10/7/2023 - Dibbs Does not like this wine:

Pretty much everything I dislike in white wines. Extremely reductive, massive dose of oak on the nose. People at the table seemed to love it. For me it was atrocious, guess my palate quite different from the people at the table.

5/15/2023 - lukeintowine wrote:

Hmm, not sure if this was a correct bottle. Too much development.
Very ripe apple, nutty notes, a bit oxidized.

2/25/2023 - LucasTijn Likes this wine:

Catherina Sadde is the real deal. I've been thoroughly impressed each time I've tried one of her wines, and even just the Coteaux Bourguignons is at a level most could only dream of. A dense perfume of violet, lilies, lilacs and black pepper alongside raspberry, tobacco, blackberry juice and herbal tea ooze from the glass. The wine has noticeable tannins and quite good structure, a little rustic, but has a playful and elegant side that really draws you in. The palate isn't as aromatically dense as the nose, mostly just forest berries and black cherry, but with a lovely texture and balance. A really great Coteaux Bourguignons!

12/4/2022 - auldalliance Likes this wine:

Opened in error! Confused the bottle with the Estate wine, of which I have 6 of same vintage. Label identical except for the words Hunting Hill!

Anyway, it was very pleasant, though I suspect too early for its maximum potential, and not noticeably superior to the Estate wine yet. Maybe a little less evolved and more restrained.

6/25/2022 - Vindraken Likes this wine:

A very delicate creature, none of the peachiness of Middle Mosel. Something is not quite right with the balance though.

1/19/2022 - HowardNZ Likes this wine:

Mine is a common experience with this wine ... I have a case of this wine in my refrigerated storage. The other day I saw that several of these bottles had corks protruding, almost through the foil, with some leakage. I took the worst looking bottle home and drank it over two evenings ... In short, even though the cork was soaked and a little hard to remove without breaking, the Bourgogne was fine, not inappropriately oxidised or with any other fault ... Pale ruby with some garnet. A characterful but light red Burgundy nose. Notes of funky forest floor, red and black berries and cherries - with some strawberry and red currant lift - roses, peonies and mixed spices. On palate there were similar notes but richer and riper darker cherry and berry, cocoa powder, sweet strawberry, barbeque smoke, fresh pomegranate, warm, tilled soil and some minerals. Juicy, lush and jammy with a soft core and gentle tannins. Loose knit and open textured. Only acceptable acidity. Low-seeming alcohol (12.5% ABV). Not long, detailed or in way profound. Still, it's not trying to be that. Delicious and enjoyable. Even with the leaky bottles, I will be drinking out until 2025+.

11/2/2021 - Waël Likes this wine:

Magic. Poured and drank. The nose is gorgeous like a bouquet of fresh flowers and magnolia, and vibrant fruit- lemon, lime, mango, pineapple and kiwi. The palate is even more impressive- fresh sharp tannins. I expected it to be buttery and rich but it was tue opposite: precise, refreshing and gorgeously fruity with a mineral finish. Lychee, kiwi, pineapple compote and green peaches. I don’t have another bottle but will make sure to get my hands on this wine whenever I can find it again.

6/20/2021 - csimm wrote:

This was a powerful showing, with some of its brawn really coming to the party early on (and staying for a while) before loosening-up its flex and allowing the yellow citrus and white stone elements to shine. It's a fiery P-M with an intensity that is wrestling with the finesse - not necessarily in a bad way; in fact, it made for quite an interesting education in evolving complexity. Still, the sum of its parts have not fully come together. But when they do, hold on to your hat, as there is serious promise coming for those patient enough to let this thing settle into itself.

Sealed with DIAM 10. So, take advantage of the confidence such a closure offers and sit on this wine for at least another 5-7 years. For those wanting a more delicate P-M, perhaps look elsewhere. For me, I like where it's headed. It just needs to continue "heading" to its destination, as it's just getting started on its journey to Xanadu - and not the Olivia Newton John Xanadu (awful), and not the literal Inner Mongol Kubla Khan city of Xanadu, but more the general metaphoric idyllicism of Xanadu - just for clarification :).

3/20/2021 - NostraBacchus Likes this wine:

Medium ruby/garnet color with some lightening up towards the rim. High viscosity. Beautiful notes of pure red fruit, strawberries, red cherries, some kirsch, but also some saline minerality, a touch of spices (white pepper), also some flowery notes, there are also some savory herbs and some graphite. It‘s medium+ bodied, with excellent mid-palate persistence (but without weight), it has medium tannin that is present but excellent quality and some medium+ acidity providing beautiful freshness. Long finish with very nice complexity. A fascinating CdP from this top-notch Cru (Pignan), from super low yields but gentle extraction and elevage in amphorae. Wow this is interesting and very complex.

3/13/2020 - jhw425 wrote:

Probably a great bottle of wine but so backwards I can’t even sort it out. Revisit in 2925 not before

2/17/2019 - The Gilded Sage Likes this wine:

Part 2 of 2

“Nanny,” I said. “It really is you. May I pour you a bit of this brandy?”

She blushed, shook her head, reminding me in a tremulous voice that she never took any alcohol at all, save for a bit of sherry now and again.
I knew well that she referred to the sort of vile cream sherry common to church rectories and pensioners’ homes, but I nevertheless summoned Aloysius (who had greeted Nanny with a sort of reticent gladness) to bring us a bottle of fine Oloroso.

And so began some weeks during which that kindly, gentle old woman and I drank bottle after bottle of the manor’s best sherry: from pale and austere Manzanilla with speck, to unctuous, blackstrap Pedro Ximenez. How we laughed, remembering earlier times! Nanny seemed to recall each detail of our shared life, reminding me with good nature of my high jinx from those days: sculpting ribald shapes from foie gras at dinner, or the terrible shock I once inflicted on her by placing the well-worn dust jacket from her Holy Bible on a copy of 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover.'

But alas, happy as we were for those weeks, even then I knew our joy could not last; for I could see that Nanny was not a well woman. She shivered sometimes for no reason at all; her appetite for organ meats wasn’t good. At first, I took her to be suffering from one among the very few illnesses that tend to afflict those in my own milieu: gout, the occasional touch of syphilis. I called for Dr. Enderby, who acted with such heroic distinction last autumn in curing Lord Willoughby’s bed sores, but when that good man emerged from her room it was with a grim and unyielding expression. There was nothing he could do for her now.

And so we found ourselves on that bleak winter night, drinking this exquisite Amontillado while I read to her from The Marquis de Sade by the delicate light of an old candelabra. Its aroma recalled an array of dried fruits; the spice chest I once saw at a fair in the village when I was allowed to go as a boy; great uncle Alfred’s tobacco urn, papered to look like a map of the world, where I used to hide marbles and other small toys. In the mouth, it recalled the dry skins of an almond, the burnt sugar sweetness of game on a grill.

As the candlelight began to flicker and wane, I looked up to see the window filigreed with fine frost. Nanny lay unmoving in bed, her breath slow and shallow, but evincing no labor. I watched her in that way for some time, seeming to fade, or perhaps to recede like the tide. I could not, I must now admit, help but notice that she had failed to finish her sherry. A pity.

Around midnight, the first of the candles burned out, and as a pale smoke twisted in the wake of the flame, I knew without even having to look that Nanny had parted from this mortal realm. For a long time I sat there, rent with my grief. Life had returned something precious to me, and now again it was taken away. But there had been pleasure—O, such pleasure! Such wine!—and there is, surely, something sacred in that. At some point, Aloysius knocked feebly at the door, and I bid him, wretchedly, leave me alone. Nanny’s hands lay peacefully on the bedspread, folded like the hands of a saint. Periodically, I looked up to steal a glance the sherry, at least two fingers high in the glass, a rich amber such as is known to preserve material from the beginning of time; it seemed to me then an object of infinite sadness, that glass, possessed of a stupid, mute eloquence that told of all life’s sorrow and love; it stood beside the bed on the table, alone, like the very cup of trembling.

Reader, I drank it.

1/28/2018 - cab wrote:

This bottle is leaving me kinda meh. Interesting to read other notes saying this will flower in 5 years. I'm not experienced enough for that kind of prognostication,but not what I would have discerned. Seems pretty one dimensional,and a little harsh. Not the most drinkable stuff in the world. In part because of some healthy tannins,though. Not bad,but in looking at my two prior notes,one saying but again,one saying not,I think I'll tip the balance to the not side.

11/27/2018 - Stevelayden Likes this wine:

AP 05 18. LOVE LOVE LOVE this Spatlese! Something Willi Schaefer did this year (or nature did) managed to transcend even his usual brilliance. I’m somewhat reserved in my review because I get the immediate impression that this is holding something back that will be offered up over time.

Spectacular nose on this! It’s like the freshest Beerenauslese in concentration and sort of primes one to expect a huge, ripe, and electric wine (similar to 2015). But no, this ends up being a spectacularly light, structured wine that somehow belies everything you think you knew about ripeness and concentration. So light and almost effervescent. Nay-saying at first. It forces you to be quiet and concentrate, searching and peeling back the layers.

And it’s this veiled distance that leads me to believe more detail will appear as this grows up. 95p for now with potential to be absolutely insane! This was a small crop for a very small producer, so if anyone has any left - buy it!

12/29/2017 - Gillmorphean wrote:

Crisp and clean, lemon and apple, a little flinty. Good but nothing special.

11/9/2015 - isbjoern wrote:

Absolutely lovely bottle of Grüner Veltliner. Crisp, lots of ripe acidity, citrus fruits, very refreshing and palate cleansing, like water from a mountain spring, classy pepper notes and some apple flavors. Extremely pure and racy, I really love this style. - 92 points