Impressions November 2020 Part III

[VLM]

Some more old favorites and an awesome La Sibilla Piedirosso, a wine I used to drink a lot when I lived elsewhere that has now made it to our market and it was everything I remembered it to be. Great wine and a ridiculous value. I think my palate was fried from surgery for Thanksgiving because nothing tasted good. Took my first crack at Falkenstein 2019s.

2016 Henri Prudhon & Fils Saint-Aubin 1er Cru Les Perrières - France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Saint-Aubin 1er Cru (11/20/2020)
Not as good a showing as previous bottles but it may have been the food pairing (salty and spicy charcuterie) was a bit aggressive for the wine. (90 points)

2011 Domaine Rollin Père et Fils Pernand-Vergelesses 1er Cru Ile des Vergelesses - France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Pernand-Vergelesses 1er Cru (11/20/2020)
An interesting showing as this was more structured than I remember the last bottle being. All that said, I think it's time to drink up as the fruit may fade below the structural balance point. Still a pretty little wine. (89 points)

NV Agrapart Champagne Grand Cru Terroirs Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut - France, Champagne, Champagne Grand Cru (11/21/2020)
Similar in style to the last bottle although this is from the 02/20 disgorgement. Maybe a touch more spice added to the tart, citrusy and mineral style of this wine. With fresh from the coast yellowfin poke, it works so fabulously well with the tuna. I'm not sure if I used the stopper incorrectly, but the remainder of the bottle didn't hold its effervescence when returning to it after a few days in the fridge, but the core of the base wine was still there. (91 points)

2016 Istine Chianti Classico Vigna Cavarchione - Italy, Tuscany, Chianti, Chianti Classico DOCG (11/21/2020)
This is a new Chianti producer we're checking out and will probably be adding to the stable. Less dense than the I remember the 2016 Istine vineyard. This is more of a mid-weight which is a bit of a surprise since this is in Gaiole and my simplistic expectation is for a blockier wine. This was definitively red fruited and bright but with a core of density. These wines are only 5-6 years old so this will be interesting to watch over the years. I like the style of this as it is different from the Monteraponi and Caparsa wines we drink regularly. If it were a bit less expensive it would be good value. (92 points)

2018 La Sibilla Piedirosso Campi Flegrei - Italy, Campania, Campi Flegrei (11/21/2020)
Reminiscent of Roddolo, this wine just tickles something in my lizard brain. There is some heady combination of ripe fruit sitting at the joint of potential over ripeness but you realize that what you might perceive as over ripeness is actually a strange mix of gamy, savory deliciousness. Holds a beautiful shape and so easy to drink at 12.5%. I haven't had access to these in years and will make this a part of our regular rotation. This is a ridiculous value. I'm going to try to get some of the higher end version to check out. (93 points)

2011 Coudert Fleurie Clos de la Roilette Griffe du Marquis - France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Fleurie (11/22/2020)
Finally a good showing of this but the underlying structure still very much requires food. I opened the bottle about 3 hours before dinner and poured a taste leaving the rest to gently open. There is a rhubarb savory quality to the red cherry and berry fruit. Some herbal-menthol notes on the top with a kind of dark mineral and leathery quality to the tannins. Still showing a bit four-square but this is the best showing in a while. (91 points)

2008 Domaine Georges Mugneret-Gibourg Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Feusselottes - France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru (11/22/2020)
Airy, pretty and finely etched red fruits, flowers and mineral. This isn't quite as far along in its development as the Chaignots from a couple of months ago and showing firmer structure and a fine bead of minerailty to the tannin that shows it is keeping some things in reserve. I think a couple of years will relax it a bit but I really love the mouthwatering acidity, subsequent purity of fruit and finely chiseled features. Elegant and regal. Who knows, there may never be another vintage like this considering the changing climate. (93 points)

2017 Gilbert Picq & ses Fils Chablis 1er Cru Vosgros - France, Burgundy, Chablis, Chablis 1er Cru (11/23/2020)
A really nice vintage for this wine and just getting started. Steely and classically dry Chablis. Lots of salty stones and shells lead to tart citrus and other yellow fruit. There is a sense of density to the long, structured finish. I like the vibrancy of young wines, but if you like structure more resolved I'd wait a couple of years. I'll try to save a bottle or two to try at 10 and 15 years. (92 points)

2018 La Sibilla Falanghina Campi Flegrei - Italy, Campania, Campi Flegrei (11/23/2020)
This is perfectly pleasant and maybe we would have liked it better during the summer. My expectations may have been too high after a really impressive Piedirosso. I guess I was expecting a little more sea spray type mineral intensity. Nits aside, a wine that will probably make its way into our rotation. (88 points)

2015 Pierre Gonon St. Joseph Blanc Les Oliviers - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, St. Joseph (11/26/2020)
A broad shouldered wine that seems neither fish nor fowl. I opened it expecting it to be big but I expected it to be more fruity and expressive. I should note than none of the wines I opened for Thanksgiving were particularly impressive. It was a bit better the next day and closer to what I was expecting but not at the level that this wine can be. (90 points)

2015 Weingut Knoll Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Ried Schütt - Austria, Niederösterreich, Wachau (11/26/2020)
Also disappointing. There are some of the classic Grüner Veltliner aromas but the overfell impression of the wine is that it is a bit diffuse. Again, I don't really trust my Thanksgiving palate. I'll try another bottle sometime later in the winter. (88 points)

2019 Julien Sunier Morgon - France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Morgon (11/26/2020)
Beautiful shimmering ruby/garnet color that is distinct to Gamay. It isn't being particularly showy and while there seems like there is plenty of fruit underneath it's all a bit muted and wrapped in an herbal, wicker sphere. Bits of spice and earth on the finish but a wine not inclined to show much today. Again, a possible victim of my faulty palate. We decide it'll be great to use for braising. (88 points)

2005 Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru Clos de la Maréchale - France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru (11/26/2020)
This was the most puzzling performance of all the wines from Thanksgiving and the one that made me certain that there was something wrong with my palate. The last bottle form a couple years ago was open knit, pretty, and generous. This seemed a bit dull and hard edged and at odds with the other botttles from a 6-pack that I've had since release. I'll try another bottle later in the winter or next spring. (88 points)

2019 Hofgut Falkenstein Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Kabinett "Kugel Peter" #12 - Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer (11/28/2020)
My friend Jayson had a spot-on take for this wine. On the first day, it's all earth and stone and not the blossoms, citrus and minerals you'd normally expect. I followed this over a few days and it gradually unclenched. There is real concentration here and it'll be fascinating to see how it develops. My guess is that in 6-8 months it'll start to sort itself into shape and be ridiculous. (91 points)

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

If you are going to grade wines, 88 and 89, being B+ are, traditionally, honors grades and not marks of disappointment. If you scaled down some grades, you would give yourself a more flexible scale of evaluation. I probably still won't know what to make of it, but others will.

I know only too well that at universities, at least, grade inflation has made the modal grade somewhere around 3.7. The average is usually lower. And means, modes and averages in math are lower (at least at AU). So, by this scale, 88 or 89 could be called, if not disappointing, at least just average, but only if you are willing to accept that your grading scale is inflated.

 

[Rahsaan]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
If you are going to grade wines, 88 and 89, being B+ are, traditionally, honors grades and not marks of disappointment.

Surely you jest. You must not have gotten many overachievers at American.

B+ is most definitely a disappointment for someone expecting a perfect score. And when you're dealing with the uniformly high caliber of wines that VLM (and the rest of us) drink, things tend to get skewed. For most of the wines we drink, it's more about whether the particular showing/bottling lived up to its highest potential.

Do you actually purchase wines that are so bad they could be rated in the 70s and 60s?

That said, wine scores are silly!

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

You need to reread my comments on academic grade inflation. You may be too young too remember when B+ was considered a very good grade and B was a grade one could be happy with.

I don't have to grade wines and I've never had to think how I'd work up a scale grading different and sometimes incommensurable qualities. Figuring that out for papers was bad enough. But I agree that I doubt I would ever hava a wine I gave a C or a D to in my cellar. I have numbers of wines that I consider less than at the top of the scale, though, in which I take great pleasure. Even within narrow bands of qualities, I don't like all Charvins or Olgas equally, but I'm happy to have all I have.

 

[Brian C]

originally posted by VLM:
If it were a bit less expensive it would be good value.

So often the case...

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Rahsaan:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
If you are going to grade wines, 88 and 89, being B+ are, traditionally, honors grades and not marks of disappointment.

Surely you jest. You must not have gotten many overachievers at American.

B+ is most definitely a disappointment for someone expecting a perfect score. And when you're dealing with the uniformly high caliber of wines that VLM (and the rest of us) drink, things tend to get skewed. For most of the wines we drink, it's more about whether the particular showing/bottling lived up to its highest potential.

Do you actually purchase wines that are so bad they could be rated in the 70s and 60s?

That said, wine scores are silly!

I think it is fair to be disappointed in a Knoll Schütt Grüner that is merely very good. I have had many great bottles from this vineyard and producer and was expecting this bottle to be great.

I don't think scores are useless, in fact, they make the words more useful. At the very least they offer a judgement of relative quality to me (a 90 is a better wine than an 88) rather than just babbling about a wine, it puts down a marker. I use them this way and because it also forces me to think more carefully about the wine. As you know, I actually view them as objective grades of quality. You don't need to view them that way but would you rank them differently? Even if you don't believe they are interval in scale, would you allow them to be at least ordinal?

I rarely have wines that aren't at least very good because I'm very good at buying wine. I don't generally post on wines that aren't coming from my cellar (and in cellartracker), so they are there for a reason. Given all that, it shouldn't really be that much of a surprise that there aren't low scoring wines.

 

[Peter Creasey]

Nathan, well said on all counts. Points are valuable to some (most?) people and can be easily ignored by the rest.

. . . . . Pete

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by VLM:

originally posted by Rahsaan:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
If you are going to grade wines, 88 and 89, being B+ are, traditionally, honors grades and not marks of disappointment.

Surely you jest. You must not have gotten many overachievers at American.

B+ is most definitely a disappointment for someone expecting a perfect score. And when you're dealing with the uniformly high caliber of wines that VLM (and the rest of us) drink, things tend to get skewed. For most of the wines we drink, it's more about whether the particular showing/bottling lived up to its highest potential.

Do you actually purchase wines that are so bad they could be rated in the 70s and 60s?

That said, wine scores are silly!

I think it is fair to be disappointed in a Knoll Schütt Grüner that is merely very good. I have had many great bottles from this vineyard and producer and was expecting this bottle to be great.

I don't think scores are useless, in fact, they make the words more useful. At the very least they offer a judgement of relative quality to me (a 90 is a better wine than an 88) rather than just babbling about a wine, it puts down a marker. I use them this way and because it also forces me to think more carefully about the wine. As you know, I actually view them as objective grades of quality. You don't need to view them that way but would you rank them differently? Even if you don't believe they are interval in scale, would you allow them to be at least ordinal?

I rarely have wines that aren't at least very good because I'm very good at buying wine. I don't generally post on wines that aren't coming from my cellar (and in cellartracker), so they are there for a reason. Given all that, it shouldn't really be that much of a surprise that there aren't low scoring wines.

You turn this into a far more prickly exchange than it was ever meant to be. Still, if you begin with the assumption that all wines in your cellar, or that you report on, are at least very good, then, yes, I suppose a very good wine can be relatively disappointing as measured against an excellent wine or a wine that rocks your world. Still, even if you start with that assumption, and so state it, you would do better to have a larger scale to work with. As for objectivity, stipulating that it exists, grading is still a relative scale--this one is better than that one, as you say--stabilized only by definitions within the scale of what points on it mean. If F means failure, A means perfect, C means average (remember those days?) and B is thus above average, the grades will mean differently than if C means effective failure (I would not drink the stuff), B means barely acceptable and all wines that are not diappointing are in the A range.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by VLM:

originally posted by Rahsaan:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
If you are going to grade wines, 88 and 89, being B+ are, traditionally, honors grades and not marks of disappointment.

Surely you jest. You must not have gotten many overachievers at American.

B+ is most definitely a disappointment for someone expecting a perfect score. And when you're dealing with the uniformly high caliber of wines that VLM (and the rest of us) drink, things tend to get skewed. For most of the wines we drink, it's more about whether the particular showing/bottling lived up to its highest potential.

Do you actually purchase wines that are so bad they could be rated in the 70s and 60s?

That said, wine scores are silly!

I think it is fair to be disappointed in a Knoll Schütt Grüner that is merely very good. I have had many great bottles from this vineyard and producer and was expecting this bottle to be great.

I don't think scores are useless, in fact, they make the words more useful. At the very least they offer a judgement of relative quality to me (a 90 is a better wine than an 88) rather than just babbling about a wine, it puts down a marker. I use them this way and because it also forces me to think more carefully about the wine. As you know, I actually view them as objective grades of quality. You don't need to view them that way but would you rank them differently? Even if you don't believe they are interval in scale, would you allow them to be at least ordinal?

I rarely have wines that aren't at least very good because I'm very good at buying wine. I don't generally post on wines that aren't coming from my cellar (and in cellartracker), so they are there for a reason. Given all that, it shouldn't really be that much of a surprise that there aren't low scoring wines.

You turn this into a far more prickly exchange than it was ever meant to be. Still, if you begin with the assumption that all wines in your cellar, or that you report on, are at least very good, then, yes, I suppose a very good wine can be relatively disappointing as measured against an excellent wine or a wine that rocks your world. Still, even if you start with that assumption, and so state it, you would do better to have a larger scale to work with. As for objectivity, stipulating that it exists, grading is still a relative scale--this one is better than that one, as you say--stabilized only by definitions within the scale of what points on it mean. If F means failure, A means perfect, C means average (remember those days?) and B is thus above average, the grades will mean differently than if C means effective failure (I would not drink the stuff), B means barely acceptable and all wines that are not diappointing are in the A range.

I think if you have an A producer and and A vineyard and the wine is priced accordingly, a B or even B+ is disappointing relative to expectations. I have a larger range, I just don't normally use it because I don't have wines like that in my cellar, that's all. I'm at 30 years of tasting, evaluating, sorting and grading so it would be surprising if I had a bunch of mediocre wine around. I think I've become much tougher at the top end of my scale, experience does make one a bit jaded. I also usually don't include notes on wines that are noticeably flawed.

What I'd really love is for others to drink the same wines (almost all the wines I drink are with food) and score them and see how that correlates. I imagine rank-order correlations between say Rahsaan and I, would be quite high.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

I guess, up to a point, I would agree. But let's suppose you have a student whose past performances lead you to expect A work (thus an A student). This time, he or she turns in a paper that objectively (!) you would grade an A-. Would you want to signal your disappointment by given the poor student a B+? Is that what you are saying of the wine from an A producer and an A vineyard? I should say that, while price certainly affects my sense of whether the wine is worth buying given its quality, it does not affect my sense of its quality per se. Thus an A wine is an A wine is an A wine ( or, at any rate, I like it as much as I do when I am liking it for what it does) regardless of whether it costs a buck or a hundred bucks.

 

[Jayson Cohen]

Thanks for the great notes.

I don’t think I’ve tried the 2019 Falkenstein No. 12 yet. (It’s in the queue.) Do you have another friend named Jayson who is Falkenstein-obsessed?

That said, I’m sure the wine is all you say it is, and I’m sure I am right about it (or will be),

 

[Jayson Cohen]

Caught up with the discussion. For some reason it reminds me of an engineering Thermodynamics exam in college that I thought I bombed, where the mean was a 23 out of 100 and I got an A with a 32. (I’m sure there’s a relevant lesson somewhere in that anecdote, but I’ll just leave it.)

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
Thanks for the great notes.

I don’t think I’ve tried the 2019 Falkenstein No. 12 yet. (It’s in the queue.) Do you have another friend named Jayson who is Falkenstein-obsessed?

That said, I’m sure the wine is all you say it is, and I’m sure I am right about it (or will be),

I thought I saw you post on this wine somewhere. Perhaps I'm mistaken. But yes, we're both right. This is a different seeming Falkenstein in the early going. I should probably go back to a 2017 or 2018 to compare.

 

[Rahsaan]

originally posted by VLM:
At the very least they offer a judgement of relative quality to me (a 90 is a better wine than an 88)...As you know, I actually view them as objective grades of quality. You don't need to view them that way but would you rank them differently? Even if you don't believe they are interval in scale, would you allow them to be at least ordinal.

I think the wine internet has seen this discussion many times over. But it is exactly this comparison across wines (interval/ordinal/whatever) that loses me. Wine is not like money (more = better) because different wines have different qualities. Points don’t help you choose the ‘best’ wine for a casual oyster feast as opposed to a formal dinner with steak.

But that’s why I don’t put down numbers. Your notes are clearly very sensitive to the context of the wine, so whatever works.

 

[robert ames]

i haven't read through all the posts on this thread, but one good way of using points whilst explaining their relevancy is used by claude kolm (fine wine review) where he gives a points score plus a grade.

this could result in say a beerenauslese (sp?) receiving a score of 91 points and a letter grade of D, whereas a muscadet might receive a score of 92 points and a grade of A.

 

[Florida Jim]

originally posted by robert ames:
i haven't read through all the posts on this thread, but one good way of using points whilst explaining their relevancy is used by claude kolm (fine wine review) where he gives a points score plus a grade.

this could result in say a beerenauslese (sp?) receiving a score of 91 points and a letter grade of D, whereas a muscadet might receive a score of 92 points and a grade of A.

That sounds confusing . . . to me.

I’m no fan of points/letter grades/puffs/etc.
Just tell me what you think.
Objective precision for a subjective opinion is lost on me.
Best, jim

 

[Jeff Grossman]

Prongs, guys. Prongs. Get with the program.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Prongs, guys. Prongs. Get with the program.

You mean the prongram?

 

[Zachary Ross]

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
Caught up with the discussion. For some reason it reminds me of an engineering Thermodynamics exam in college that I thought I bombed, where the mean was a 23 out of 100 and I got an A with a 32. (I’m sure there’s a relevant lesson somewhere in that anecdote, but I’ll just leave it.)

I had a couple of exams like this as a Physics undergraduate. One time in mechanics the professor threw out the exam, with the logic that if everyone did so poorly it was the exam and not the students that failed.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by Zachary Ross:
One time in mechanics the professor threw out the exam, with the logic that if everyone did so poorly it was the exam and not the students that failed.

Hm. One might read the causality the other way.