Darryl

From what I’ve heard the 2004 will be released as a reserve wine and the price will be higher. They have actually released the 2005 ahead of the 2004.

Kwispedoor

Great Cabernet, generally. I’ve had about seven or eight of the 1997 magnums over the last year. A few showed a touch of brett and were a bit more difficult to drink, but the good ones were truly fantastic (complex, minerally, balanced and very easily drinkable).

Hey, Fred – Webersburg Cab 2001 won a blind tasting at my club last year, but your wine is too good to win competition awards in this country – too many prominent judges are seduced by hollow, extracted and showy wines.

Example: Wine Magazine’s Aug. (Shiraz) & Sept. (Bordeaux-styled blends) headline tastings.

SHIRAZ: apart from the yummy Rainbow’s End Single Vineyard 2008, ALL the other top rated wines (4 & 4.5 stars) have 14.5% to 15.1% alcohol.

BORDEAUX BLENDS: ALL the top wines (5 & 4.5 stars) have 14.5% alcohol.

If you take the 0.5% legally allowed alcohol deviation on the label into account, it’s a lot worse. Nobody is going to label a 14% alc. wine as 14.5%, but most 15% alc. wines will be labelled as 14.5%.

Looking at recent Wine Magazine ratings, two wines that I personally like (with alcohol levels generally at 14% and below, but with heaps of fruit and structure), Kanonkop Paul Sauer and Cordoba Crescendo, just can’t seem to battle past 3.5 stars. That excludes the 10-year old reflective tastings where they fare much, much better. When these wines are young, fragile/inexperienced palates (especially the ones easily seduced by the more showy wines) might misinterpret their tannin, potential, etc.

Sure, some of the higher alcohol wines are very good but many of the really, really wonderful wines seem to slip through the competition cracks on a regular basis. With judging like that it shouldn’t come as a surprise when top producers increasingly refrain from entering competitions…

Kwispedoor

Great Cabernet, generally. I’ve had about seven or eight of the 1997 magnums over the last year. A few showed nouances of brett and were a bit more difficult to drink, but the good ones were truly fantastic (complex, minerally, balanced and very easily drinkable).

Hey, Fred – Webersburg Cab 2001 won a blind tasting at my club last year, but your wine is too good to win competition awards in this country – too many prominent judges are seduced by hollow, extracted and showy wines.

Example: Wine Magazine’s Aug. (Shiraz) & Sept. (Bordeaux-styled blends) headline tastings.

SHIRAZ: apart from the yummy Rainbow’s End Single Vineyard 2008, ALL the other top rated wines (4 & 4.5 stars) have 14.5% to 15.1% alcohol.

BORDEAUX BLENDS: ALL the top wines (5 & 4.5 stars) have 14.5% alcohol.

If you take the 0.5% legally allowed alcohol deviation on the label into account, it’s a lot worse. Nobody is going to label a 14% alc. wine as 14.5%, but most 15% alc. wines will be labelled as 14.5%.

Looking at recent Wine Magazine ratings, two wines that I personally like (with alcohol levels generally at 14% and below, but with heaps of fruit and structure), Kanonkop Paul Sauer and Cordoba Crescendo, just can’t seem to battle past 3.5 stars. That excludes the 10-year old reflective tastings where they fare much, much better. When these wines are young, fragile/inexperienced palates (especially the ones easily seduced by the more showy wines) might misinterpret their tannin, potential, etc.

Sure, some of the higher alcohol wines are very good but many of the really, really wonderful wines of real character and longevity seem to slip through the competition cracks on a regular basis. With judging like that it shouldn’t come as a surprise when top producers increasingly refrain from entering competitions…

ouch

Kwis- rating yourself as a bit of a demigod there in the tasting world:
“fragile/inexperienced palates (especially the ones easily seduced by the more showy wines)”
and we can only assume you have tasted all the wines blind before throwing out this pearler.
“too many prominent judges are seduced by hollow, extracted and showy wines.”

Bizarre you dont have your own blog as we need out own Parker!

Kwispedoor

LOL!! No, “Ouch” – I love tasting blind and we all know how humble that keeps all tasters. Well, maybe a little less so when they taste only within specific categories, as most panels tend to do, but still…

Forget about little old me (not being involved in any commercial competition panel), but do you agree with me or not on the types of wine that’s generally awarded lately in this country? Are they generally the very ripe, softly tannic, extracted, early drinkable ones or the ones of real character, longevity, balance and uniqueness (showing a sense of where the grapes were grown)?

ouch

Totally agreed – obviously its a concern when Merlot starts becoming Cabernet and Cabernet becomes Shiraz> unfortunately what constitutes “classic” these days?- as the frenchies lie throught their teeth about the alcohol in bottle and pretty much every second cellar has a RO machine in Bordeaux.
There is nothing “normal” about competitions or the way they are conducted, but a necesarry evil I guest to indicate what style seems to be the vogue!

Kwispedoor

I guess classic is still very much the same as it always was – there’s just less of it…

I generally avoid whatever is the “in vogue” style. But that’s how I like it. It means I’ll be drinking Riesling while the fashionable crowd is drinking unwooded Chardonnay and Pinot Noir when the fashionable crowd is drinking awkward Merlot and alcoholic Shiraz. It also means there are no pics on Facebook showing me donning a pair of Crocs. There might be other embarrassing pics, but fashion will never be the cause of it.

ouch

all true- when the tail wags the dog, its time to buy a dog with no tail.