Tay JR
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NV Weightstone Vineyard Estate & Winery WE White No.4
4/28/2024 - Tay JR wrote: 84 Points
I recently read an article on the nascent Taiwanese wine industry and was curious to try some.
This is a blend of Golden Muscat, Musann Blanc and Mehone. The little information I could find seems to indicate Musann Blanc is a hybrid grape that was developed in Taiwan (and presumably specifically for the Taiwanese climate), whereas there's zero information online about Mehone. Golden Muscat is also a hybrid with Muscat d'Hamburg in its parentage.
Taiwan, much like many parts of Japan, sees typhoons for several months a year which naturally threatens yields and increases disease pressure.
When it's not pouring, it's also quite a bit hotter than is preferred during the growing season. Despite this it seems the grapes have issues achieving full ripeness, mostly because growers are forced to pick early lest their crop gets destroyed by any of the many typhoons that pass over the island each growing season.
Now on to the wine:
It's medium lemon in the glass and not quite crystal clear. On the nose it's aromatic and expressive with lots of lychee and white flowers. Despite the main varietals bring vinifera x labrusca hybrids, there's no trace of foxiness here, and the wine isn't nearly really grapey at all.
The palate is largely consistent with the nose, but is also distinctly thin, so much so that the non-wine drinkers who were having it commented on this quality as well.
I have to say that the quality here surprised me - given the challenges above I was expecting this to be a non-starter, but it's really quite a decent wine. There's really not enough information out there to draw conclusions on the terroir/winemaking's effect on the wine, but i'm definitely keeping an eye on these wines from now on.
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2021 Le Bois d'Azur Kyohō mon petit rouge
4/28/2024 - Tay JR Likes this wine: 91 Points
This is one of those wines which you just love or hate.
Make no mistake - this is a natty wine and doesn't try to hide it. Cloudy and a brick-ish pink in the glass, certainly quite an eyeful.
The nose opens with crunchy (and I mean CRUNCHY) red fruit, yeast, black tea, VA, and ends on a soft blanket of flowers. It's expressive and distinct, much like Beau Paysage's reds.
What surprised me was how much it tasted like regular vinifera. For context, this is made entirely from the hybrid grape Kyoho, and the Kyoho wines i've had generally had a distinct savouriness to them as well as a taste somewhat adjacent to foxiness.
This on the other hand was much more akin to Poulsard or Trosseau from Jura which makes sense because the winemaker here trained under Kenjiro Kagami of Domaine des Miroirs fame.
Anyway, on the palate, this wine was equally expressive. After the initial hit of VA, you get sour cherries, flowers, and ends with a bitter finish that I feel works really well with everything else going on here. The VA also blows off a little, and integrated nicely over the course of the bottle.
Again, this isn't a wine for the faint of heart, and that's entirely by design - make of that what you will.
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2011 Domaine Bzikot Pére et Fils Bourgogne Blanc
4/28/2024 - Tay JR wrote: 88 Points
No noticeable oak here and pretty simple overall. Lemon, apple, and some chalky minerality, as expected for this style.
Quite amazed by how fresh this was despite it's age and being only a BB though! Good concentration and plenty of fruit left over, plus it feels like age has rounded out the acidity a little and made it more palatable than a young BB.
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