Recent content by Josh Beck

I recently had it and liked it quite a bit but didn't love it. Somewhat middleweight and still markedly whole cluster but not in a bad way. I'm not sure it will ever be a tour de force and I feel like the w/c is a little much for the fruit in terms of clearly seeing the terroir, but those are...

4 bottles of 04 Leon Barral Fougeres that I had had a free sulfer in excess of 400 ppm. Now that's a winemaking/bottling fuckup! ;) You want to talk about difficult to drink? You try drinking through a respirator!

I at least thought I could see a wee bit of oak in castiglione 04,05,06. Not offputting, but there.

If you taste the Castiglione, Brunate or Rocche in a lineup with Monprivato, Capellano and Giuseppe Rinaldi, they will appear a bit more polished certainly but will still look pretty good. If you taste them in a lineup with Paolo Scavino, Luigi Pira and the like, they'll seem pretty old school...

We have our suspicions....

Is who is @hipstervigneron? We are laughing our asses off.

Levi, Not sure what I did to put a bug in your butt... we all have our tastes and I was just sharing my thoughts. Leaving issues of our subjective tastes (which probably aren't as disparate as you think) aside, wine is not bretty because of storage, but rather winemaking, and I'm sure you know...

Thanks for the link, btw.

Not the best, but among. And re: the 97 - I'm not a fan of 97 in Piemonte at all. The first really hot vintage there and a lot of the wines are baked and lack freshness and were acidulated poorly so they have a tangy kool-aid finish. I've not had any 97 A Conterno but have been a fan of the...

Perhaps that was a reach for a comparison, I just meant that it was similarly a drier, richer style that showed the house's imprint for sure but still showed great minerality, depth and complexity and that I liked similarly...

Very much agree - the low end bottlings are of zero interest but the Barolos, particularly the 3 crus, are some of the best wines being made in Piedmont at the moment for my tastes.

A slightly spritzy mouthfeel that goes away overnight or with decanting is frequently high dissolved CO2 at bottling, agreed. This was not, this seemed to clearly be a referment and was much worse on day two. Like I said, one of the most flawed wines I've ever had. I've had some 08 Ganevat...

It has. I've had some great Potels but it seems so random so I've gotten gun shy with further purchases and am drinking what I've got. I don't know much about Potel behind the curtains in terms of sources, cellar practices, why some lots are clean and others aren't, etc. However you slice it...

Some recent highlights: 04 Agrapart Mineral was all sorts of awesome. Moderately rich style. Very stoney, very penetrating. Not fruit driven, more terroir and a bit of biscuit and yeast driven. Good concentration and a lot of power and a long finish. A bit stylized but very very good. More in...

Or, you could jump to a conclusion and just make one pie: