Decant Stop Tasting Wine Blog

I’m sort of unimpressed with this wine, but I’m hesitant to say that to you.  Reason being, I’m a huge fan of Argentine Malbec, and have had so many of them that to me rival most other wines I’ve had.  So my expectations for Argentine Malbec is always fairly high, especially “for the price” – even under $10.  This is a good wine though, and at $10, is still, in my humble opinion, still a good value.  All I really needed from this wine was more fruit, and I would have been very happy.  I’m happy with all of the complexity it offers, fairly classic varietal profile… but it just needs more fruit.  I’m not a fan of fruit bombs either.  Too bad really, because otherwise it totally has what it takes to be a 90+ wine.  It reminds of Durigutti, but it falls a little short of that wine.

If you like old school Italian wines, or non-fruit bomb Argentine Cabs, then you’ll like this wine.

Rating:  88

Price:  $10

I bought this wine as a party wine for the Summer.  I only bought one bottle, to try it out in fact, really unsure if it would even be “good enough” for a party wine.  Let’s face it, 7 bucks doesn’t usually buy a very good wine.  Wow, was I blown away!  I mean, it isn’t one of the better wines I’ve had, but for 7 bones???  This wine rocks!  It’s rather opaque… I could barely see the sun through it (I was drinking while swimming in the pool for the first time this season)!  It has an almost soda-like acidity that screams SUMMER!  There’s also a bit of citrus and herb on the pallet.  What’s more, it isn’t just a big ole fruit bomb – it actually has structure, tannin, and a decent vegetal aspect.  This is truly classic Italian fare here.  I’ll note that it doesn’t have much of a bouquet, just kinda dusty old Italian wine smell, without much fruit or other interesting odors… but also no funkiness.

This wine will be perfect for Summer BBQ’s, and even just drinking over-chilled on hot summer days poolside.  Beyond that, in general I’d say this is the best wine I’ve ever had for the price.  Highly recommended!

Rating:  88

Price:  $7 (K&L)

I needed a white wine to do some cooking with this week.  I wanted a Sauvignon Blanc for its varietal characteristics (complexity/vegetal), but didn’t want to pay more than 10 bucks for cooking wine.  Note that I also won’t cook with “cheap” wine, so only a place like K&L or possibly Wine House could pull this off for me.  Rika first made a dish based on Shrimp Étouffée, so I figured I’d drink a little of it with the meal.  My first sip put that “oh wow” look on my face.  LOL  Now, granted, my expectations were pretty low, plus anyone who’s read this blog much knows I’m not big on white wine.  But I actually like this wine!

Read more

This vintage Barbera D’Asti pretty well lives up to its reputation.  I wish we could have tried a bottle of it 5 years ago to see what the years have done to this wine though.  My feeling at this point about vintage wines in general is that after 10 years they all tend to contain what we’ve come to call “that vintage taste”.  It is a slightly sour and dusty flavor… not in a bad way though.  It just makes the wine go better with sushi!  Have you ever had a decent wine that was at least 8-10 years old?  Then you probably know what I’m talking about.

Read more

This isn’t too far off of typical McLaren Vale wine… thick and yummy, but with the addition of Grenache to the Shiraz, it has more complexity, and a notable vegital factor.  Based on the flavor profile, and especially for the sake of the Grenache, this could have used at least another couple of years in the bottle to develop.  Still, I liked it quite a bit.

The fruit is pure and more on the red side than usual Aussi Shiraz and has nice dry tannins and slight acidity.  I especially like the spices on the mid-palate, but not that fond of the tanginess on the back end.  Once that subsides you’re left with an aftertaste that is similar to having had a good vinagrette salad with black pepper. 

In all this is a nice wine that should please many critics… and has.  I’ll have to side with Rober Parker on this one (91).  Steve Tanzer gave it 90, as did Wine Spectator.

Price: $13

Rating:  91

Upon first opening the bottle this wine looked nice – deep ruby color with hints of orange/brown, which I associate mostly with Barolo.  I didn’t know yet, but this producer also makes Barolo and is apparently good at it.  You may recognize the name too, as we recently had the 1998 vintage of the same wine.  We loved that wine.  This one is good, but not as good.

Initialy on the nose and in the mouth this wine was a bit hot.  Still, there was good fruit and structure already, so we waited for it to decant a while.  This certainly paid off, as the heat subsided to some degree, making the wine more pleasant.  At that point it was in essance a richer, bolder version of the 98, but still… not as enjoyable.  The veggies, the mint, the tangerine… there, but just slightly, and the fruit isn’t as pure.  There’s more tannin and acidity, so it will take on more robust foods.  It is good, but I guess I’m just a little disappointed because based on the 98, and what this wine adds feels like potential for greatness, but in practice takes away from it.  It is the same wine, with increased levels of fruit, acidity, and tannin.  You can still taste the rest, but it is almost hidden by the power of those increased factors.  It is a good wine, and I do recommend it, especially if you’re having it with a meal.

Rating:  90

Price:  $6-17
We bought this wine during the same sale.. paid $6, but it retails for $17+

We sort of got stuck in beer and re-buy mode for a while due to the heat.  I know that isn’t really what you want to hear from a wine blogger, but… we’re only human after all.  That said, we promise to try to work though that period next year.

That’s all in the past [for now] anyway, as the cooler weather is here and we’re back in full swing with our pallets raring to experience some new and interesting wine.  The next review is coming tonight, and with a decade old Dolcetto D’Alba to boot!  We’re going to do it up right with multiple photos and details, details, details!  Join us and enjoy the experience along with us!

Enobytes.com recently compiled a list of “Google’s Top 100 Wine Blogs” and our humble blog made it on the list at #77!  We’re pretty excited about this, since we’ve never done anything to increase our ranking with Google (or anywhere)… we just review the wines we drink.  I guess our database IS getting pretty big, which probably has something to do with it.  Plus, we drink wines that are fairly “available”, and thus get surched fairly often.  This is evident by the over 4,000 visitors we had in October.  Now, if we could just get people to COMMENT! 

Sorry for the lull in reviews, but I promise I have a sorry excuse!  LOL  Two things contributed most to my not posting our reviews as dependably as before.  The first is the fact that my laptop, which I did the reviews on 95% of the time, bit the big one.  I got another used one, but was sick of Windows (too resource hungry) and decided to give Linux yet another try to see if it is "ready" for prime time.  After a couple of months of testing, I have to say it is close, but not there yet.  The biggest issue for me is that there’s no good blogging software.  Windows Live Writer is light years better than anything available on Linux, and despite my valiant attempts to get it to run in Linux, I was unsuccessful.  So, this past weekend I installed Vista, of all things, and am back in action.  My system might be slow, but it works.

The second is that we went through a period of being lazy, both in writing reviews and with buying wine.  We got into a zone and were embarrassingly stuck on a specific group of yummy wines and weren’t too adventurous.  I felt a little "burnt" on doing reviews too… I just wanted to relax and enjoy the wine for a while.  It did give me a great appreciation for the work that wine critics do.  They don’t have the luxury of going on an extended vacation from reviewing wines.  But I think I’ve found the solution, so hopefully we’ll be back for good.

I’ll be posting a several reviews that I made notes on paper for, thinking I’d be posting them soon from my PC.  I can’t tell you why I never did… it is a mystery to even me.  It is far less convenient to post from my PC, since I typically post reviews on the spot from my laptop, not from my office some other time.  But still, I do spend plenty of time at the PC and could have done it… guess I just used it as an excuse. 

Oh, and if you read this, POST COMMENTS!  We know there are lots of people reading our blog and nobody is posting comments.  We want them!  Give ‘em up!  Especially if you try a wine we review, whether you agree or not, post your own comments about it.  We want to know what you think. 

Shawn (MrSato)

Vignobles Chaigne et Fils, who produce the Ballan-Larquette wine in the Bordeaux region, which we reviewed recently, send us an email regarding the post.  I thought you might enjoy reading our communication as much as I enjoyed it, so here it is.  As a note, you may recall a blurb I had about Wilfred Wong at the end of that review.  Regis comments on that, among other things, but I have since taken the blurb out of the post (consider this a retraction), as what I said was disproved.  Thanks to Regis for setting this straight for me!

Read more