![]() ![]() Mirassou is a huge booster of Livermore Valley, where his father moved shortly after selling the family's eponymous winery (Gallo owns it now.) Pre-Prohibition, Livermore Valley was about as respected for fine wine terroir as Napa Valley.īut while the Wente family has done a nice job of getting Livermore Valley in every airport wine shop in America, the high-end industry has never taken off. But if people think we belong on the table, that's a win for Livermore Valley." Fair enough. Mirassou said, "I'm not expecting to win the tasting. I liked the flavor better than the aroma, but I don't know if the tasting accomplished what Mirassou wanted. Virginie writes a lot more wine reviews than I do these days and "liqueur" is the lingua franca. It smelled and tasted of candied fruit to me Virginie Boone from Wine Enthusiast called that same flavor "liqueur." Language is so important in the wine experience. That leaves our host's wine, the Lineage. It was the easiest to drink and possibly the easiest to finish a bottle of. You'd think the Saint-Estèphe would have stood out in this group, and maybe it did in retrospect, but when we blind-tasted we didn't actually know where any of the bottles were from save "Northern Hemisphere." None of us jumped up and said, "Ah, back to France!" This wine was the simplest up front but also the liveliest, with a nice fruity finish. Well, maybe I went back to it later and still liked it. Another taster called it the kind of flashy California wine that tastes great with one sip but you can't have a second glass of it. It's very New World, ripe, dark fruit, well-balanced. I liked Tim Mondavi's Continuum more than the other tasters did. I guess people pay for surety with this brand and at that it succeeded. The Phelps Insignia tasted generic: solid, boring, could be a Cab blend from anywhere, which makes sense given that it's a many-vineyard blend. I just wrote about Harlan Estate a couple months ago and I have respect for what they do, but in a blind setting, I have to hope this was bottle variation. The Harlan Estate, I'm sorry to report, finished last and tasted weird we all hated it. The tannins on the finish were a little strong, but this isn't a wine meant to be drunk on release, plus I went back to it an hour later and they had loosened up. And the flavor delivered complexity as well. ![]() But this time, it had easily the best aroma of the group: elegant, complex, dark cherries in a warm cedary drawing room. The last time I had Opus One, I thought it was very oaky. ![]()
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