Goodbye Lebron. Hello Frank.

I am currently importing these wines for NY. It is my belief that some of the bottle variation people have been experiencing may be due to a supply chain that has not been completely temperature controlled. This is true only of the previous NY importer. I have been fortunate enough to have great luck with the wines and having tasted them a number of times with Frank have become a little more accustomed to their profile. I would say that there is no question that the younger wines are much cleaner than his older productions, remember, Frank has not been making these wines all that long and no sulfur production is not all that easy. Also, what is perceived by the commercial wine making industry is detectable VA is over 1.5, which I guess is why the 1.81 warranted all those exclamation marks. However, VA expresses itself quite differently in different wines and I have have many wines with much higher rates of VA in which the aromas of it were undetectable, and vice versa, wines with less that reeked of it. In terms of the high sulfur accusation, I would call that one hearsay.
 
I'd also like to add, that the prices that those wines have been sold at represent gouging by the previous importer more than anything else. When reintroduced to the market, they will be about 30% cheaper. If that makes any difference.
 
Zev, that's the sort of thing you say before you suggest the previous importer is gouging and overheating the product, not after and only in response to a query.
 
It's not "misleading," it's sneaky and dishonest. I don't mean that you might not be absolutely correct, I mean that I now find your motivations untrustworthy and will view anything you post through this lens (and if I'm alone in that, I'd be surprised). The way you avoid that is through prior disclosure, the need for which is more pressing if you're about to trash a competitor. So while I thank you for the apology, I'd suggest that it would a better idea to revisit your original posts with an editor's pen.
 
I will say that I felt compelled to stand up for a winemaker that I feel has been poorly represented and the fact that I am now working with him certainly makes me more inclined to weigh in. If I was trying to be sneaky or dishonest it would have been quite easy to use a different name or not say that I was importing the wines so quickly. That said, I agree, I should have included my roll in this right from the start.
In revisiting my previous post, to start, I would say first that my introduction to the wines has been through a series of imported bottles. Some of them were direct imported and were purchased at Crush. The bottles were wonderful. They expressed the density and purity of fruit that has been mentioned many times in this thread. Since, I have had quite a few bottles that have been purchased through the more traditional supply chain of retailer via importer who has shipped and stored the wines and have run into a number of very sour bottles, though quite a few great ones as well. In determining variables, while the sample size is small, it is suggestive. In reference to the pricing, I am privy to the prices that Frank is charging, and feel quite certain, that the prices on the market are directly related to an abnormally high mark up by the importer. I think their context is different at a different price point.
 
If I was trying to be sneaky or dishonest it would have been quite easy to use a different name or not say that I was importing the wines so quickly.
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Zev, respectfully, the way to allay suspicion is not to point out that you could have acted even worse.

Also, regarding "quite easy," were you more of a wine-internet veteran you'd know that importers and their lawyers don't always take kindly to this sort of thing, even -- or perhaps especially -- when the accusations are true. Some people here are old enough to know what I'm talking about. The only thing that would change with sock-puppeting is that you'd drag a forum's administrators into it...upon which I doubt they'd be predisposed to look kindly, either.

Let me encourage you, again, to edit the original message to preemptively identify your role in this conflict.
 
originally posted by Zev Rovine:
Also, what is perceived by the commercial wine making industry is detectable VA is over 1.5, which I guess is why the 1.81 warranted all those exclamation marks. However, VA expresses itself quite differently in different wines and I have have many wines with much higher rates of VA in which the aromas of it were undetectable, and vice versa, wines with less that reeked of it.
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The threshold for VA in wine is closer to 0.75 (g/L) than it is to 1.5.
And once you get up to 1.5 you're in pretty rarified territory. For dry wines, a VA of that level is almost invariably going to be quite prominent.
 
Thanks Bruce. I just had this discussion a few nights ago with a friend of mine that makes biodynamic wines in California, and it sure seems that I got numbers wrong on this one. We have had a number of his wines that carried 1.5 g/L in which the VA was undetectable, but those were certainly the larger and bigger reds. The more delicate whites showed VA at much lower rates. Thanks for the correction.
 
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