Wow. Great episode.Great questions.(Thanks for that)
my wines this week in ascending order.
2000 Amity Pinot Noir
2004 Prisonor
2002 Kangarilla Road Shiraz

Bears will win 30-20 and run the ball for 285 yards.
Ewing most underrated NYC athlete… I would give my vote to Chad(noodle arm)Pennington

Gary,

AWESOME Show – love the excitement! The vaca. did you well.

QOD: I’m choking it down as I type – 2003 Sainte Leocadie Les Clauses Minervois. It’s awful.

QOD Gift Wine…………Lost Vineyards malbec bonarda i would have rather eaten the bottle

Great Show….
QOTD: Duckhorn Decoy 2002……blahhhhh….not worth the $$$.
The Can Blau Montsant is much better wine and half the price.

Boor-goy, huh? I love Chinon, so I’ll have to give the neighbor a try. Thanks for bringing out wines from off the beaten path once in a while. I’m with you – life’s too short to drink the same wine all the time. In fact, I’ve never purchased more than 2 bottles of any one wine. Saying yes to 12 bottles of a wine is the same as saying no to 11 bottles of wines I’ve never tasted!

mbannon:

Love your attitude about trying as many wines as you can…..but I found that some wines built for long life are very different wines at differnt stages of their lives. I live to buy 4 bottles of these type of wines (Montelena, Insignia, The Leovilles, etc) and taste them 5 to 7 years apart. A Montelena at 10 years old and 20 years old are much different wines than different Napa Cabs at the same age!

Joe

QOTD: My girlfriend was recently down in Florida on a vacation and she had a bottle from Trinchero. She claimed it was great, but couldn’t remember much else about it. We were in a little wine shop in the North End here in Boston when she spotted a bottle of 2004 Trinchero Family cab. It was $10, so I was a bit skeptical, but we bought it anyway.

This wine can be summed up in one word: BRUTAL.

I think we had about 3 sips and tossed the rest.

Gary,

You get special credit for bringing up TV tag! Hahahaha I loved TV tag. Can we setup a special WLTV tag game? YOU’RE IT!

QOD: My friend opened a bottle of St. Francis Cab last week. Can’t remember the vintage, but I also couldn’t finish the glass. Ugh!!!

Okay, so you like November Rain. But why get obsessive about it? Guns and Poseurs made other good songs. I wonder if any of the band members are still alive or are they still in rehab?

What kind of grape am I? I’m a Molinara: Italian; contributes color and character; most appreciated in small amounts.

G’nR is still cool Gary…go with your heart. Welcome to the Jungle? come on! Great tune..that drummer is so underrated…actually, the whole band was underated musically…put into the same light as Poison? no way…G’nR is cool. I had the G’nR blacklight poster in the 4th grade. Obviously, I didn’t really know that blacklight posters were for the more exploratory crowds (if you know what I’m saying.

good episode…EAST Coast wine country…do you know anything about GA? I keep askin in the ASK link, but no love.

QOTD: Las Rocas Grenache – did NOT like this wine, which was different from your rating…but that’s why we’re all diferent. I think I’m learning that I like the older world stuff, as that one tasted too “fruity” for me.

Colts!

Hope you enjoyed the weather @ the game.

QOTD: Had to dump a bottle of Los Vascos 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon. My wife & I each had a couple of sips then down the drain it went.

Great episode Gary. I love the vertical tastings.

QOTD: Blue Moon Reisling (2001 I think). Another Blue-bottle-disaster.
It was horrible. It was a gift that was taking up space. It was a pleasure to watch 740ml of it flow down the drain.

Isn’t it pronounced Ma-Be-Yo instead of Ma-Bu-Lay???

Went to a nice restaurant on Saturday night. Paid like $75 for 2003 Paraduxx from Duckhorn Winery (under huge pressure from the waiter). I kind of wished they opened it on the Thursday before we got there.. May have helped it open.

Once again enjoyed the ep., your enthusiasm, and the story about your Dad’s cell phone(freaky). I had tried quite a few wines this past week and none to be forgotten but had a Pianetti Sangiovese last week that could be. Gary, almost paid you(WL) guys a visit this weekend(Sunday). My cousin lives about two or three blocks from WL and he told me take a ride to WL with him. Of course, I’m not going to pass that up so I ran to get my coat and jump in his car. As we approach the store, I’m thinking, he’s going a little too fast to make the turn into the parking lot and he keeps going past the store. I realize as we are passing WL is closed anyway but time seemed to go in slow motion for a while( Like the part in the movie “A Christmas Story” when the kid is helping his dad change the tire and there goes the lugnuts all over the place and he says OOOOOOOOH FUUUUUUUUDGE! It was if I was a kid told we were going to an amusement park and the driver keeps going. So I said Muth&R Fu$ker Sonovabi$%H! where the #%#& are we going. I was hijacked just take a ride to somewhere else. Disappointed!? Indeed!! Hope to see ya next time!

QOTD: Casa Castillo Jumilla. I bought the wrong vintage and got a bottle of sour tea. Ugh.

Hi Gary,

I noticed the last couple episodes you mentioned tasting dill in the wines. I thought perhaps this might be a good time to suggest discussing the different types of oak used in aging wine – French versus American. In my limited experience I have noticed dill as a hallmark of American oak while French oak has a more floral characteristic. Both of the wines you tasted where you mentioned dill were French wines so probably weren’t American oak. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Tim

QOTD- The worst 2 wines by a wide margin were the 2003 Laurier Merlot & 2000 Laurier Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (Sonoma County). Usually old Bob Stashak from Classic Wines does a mighty fine job with whatever he has his hands in but the ball got dropped on these two. The older Laurier Pinot Noirs (2000 or so) made when Mary Edwards was consulting were amazing especially considering they were under $10 Dead Presidents…

Yuw, watching “not so back” back-eps. Know what? I think this Italian obscure wines week is the greatest idea you ever had. So , plzzzzzzz, go ahead. And don’t forget Nero di Troia, Lacrima di Moro, Bonarda, Refosco, Cortese, Grecanico, Aglianico, Croatina, Gaglioppo, Magliocco, Malvasia Nera, Bombino Bianco, Inzolia, Fiano, Monica, Corvina, Frappato, Perricone, … you could go on for ages like that. 400 different varietals, … maybe two months ;-)?
I had an Statti Arvino 2004 on friday: very strange, never came across this in Italian wine, blend of Cab. Sauv. and Gaglioppo. It tasted like sauerkraut, juniper berry and blueberries; weird mix, and quite ‘cool’ for a Southern Italian wine (Calabria).
Anyway, QOTD: worst wine last week was a Chianti Classico Castell’in Villa 2003. It was not bad for 9 EUR, but a bit jammy and alcoholic, not really persistent and chalky tannins. Not bad though, but a bit cooked, pity when compared with their 2001, which was of penultimate greatness :D. That was the worst …

Just opened up my bottle of the 2005…

I have to agree with GV – great bottle. Lots of veggies in this one, and I like it. It’ll be a challenge not to finish this one off in one sitting.

Has anybody tried the “aging sticks” that are available on sites like Wine Enthusiast? I’m curious what everybody’s impressions of them are. My company made a Zinfandel last year, which is still quite young, and in my opinion, the “aging stick” does a pretty good job of improving the taste of the wine – making it taste somewhat “older” than it actually is. I’ll be curious to compare tasting notes from the wine “aged” by the stick versus wines actually aged in the cellar. Any feedback would be welcome.

Happy Tasting…

Great episode Gary. QOTD: The worst wine I’ve had is the 2003 Bonny Doon Big House Red.

Hi Gary great episode. I’ve had a couple Bourgeuil and a couple Chinons. Find the Bourgeuil a lot more user friendly. In fact they remind me of some $20-$50 California Cab Franc’s I’ve had. Love that intense, fruity, minty, and meaty flavor. Will watch a Chinon episode next!

I am drinking the 05 Mabileau right now and I never thought a Cab Franc could be so nice. It is 90 pts for me (check out corkd.com).

QOTD: 06 Smoking Loon Merlot

QOTD: I wrote a letter to the Dynamite winery because the 2004 cabernet was so awful I couldn’t drink it. A 20 dollar cab that I’d be hard pressed to score over 75 points. Highway Robbery my friends!

7 superbowls under eric mangini? hahahahahahahahhahah. hahahaha. aaahahahhahahahahah.

the curse of belichick is upon you.