Tasting Notes 9/16

It's been a long time, over a year since I've had anything to say in this blog. My job has changed a bit and I have both less and more time and opportunitites to taste wine, and usually very little time to actually reflect and try to capture my impressions outside of good and bad and great.
A lot of my entires in the coming months will be presented as my basic notes with only enough language added to make sentences here and there to try to capture why I was thinking what I was thinking. Not very interesting to anybody else, but a good reference for myself.
These are notes from a seated tasting, done in flights of 3. We tried to take our time and communicate our impressions. Here's my experience:

2007 Leitz Eins Zwei Dry Riesling
Decent – Slightly metallic and just barely sugary enough to be a bit cloying.

2007 Leitz Dragonstone Riesling
Sweeter, with more granny smith apple. The sugar is balanced with lively acidity.

2007 Leitz Rudesheimer Magdelenenkreuz Riesling Spatlese
Zippy. Good. Hard to pronounce (?).

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2007 Pierre Boniface Apremont Vin de Savoie
Stony and dry with an austere finish.

2006 Pierre Boniface Chignin Bergeron
(Rousanne) Noticeable barrel spice on the nose, with soil earthiness.

2007 Chateau de la Greffiere Saint-Veran
Low on acidity; mellow fruit with spice. Nicely refined.

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2007 Brewer-Clifton Chardonnay Santa Rita Hills
Vanilla and …sawdust? Some kind of dusty wood. Pineapple with a lot of alcohol heat. 14.9 % and not entirely masked well.

2006 Ramey Chardonnay Ritchie Vineyard
Spice and vanilla. Spiced dry apricot.

2006 Ramey Chardonnay Hyde Vineyard
Again overwhelmed in cooking spices, with even more outward spice. Anything but subtle.

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2007 Cade Sauvignon Blanc
Expected gooseberry and slight cat pee. Thin and light.

2007 Domaine des Aubuisieres B. Fouquet Vouvray les Girardieres
Musty nose with pear and noticeably low acidity.

2005 Domaine des Baumard Coteaux du Layon Cuvee le Paon
Nose is fat and fruity, forecasting the sweet honey and apricot. I’m not usually good at identifying mouthfeel, but this is quite noticeably heavy and thick.

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2006 Soter Pinot Noir Beacon Hill
SPICY and medicinal. Not fruit forward at all. Similar in style to that St. Nick pinot from France that I didn’t like, with a similar cinnamon dental floss quality, only lighter.

2006 DuMol Syrah Russian River Valley
Deep & Dark. Quite rich – plumy and peppery.

2006 Ramey Syrah Shanel Vineyard
Also deep & dark. Rich and stony.

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2006 Chateau Mourgues du Gres Les Galets Rouge
Herbs & garden spice. Dark and rich, tight and tannic.

2005 Domaine le Grands Bois Cotes du Rhone Cuvee Maximilian
All soil and mineral. Lots of tannin and a long tannic finish. Surprisingly austere for a Cotes du Rhone.

2006 Selection Laurence Feraud Cotes du Rhone Seguret
Juicy by comparison. Good fruit dimension and a little more balanced.

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2005 Domaine Saint-Damien Gigondas
The most austere of these next three. Spice and acidity, good tannin on end.

2005 Selection Laurence Feraud Gigondas
Jucier. Less mineral but still quite tannic.

2005 La Bastide-Blanche Bandol
More of the same. My palate is now overwhelmed by tannin. My lip is stuck to my teeth, and I have to stop and drink some water.

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2007 Cantina Valpantena Corvina Torre del Falasco
Thin with some bacon fat and a short finish.

2005 Fantino Rosso dei Dardi
(Barbera and Nebbiolo) I mentioned that this wine smells like port. A friend corrected me. I think my perception was shaped by the brown to tan color of the wine. It wasn’t too autumnal, but fruit was not the focus.

2003 Cantina Valpantena Amarone della Vaploicella Falasco
Decent. Not too heavy, like some Amarone, but also not as deep.

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2000 Monsanto Chianti Classico Reserva Il Poggio
First bottle suffered of very, very bad cork taint.
Second bottle was beautiful with a ruby dimension like classic sangiovese. It was suggested that it, too, was corked. I couldn’t detect it, but it was clean and pure by comparison.

2000 Monsanto Nemo
(Cabernet Sauvignon) Light for cabernet. Some spiciness, mellowed lift and a bit of tannin. I wonder about the aging this wine received in barrel.

2005 Antinori Tignanello
I can tell this is good, but I’m again suffering tannin overload and can’t make out details.

After the tasting was over, a friend who has a lot of experience with wine told me a story about a Petrus vertical tasting he was able to sit though years ago. He had a terrible cold and stuffed nose, and could hardly taste anything. Still, he said he was able to predict which vintages would be named the better wines, just on mouthfeel. He said you don't have to be a supertaster to detect the qualities that make wine great.

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2005 Ernie Els Engelbrecht Els
Our tasting takes a sudden shift to the new world. This is much lighter with cocoa and for the first time, a focus on the fruit. Bright.

2003 Rust en Vrede Estate
More of that. Spice and cocoa from easy barrel aging, oak and fruit.

2006 Boekenhoutskloof Chocolate Block
Wow! on the nose. Not a classic, complex wine, but dimensional. If only they made rhubarb Jolly Ranchers, this is what they would taste like. Even a little underripe greenness in the fruit, or maybe plants like aloe or menthol. Lower acidity, peppery. Seems treated with a heavy hand.

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2006 Two Hands Shiraz Gnarly Dudes
Raspberries and fruit and fruit.

2006 Two Hands Shiraz Bella’s Garden
More of the same, with more spice and more fruit. I guess more intense.

2006 Two Hands Shiraz Lilly’s Garden
The most refined of these three. Fruit and…..vanilla?

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2005 Altamura Sangiovese
Deep for sangiovese. There is some cocoa in there along with the plum.

2005 Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards Eloge
Pepper and vegetal qualities suggest cabernet franc (25%!) Pepper includes green and black and there’s some barrel spice in there, too. Very good, but pricey.

2005 O’Shaughnessy Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain
Nice and balanced. Not understated, not huge.