Posts belonging to Category Syrah

Summer was almost here…then it jumped off the hook just like a River Monster. tBoW and team tasters have been doing our best to get ready for endless heat and long evenings on the patio with corks getting pulled and the BBQ working. Spring cleaning usually turns up a couple surprises but this year we hit the jackpot. Been waiting on this double-and-a-half magnum for some time. We did not know what to expect although we could vouch for the past 20 years of provenance. There’s more. (more…)

Hand over the mantle of leadership for Rhone style wine-making to the Tablas Creek team. Something has happened in Paso and we need to understand how…somehow. A region that once struggled to overcome vegetal Cabernets and tomato-flavored Pinot Noir is the zenith of New World Rhone style wines. No more fruit bombs. Plenty of spine and grip. And lush fruit. (more…)

Collectible kosher wines? The thought boggles the mind. How could inky purple Manischewitz syrup with a shelf life of 20 minutes get a Parker rating? Next you’ll tell me there are “growth” Bordeaux, as in those classified in 1855, that obey Talmudic law. Every year there are more customers than there are wines for those lucky labels classified under the five levels of Bordeaux Growths: wines such as Château Léoville-Poyferré a 2nd Growth St. Julien; or Château Malartic-Lagravière an unclassified yet coveted Graves; Château Pontet-Canet a 5th Growth Pauillac; and Château Le Crock a Crus Bourgeois Pauillac. Oh yes. Each one of those highly coveted labels has a kosher “edition.” N’kidding. (more…)

With temps in the 80s, offshore winds and longer daysit is starting to feel like Dotoré’s favorite season. Fighting off the urge to nap we have time to hit you with some wine reviews. And the occasional observation.

What if Andrew Dice Clay reviewed wines?

The Underground Wine Letter is running a series on wine fraud. Phony DRC wines caught at auction. I saw a guy on Auction Hunters crying because he only got $55,000 for his Delorean “time machine.” It was a replica. So these wine frauds pay for empty bottles of premium Bordeaux and Burgundy. If you can get past the effete-iness it makes for interesting reading. Especially the entry where Tilson (UWL editor) goes through a multi-decade process solving a mystery about a case of very unusual 1928 St Emilion he bought at auction. (more…)

We started “tasting wine” in 1978. We frequented a wine shop in West LA up the street from the Wine House which had recently opened. The shop was located in a bungalow that was once somebody’s home on Cotner. It was the outlet store for The Wine Merchant owned by Dennis Overstreet and located in Beverly Hills. His BH store had all the celebrity clients. The outlet spot was for the lumpen proletariat of LA’s budding wine scene. In 1978 the collector’s find was any Napa Cabernet from 1974. The first wave of Napa Cabernet producers was emerging that included Diamond Creek, Caymus and Ridge. Heitz Cellar was an old guard hot ticket along with BV Georges De Latour. The real sharpies were hunting down old vintages of Inglenook. The good thing about the Cotner store was the Saturday tastings which were loosely formed, spontaneous events. Once a sufficient threshold of aspiring snobs was present somebody bought a bottle and opened it right there in the store. The store clerks were not like the info-matics you find today in upscale wine versions of Target like Total Wine or BevMo [ed. he prefers Total Yawn]. The store clerks at the Cotner store were geeks, folks like the ones buying wine except they had to work somewhere and living in LA was still pretty cheap in the late 1970s so a wine shop was good as any other minimum wage shithole. And you could drink interesting wines when the air got thick with opinions and burning curiosity. (more…)