The Official Wine Thread - Page 948

Villa Antinori rosso for 9.75€.

Anybody hear of a producer in Long Island called Clovis Point? I had an a great Merlot from them for $15 Saturday night.

"I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot!!"'

~Miles

Speaking of LI wineries, I was at a thing last week with a lot of Fingerlakes wineries showing their stuff (most quite good) and there was one from LI, I think it was called Millbrook, and I tried their Chard and it was ... bad! Actually bad! I've had many indifferent wines and many that just did not live up to expectations but this was the first time for a genuinely bad wine in a long time. I had forgotten they exist!

"I have a 61' Cheval Blanc."

~Miles

Most all of the Finger Lakes stuff was great, a few were a little weak, but basically all of the Rieslings were delicious, and some superb.


but yeah, that chard was

on the Kosta Browne - this was actually my first time ever tasting something from this producer. I'm on the list and I have a few bottles in my cellar from the 2009 vintage, though my bottles from 2010 were traded away. The '09 is still a young wine, and I decanted it for about an hour, but I imagine it would benefit from more age just to integrate more, it seemed disjointed at times. I wouldn't necessarily call it a giant fruit bomb, because I've had other wines that were much more over the top, but it wasn't far from it either. It was complex in the way that there was a lot of different fruit flavors involved, but I found this wine to be out of balance and (as I mentioned earlier) not integrated, or at least not integrated yet. There was good acidity and fairly good depth as well, but on the flip side I was a little surprised that the alcohol seemed so pronounced. I actually enjoyed the Au Bon Climat more than this simply because of the whole "balance" thing, which is the thing I care most about in wine - the ABC had a somewhat similar profile, but didn't have the fruit on turbo mode.

as was mentioned, Wine Spectator loved this wine and gave it 95 points while naming it their #1 in one of the "most exciting" wines of the year. Maybe it's just me.

I will tell you that I was pretty surprised they picked that KB to lavish such praise on. I think the RRV is a better wine (but I tend to like RRV Pinot and not everyone does). Their SVDs also tend to be superior, more complex, and less fruit bombish. I have no idea why they picked that as WOTY but I can tell you horse trading them to my somm friends is pretty lucrative. Needless to say they can charge quite a premium for a WOTY on their lists and allocation became suddenly very tight.

I personally really like KB. I had a bottle of the 4 barrel last year and drank a bottle of the 2007 SC recently and both were great, am unfortunately not on the list.

to my palate, the wine lacked some restraint. There was nothing subtle about it, and this is what I think threw it out of balance.

The integration was another issue, and is the main thing that had me thinking meh since I can appreciate and understand wines that are very much one particular style. I would have preferred to say "yes, this wine is a style that I don't usually go for, but it was still complex, well integreted, and had really solid depth from start to finish". Maybe more integration will come with age, maybe WS was assuming this all along.

The KB wines are DNPIM for me. I have found them to be hot, out of balance, and generally not representative of pinot noir at all. Like you, I find their biggest flaw to be balance and I don't think these will ever integrate. I don't mind an occasional big wine, but I don't think pinot is the right vehicle for that style.

Just picked up a case of Villa Antinori Rosso '08 at 9.75€ each. Will also pick up a case of the Bianco at 5.99€ each. Hard to beat QPR.

drinking a really nice $13 2005 Rioja that has the potential to go another 10 at least. This is a big chewy beast.

ME allocation in.

--