down.

12/9/2020 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

1st session: tonic herbs infused in sour berry syrup collected by gravity from under the clusters. (Imagine how heavy with flavor the berries must be to burst spontaneously through the skins like that.) Cardamom, Tobacco. Great wines have tension. even polar tension. In this instance it occurs across the imaginary divide between the beginning of a drink and the finish. It starts dense, thick, and mouth-coating, with tart, flavor-rich, ruby berry and spice. The shocking moment occurs half way through, when it suddenly becomes a lord’s antique library—dry, erudite, rich with leather and old silk pages, studded with tangled narrative code. And lastly, a whispering levitation of one savory, dark, bitter note; which amounts to an invitation to drink it perpetually.

2nd session: Pencils in antique red berry and lavender jam. Patient archways. I want to concentrate now on its flavor and texture of sap. Great red Burgundy can be sappy, but that term suggests a degree of aggression and amplitude that is not present here. This sap requires you to volunteer for it. And when you do, you fall into a tunnel of truffle and earth. Serve it with slow cooked comfort food. Fats, produce, aromatic vegetables; that sort of thing.
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Stirring, delicate, tender with age. The core is lean, perfumed, grape. This really wants to be experienced in a setting without stimulant pollution. Don’t drink it after a shot of Cap Corse. Don’t try and assess it after tasting 23 other wines. That's a good way to miss it completely, *and all the more completely* if you have experience!

9/27/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

10.5%, AP 01. This is my last bottle of a vintage I once opened routinely. EYES & EARS: perfect color; a slight chroma gain over the years. There's a barely audible sound of positive pressure equalizing under the screwcap. NOSE: medium length teeth (drill, Saar, Côte des Blancs.) Tall stone face, quenched with a solution of sprouted lemon seed, herb cream, and button mushroom. MOUTH: speechless, for minutes. Years ago, acidity etched its drier-than-trocken finish (we drank in awe.) Now, sweetness emerges to organize the experience. The action is airborne as ever, but the volume under the arc is filled in, with blazing and varied color. Ridiculously large blossoms, wilted in coastal rain; bombastic, bell-ringing tang; saline herb infusion. More yellow than green; more green than red. Long, pristine, animated finish. This wine possesses a particular appetizing bitterness that appeals to adults—a tonic aerosol—as it gently punctuates the range. Arguably, it has yet to peak; an exemplary 2015; an exemplary Mosel blend.
TIME: it drinks slowly, especially for something only 10.5% abv. So flavor. And the contrast is unavoidable, between common flavor bombs boosted with micro-bio insights, and something organized by its soils, like this. Temperature is a topic here—logarithmic leverage at the extremes, like two completely different wines at 40° and 65°. Warmer now: it's oily, a mischievous flavor concentrate; savage Baltic forest of pine, apple, and lemon root.

7/2/2023 - JohnMcIlwain Likes this wine:

The 2014 Simone Palette Rouge is exiting its primary fruit stage with resinous and garrigue character emerging with pretty spicebox aromatics and dried flowers developing on the nose. Fabulous with chicken fricassée, roasted mushrooms, roasted red pepper salad, and farro. No hurry on the Simone but certainly worth a look if you have a couple.

12/30/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Falkenstein Horizontal (Detroit): 1/12. 8.5% abv. AP 15. 63°F. NOSE: arid, cascading, foraged natural laundry sheets. Scrub. Wind. Gravel. Pressed roses. Hyacinth blueberry dust. Time flatters it with the emergence of a linear, sharply edged gesture of black slate. MOUTH: translucent, creamy medium for the expression of strawberries, sage, and crumbled road; weightless; withdrawn acid claws; and blooming green fruit sugar. Complex and restrained in such a way that it's all too easy to project sensation upon it—pear? yes; apricot? yes; pistachio? yes.

12/30/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

Falkenstein Horizontal (Detroit): 1/6. 10.5% abv. AP 18. 63°F.
EYE: I don't recall ever seeing a bloom of dark grey/green fungus on the top of a cork in a freshly shipped wine—very slight, in this case. I take this to be a value neutral condition, or maybe just slightly promising.
NOSE: stately, salt, collagen, cured and pressed herbs, bright and baritone fruit sensations (lemon, fallen peach, fig, lime, tamarind, pear, blueberry.)
MOUTH: wow. Energetic, transparent, & massive marble slab of flavor. Huge displacement. Entertaining and raucous, yet bedrock. As poised as it is, it leaves my head spinning. A drink is ready and thick with glycerin; deeply saturated with stone acidity; utterly clear; and teased with an ever-shifting curation of flavonoid characters—pea shoot, galangal, parsley.
FINISH: gathers itself into a dry sheet, a brittle and detailed tissue. There's lots of flavor production here, too: seashell; cracked rock; lime/ginger/cassis.

12/29/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

12% abv. AP 10. NOSE: animale, sweet stems, grape jelly. MOUTH: angular, dry, steely transparency. All kinds of acid are involved with the skin and the bones of this object. Thick-skinned, inky little salt-marsh berries insist rewarding fruit flavors. Returning to the aromas, now rearranged by such a piercing mouthful, there is a frontal tablet of dense, aromatic, dark-colored wood. I like the range and energy here. Big mouthfuls enable appealing arcs of aromatic berries and sappy herbs. Very dryly drinkable. The beautiful way it pairs with slightly under-salted soul food is startling. 89? points.
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24 hours later, remaining 6 oz. resealed tabletop—I did not expect this wine to change much, but it did, and all in the direction of drinking pleasure. Most striking is the gain of luxuriant, draping texture. More subtle is the way the aromas and flavors have merged. Today it tastes more like ideals related to Pinot Noir, as lean and attenuated as ripe fruit can be. In no way to be confused with Chambertin, but sharing something like that perfume—opium, violets, blackberry, quarried stone—with a breach of spearmint and wintergreen. Maybe I can find another bottle or two to lay down. 90+.

9/12/2014 - Keith Levenberg Likes this wine:

This is a really terrific chardonnay, about as classic as it gets. I don't think I've ever had one from California as pure and crisp as this. The fruit is so bright you gotta wear shades, and it has a tactile minerality giving it a chalky, sandy texture that makes you think of the beach. Next time I have to try this with lobster. Not much of a fan of the Vogon poetry on the label, though.

12/27/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

2/3. Sharp, fresh, informed with doughy almond meal, patiently turning breeze-blown drapes on lemon pulp, dried spring herbs, garden tools, and a curious hypothesis of apricot crossed with kirsch. Drink 3/3 by 2025 or so.
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24 hours later, resealed in the fridge. Traces of exhaustion, dry weeds, and steel. Credit for its clarity and attenuation. Is this an example of cosmetic hazard malolactic inoculation? Maybe not! But maybe. Please educate me in the comments if you know somethings. The score can remain 88; but this drink would be 87.

12/21/2023 - Trazzle Likes this wine:

First of two bottles put away a couple of years ago. Mineral driven as always with the zero, but really starting to develop some deeper notes. Excited to wait a couple of more years to pop the second one. Great NV bottle to put away.

8/1/2022 - Madera16 wrote:

Big fruity nose, little bit Bojo-like, there’s a tiny bit of MC in the background; cocoa. Alcohol comes across a bit high, but it’s also a bit warm. Moderate tannin.

12/24/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

afaik, this is from inventory freshly shipped to my local jurisdiction. The invoice—with a certain record of unreliability—described it as "2019." However, the bottle is completely free of vintage statement, or indeed any hint of serial marking. I find it tantalizing that the cork is stamped with "23.17." Could this be 2017 base wine? Disgorged in 2023? Unlikely; but if it is, the taste will surely show it.

NOSE: modest; compact with white stone; biscuit bench; green raisins; lemon blossom; straw. MOUTH: graceful, muscular fruit—white peach, bergamot, strawberry, sloe. Cool stone bitterness lends structure. Acidity is stitched in the fabric, which drapes almost dry. There's a round, turbulent whoosh, sorting of fruit at the base—fresh and floral. Saccharides accumulate at a respectable pace, especially as the end of the bottle warms to 64° F room temp. It rests on worn bronze. There's an intriguing and appetizing backlick of licorice/tar.

Final guess, don't quote me: disgorged within the last 18 months, could be 2019-2021 fruit. If I have two more bottles, they can be opened 2024-2028.

8/15/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

A care free contact, and with bait for the sensory escapist. Mineral, sour, yellow-green fruit is counter-weighed in sun-broiled elegance. A spirited, stiff, grassy episode is involved in the event off a drink. So is puff of saline, evacuated under pressure, with incipient texture of airborne snowy scales. Charred lemon oil surges from the core, suggesting evergreen saps and tamarind. Surges of blanched bedrock. Something about this reminds me of hot wind in Jalisco, quenched under corrugated steel and pottery. Fresh. Resilient structure. Filled with detail. Joined by enthusiastic, opportunistic, savory green—call it weed and risk being exposed as a tourist starved on television culture.

So enamored with the wines of Zsolt Sütó I am, that it made sense to try some bottles currently available in USA from his younger colleague, István Bencze. I'm glad I did!

12/14/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

starts all sour red pruneaux before gathering structure and confidence.
Heady perfumes. Roiled, tangled actions involving cinnamon, strawberry jam, loosely organized licorice, duck fat, stiff and finely grained tannins, and freshly brewed coffeepot. absolutely stunning. I hope the last 5 ounces in the bottle is meaningful tomorrow when I share it with jarred.
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24 hours later, resealed from the fridge and drove across town, I could notice no sign of oxidation or decay. There's a boisterous, fresh pulpy fruit quality to its surface of flavors. I like it best with the time and space to meditate on it a bit, to repeat a few drinks. The core is a hypnotic charm, resilient and stony. There are plenty of exotic spices there to ponder, too, without being pushy. A great success.

12/13/2023 - Putnam Weekley Likes this wine:

12% abv. AP 05 22(!) 1000ml glass under screwcap.
Half-year parallax between this December bottle and June's is greatly instructional. Time seems to have altered the wine itself to a certain degree. Now the texture is an increment more tender. It is also more unashamedly aromatic. A hurried, busy rinse of mulled laurels, roses, and orange blossom carry the event forward. Acidity is clearly doing its job, even if stuck to the wall. Blissfully floral. Cassis grout. A quenching, pavlovian instrument. I hope to buy another few bottles before it vanishes forever.