Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

"Sometimes I drinks to remember, sometimes I drinks to forget."

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Had this over two nights, in between which it saw a few days in the freezer. On night 1 I was not terribly impressed. It was grapey and simple, and although it had decent scale and some acidic cut it didn't seem all that 09. Not very plush or dense, a slightly though not abnormally bitter finish. I ...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Winebid's been good to me. All wines in very good shape. Pick your spots on price.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

+1 But, you are the guys pointing out there's a "style" shift and not just some warmer than average growing seasons. I couldn't say what effect certain modern winemaking techniques will have on these wines, but they may be the wildcard in comparing the past decade's vintages with those war...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

So I am sensing then some resistance to the concept of "typicity" - another value-laden term - at even the gross level say of "left bank?" As in, "a typical left-bank vintage." Personally I have wondered about that. I recall posting a question to members asking what cha...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Yes, as you've put it, Ken, "normal" can be a value-laden term. I would be at least as interested in the subjective normal as well as some sort of objective normal, or objective normals. For example, if we were to observe meterological data in Bordeaux over the past 50 years, undoubtedly w...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Does the interruption in publishing reviews of certain areas in WA #206 have something to do with Galloni(sp)? Like he didn't fork them over, or, possibly, the counterclaim he will undoubtedly file with his answer to the WA lawsuit? I wonder who represented Bob in the sale. I expect there is a prett...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

An intriguing question, but I need to state the counter-proposition: Is there a "normal" Bordeaux vintage? What makes Bordeaux somewhat interesting on this point, say compared to a place like Napa, is that there is so much variation in vintages and weather patterns. I was thinking about t...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

The 08 Figeac is $80 at JJ Buckley. The 09 is 3x that.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

The question is the most normal vintage. There's not cut-off. Had I personal experience with '85 I might have said that too, but I haven't.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

OrlandoRobert wrote:I love the past but cannot afford the future (with this estate).

Those Chateau which do not repeat the past are condemned to the modern style of the future.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

I think I'll throw in with 2001 for the moment. Unfortunately I do not have, and have not drunk, too many wines from that vintage, but all the RBs have been super-solid without being flashy, and even the few lefties I've had seemed to fill in a bit on the second go.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

I like how this ends! Something to look forward to. Phil Spector also ended up badly.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

SAT time. I'll go first as it just came to mind.

Bob Parker is to Bordeaux wine as Phil Spector is to music. Wall of wine. One trick pony. Could even screw up Beatles' tracks.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Just changed my vote after reading David's post. First Magdelaine, now Figeac.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

... Valmy Nicolas the overall administrator.Valmy hails from the family that owns La Conseillante,and when he was a youngster spent several week as a guest in our home learning English.... Sounds like a Parker embed. Several weeks is plenty of time to "indoctrinate" a young, impressionabl...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Yes, the 06 Domaine de Chevalier almost struck me as "normal" in the flavor/structure profile. It did seem pretty large-bodied/plenty of stuffing though. Maybe that's not a bad sign.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Thought we'd get back now to some heavy, philosophical topics. With all of the vintages of the century since the 2000, I've been receiving the impression somehow lately that there are now only two types of vintages in Bordeaux: the vintage of the century type, and the somehow defective type. Bearing...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

What is the legal justification for this Jaugaret outrage?

!

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

We're going to find out, as with many a great travel article, that a substantial number of the tasting notes of a substantial number of wine critics are pure fabrications. Just recycled terms like "solid core of fruit," "kirsch-filled finish" and bouquet of "smoldering ember...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

stefan wrote:>>
$375K to review wines.
>>

How about $5 million + for coaching a college football team?

Roll Tide!

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

So it's correct, right, that Parker is still an employee/consultant or whatever to the WA with charge of what, Bdx and possibly something else like Napa?

Does anyone believe that WA will survive his ultimate departure? Despite having had other correspondents for a while, WA truly is Parker branded.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

I'll be interested too. Especially because I was sure they stopped making Bordeaux, if not before, than at the latest in 2010 when they retired the vintage of the century trophy for good.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Only had this one Citran, though I've been aware of the name since first having read Hugh Johnson's Encyclopedia of Wine. It was worth the wait. Having had a few 82 cbs on release, it is regrettable that I lacked the interest, mainly, and of course the foresight to just pick up a few cases of these ...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Now you are making fun of the greatest vintage in any region ever. I would not say (there I go with the negative again) that my only entrant in the 2007 Rhone sweeps, the 07 Clos du Caillou Cdr "Vielles Vignes" is a bad wine. Not at all. In fact I thought on purchase it was uncharacteristi...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Just to take the edge off the very intense, existential threads we have going now. 2008 Figeac. Yeah, call me easy, but after that 81-pt or whatever score was leaked I could not help myself. 1989 Cadet Piola. It's the t*ts! A serious question: if this has really been merged with Soutard, which label...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

I don't have enough experience tasting the same producer across multiple vintages to say what is a go-to qpr. And besides, the wines I have drunk mostly in the last 10 years have been by an large fairly recent vintages and however much I liked them or simply choked them down ITNOS I really don't kno...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

^Agreed, but aside from the 1sts and a few select others, it is those 98-100 point scores that drive the investment (or speculation, if you prefer) thesis. And I don't think Suckling's or anybody elses scores matter in this regard.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Yeah, I got hung up on the lawyerly "not inappropriate" thing. To restate, in my experience the Citrans of the world do age well and do develop those secondary/tertiary characteristics that make Bdx interesting. Almost nobody holds those bottles long enough (15+ years?) for them to develop...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

The 1982 Ch. Citran I had Saturday night was pretty good. It probably cost $5 on release and it cost me $25 in the past year. Now it's true, when I pulled the cork a rabbit did not jump out of the bottle. Otherwise it did the trick. I have not found it to be the exception that the lesser Bdx - and h...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

That band aid and a certain medicinal quality the wine showed on opening just sort of subsided and the wine became an undifferentiated melange of nice spicy-sweet flavors. This wine was just about perfect in the sense there were no obvious detracting elements and it was rounded, balanced and complet...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

This exceed expectations to the extent of two arched eyebrows. Details on the morrow.

http://gifsoup.com/view/2071746/spock-e ... raise.html

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

I must be the luckiest guy in the wine world when it comes to these inexpensive (then and even now) older cru bourgeois-types that who knows how many people have been cellaring since release. Bought this about a year ago and it's been idling not in the vinotemp but in the ambient 80-62 degree temps ...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Funny you should bring up Francois and burg epiphany. He did spring for some mighty (nice) burgs when we met him for lunch in Paris. Of course one was a Coche-Dury Meursault which at any level needs nothing further be said and the other a wicked nice red Corton (I think it is all Grand Cru?) from a ...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Better than the "Onion"...brought a tear to my eye...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Without speculating on their future I would just note that so many of the 05s I tried on release were so gooey, yet after just a couple of years they had dried out and straightened up in a manner similar to that Ian describes for the 2000 PB. Now I had not purchased any cru classe left banker until ...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Wow, that was fast. Jim printed his letter and Bob retired. A couple of things: First, an exercise. Please fill in the blank: If Lisa Perotti-Brown MW appeared any more relaxed, she'd be _____________. Second, how could Parker continue to view himself as an iconoclast? Maybe back in the day, but for...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

I would also hazard that the 09-ness is expressing itself most prominently in the wine at this time. Maybe it always will. This is to be expected. When anyone comes across an 09 that seems really taut, high strung and holding back, please let me know. I remember carping heavily on the 05s I tried on...

AlohaArtakaHoundsong

Funny you should mention Vietnam. Ike warned us about the "industrial-military complex" (so quaint now and especially considering the source). And it got us Ford's Bob McNamara as SecDef and the Tonkin Gulf incident. Jim is like Ike. Hey, he's even held executive office. He's been warning ...

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