So, like, what is this stuff, anyway?
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available wines. Below is a wrap-up of those twitter wine reviews from the past week (click here for the skinny on how to read them), along with links to help you find these wines, so that you can try them for yourself. Cheers!
- 10 Hourglass Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley): Berry cobbler, plum liqueur glaze, gravel plate, wooden fork, dash of awesome. $155 A >>find this wine<<
- 10 Hourglass Blueline Vineyard Cabernet Franc (Napa Valley): How lovers should meet; nearly exploding w/ tension, power & edginess. $135 A- >>find this wine<<
- 10 Hourglass Blueline Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley): Like an emotionally-charged soy sauce/cassis/gravel menage-a-trois. $125 A- >>find this wine<<
- 10 Hourglass Blueline Vineyard Merlot (Napa Valley): No escaping the complexity, fruity-sweet-sexy largesse, or the general largeness $75 B+ >>find this wine<<
- 10 Hugel et Fils Hugel Riesling (Alsace): Almost sweet but definitely electrifying; maybe the most gulpable Hugel in several years. $22 B+ >>find this wine<<
- 04 Bodegas Franco-Espanolas Rioja Bordon Gran Reserva (Rioja): Familiar like an easy chair, or a bowl of comfort food on a raw day. $24 B+ >>find this wine<<
- 11 Simonsig Kaapse Vonkel Brut Rose (Stellenbosch): Funky floral cool modeena, performed with a side of freshly ripened red berries. $24 B >>find this wine<<
- 09 Pina Napa Valley Wolff Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Yountville): Rich, demanding & driven; plums playing hot potato w/ dried herbs $85 A- >>find this wine<<
- 09 Pina Napa Valley Ames Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Oakville): Refined, broad, tinged w/ herbs; practically the mayor of Oakville. $85 A- >>find this wine<<
- 09 Pina Napa Valley D'Adamo Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley): Both hot & sweet, in a silky, come-hither-big-boy kind of way. $75 B+ >>find this wine<<
- 09 Pina Napa Valley Firehouse Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Rutherford): More like fire-juggling, & nearly worthy of cirque du soleil. $85 A- >>find this wine<<
- 09 Ferrari-Carano Tresor Red (Sonoma County): Thick enough that you could stand a spoon up in it; but it'd be a mineral-rich spoon! $58 B+ >>find this wine<<
Why do the vast majority of your wine reviews focus on wines outside of the $10-$25 range? You review wines that aren't accessible to the average wine drinker. Doesn't make sense to me. Would be nice if you had a value driven review. Get rid of the grading system already, your grades make no sense at all. Not so serious drinkers aren't paying for 95% of the wines you review.
Brian – I appreciate the feedback. Regarding the wine prices, it's a classic cannot-please-everyone scenario. I do review wines under $20, it's just that I don't specialize in any price range (there are a TON of online resources who do, for those who want only high end or only bargain, etc.). Sometimes (as is the case currently), it's more a function of the samples I have lined up, and for whatever reason the ones that have been “coming due” recently have been pricier (this could very well get followed by a wave of lower-priced samples coming my way). I do talk about and feature expensive wines sometimes, and that's a direct result of having asked 1WD readers if they want me to talk about them or not, and having them overwhelmingly respond Yes (both from the aspirational standpoint, and also from the “hey, you never know, I might find myself in front of a bottle of that someday” standpoint; and of course the “is it really worth it?” standpoint, too). As for the grades, 1WD readers are divided on those, too; so am I – it's the least fun part of what I do here, but enough people want them so I cannot just go cold-turkey and drop them wholesale (at least not yet, anyway!). Finally, the tagline of not-so-serious drinkers is incomplete without the serious wine talk part in front of it :). The objective is to take the wine seriously, but not ourselves! In any case, I do take this kind of feedback to heart, and I'll see what I can do for some more value-minded reviews in the near future.
By the way, you’re *really* gonna hate Thursday’s feature, I fear, if you’re looking only for bargain picks…