May 8, 2023 - River School Auction Tasting (Washington DC): A nice wine but fairly obviously new world. Decent length and good flavor. A bit outclassed by its company. Still, Carole Meredith is my hero.
April 6, 2023 - my bottle was winery direct and well stored since purchased, but it also was tart and thin with little to offer 🤷♂️
October 15, 2022 - Pretty surprised at the mixed reception this gets on CellarTracker. I thought this bottle was delicious. No decanting, as it replaced a bottle from a different producer that was corked. Loads of deep, dark berry fruit, rare meat and eventually a higher toned raspberry and lavender finish. Fine balance, so I have no worries about waiting on my last bottle. This should go on quite well for another 5-10 years with no problem. Nice way to commemorate the recent release of their 2020 Syrah, which is the next to last vintage.
February 17, 2022 - Note is well after consumption, so not detailed, but given I see some off experiences of late I'll chime in. My bottle was quite sound and quite excellent, belying it's age of over 12 years. It was Northern Rhone-ish in style and very enjoyable.
July 11, 2021 - Second flawed bottle and/or poor wine with four more to go. I don't have much hope. Horrible! Purchased from WineBid.com with no hope of returning for refund or replacement. Caveat emptor!
March 21, 2021 - I have been drinking wine for 12 years. This is the most acidic bottle yet. The nose was elegant, seductive, and beautiful. The palate was: Did someone squeeze lemon into my wine?
Seeing that there are some mixed reviews below. I am probably just one of the many unlucky ones to get a bad bottle.
Sad and disappointing.
February 5, 2021 - Such a deep ruby red. Agree with alot of MattMauldin's notes below. After a bunch of dark red fruit in the front end, some bbq smoke shows halfway through in the mouth. Drink now as this is in the zone
January 30, 2021 - Two hour decant. Deep ruby color, clearing at the edges. Lively aromatics - showing snappy blackberry & currant, mesquite smoke, fresh violets, sassafras, tapenade, hints of bay leaf and clove. Succulent open fruit on the palate, secondary flavors consistent with the bouquet, and adding hints of melted stone and balsamic reduction. Medium-bodied, densely structured but pliable. Bright integrated acidity, and thick juicy tannins, slightly angular, finishing with nice length. Mid-secondary with hints of maturity on the palate, squarely in its drinking window.
November 16, 2020 - This wine was really drinking outstanding, it could have five to ten years ahead of it. Give it a little time in the glass the fruit really develops, very reminiscent of a northern Rhone.
May 1, 2020 - My palate favors acidic old-world style wines. I love Barolo, Burgundy, Sicily etc. I dislike flabby wines. Big fat California Pinots for instance - some of them that retail over $100 I find literally undrinkable.
So this review is not coming from a neophyte taster tuned to flabby high alcohol Michael David dreck. I've been interesting in wine for 30 years and have tasted 1000's and 1000's.
The acid level of this LM is absurd, totally out of balance. I would be shocked if it was natural acid - to me it comes across really clearly as added tartaric.
I'm not sure why the acid is so out of balance in this wine. I suspect that the winemakers, who are incredibly expert and dialed in, got too cute with this vintage, as people who are dialed in experts can sometimes tend to do. I seems to me that they were focused on "going for something" with this bottle (long cellar life then a big reveal, hipster searing acidic style, middle-finger to the fat syrahs all around them?) and in the process lost stepped-back perspective on the wine itself.
Or maybe some cellar rat just screwed up handling a big sack of acid.
At any rate, this wine opens out of balance with way too much acid, then fluffs up some around the acid masking it a little, but not enough. Then fades on the second day showing too much acid in its third and worse perspective.
I really like LM Syrahs, have issued many 90+ scores. But this one is requiring me to look at the imbalance and see the emperor's new cloths. As much as I want to be part of the acid and cool cult-wine loving intelligentsia, I'm calling this one as it hits my tongue: an utterly disappointing vintage from a normally solid label.
75 points - squarely in the middle of "below average" in CT's scoring guide.
To be fair this wine has a great nice nose. If one only had to smell it that would be ideal.