I have a 2009 Olga Raffault Les Picasses that I'll be opening sometime soon. It'll be my first Chinon, but one of my favs from last year was a Cab Franc from Merryvale. Cabernet Franc from the Loire tends to be a very different animal than California CF. Loire CF tends to show much more pyrazines (...

And the 2010 is $23. PJ's calls this THE benchmark wine of the Loire Valley. I love Raffault, and have been drinking and buying it for 20 years, but the only red producer who could be said to make THE benchmark wine of the Loire Valley is Clos Rougeard. Looking at Raffault, the 2007 is good, but on...

Happy b-day, Danny. On any given day, Mouton, Latour, Lafite and Pichon-Lalande can vie for wine of the '82 vintage. Of course, that would have to be a very good day. Stu I would swap 1982 LLC for Pichon Lalande and omit Lafite from my list. I've had 1982 PL over 2 dozen times, many of them blind, ...

Thanks for the warm welcome, and it is great to see old friends like Alex and David. Jim, I've found Lynch to have split personalities, with vintages like 1985 and 1990 to show more red fruit and elegance, while 1986 and 1989 are more dark, brooding, and show more tannic structure. 1982 has been a w...

I decided that a fitting first post here would be a recap of a terrific tasting in November, so here we go. MOSTLY OLDER BORDEAUX - (11/5/2016) A member of one of the tasting groups I belong to hosted a tasting in honor of his wife's birthday with an announced theme of Bordeaux. He outdid himself wi...