Recent content by Ian Fitzsimmons

Ah, thanks.

A friend recently poured MoonX Pinot, a Trader Joe label, which looks like it's near $10. ABV @ 13.5 and, I thought, pretty decent for an affordable California PN. The label calls it "black" pinot noir, which is quaint, unless it confers some technical nuance I don't know about.

Hey, Pavel. Did you ever do the tube - no tube comparison at your friends? Results?

Same here.

It would be great to hear about what you hear at your friend's, many thanks. Clay is just fine-grained soil, right? I'd expect granitic and tuffeau-based soils to be generally at the sandy end of the grain size spectrum. Clay's fine grains cause high capillary pressure in the vines' root...

I have more, as well as some 05 Senechal; fingers crossed it's unwonted bottle variation or very mild TCA. I'll retrieve one of each on my next expedition to the far end of my crawl space and report back.

A counterpoint would be the 2005 Breton Perrieres I mentioned on said other thread. "1/8/2025: Not bad, not especially good. Surprisingly underwhelming for the vintage and vigneron." I must have overestimated the longevity of this wine, thinking perhaps of wines like Baudry's Croix Boissee or...

Schiit has a very good rep, per my samplings; using the multibit dac as a proxy, their pricing has been stable when others have argued supply chain to raise theirs. Do you have any strong feelings on tubes vs. no tubes in the preamp? I know nothing. Re: 2005 Javernieres, what...

Obviously I'm not a pro, but it seems like neutral wood treatment (which, if I have it right, allows very slow oxidation to occur) can give a wine a kind of polished feel. I could see conflating this sensation with that of low percentage new wood treatment.

So, 2-12 years old. Thank you. Kind of a science experiment to drink a Griffe and VT from the same vintage side-by-side.

The Freakonomics podcast did a four-episode series on various dimensions of marijuana mainstreaming, including health implications relative to those of drinking. Worth a listen at 2x speed.

Do you know if the barriques are all neutral? Some proportion new?

Yes. Did I do it wrong?

I'm down to my last three of a case of 2002s; under Stelvin, they age forever, and the last bottle felt like it was finally approaching full maturity on the third day after I'd opened it. Also have some 2018s stashed, if memory serves, to carry me through when I'm in assisted living.

Per my note in another thread, a 2011 this year was the first bottle (of five 2011s imbibed) that was really good wine, IMHO, right after opening - and really good wine it was. My thesis now, therefore, is that this cuvee is a vin de garde that needs ample cellar time (calibrated for vintage) to...