WTN: Forman, Belle Glos, Lapierre, Bin 389, La Lagune

[Jenise]

Some recent wines:

2006 Forman Chardonnay, Napa, (1.5L): Smokey nose with oily flavors of pear and diesel. Acidity lighter than expected or needed; a bit OTH.

2007 Belle Glos Pinot Noir, Clark and Telegraph VY, California (1.5L): Raspberry fruit with tomato skin and thyme, fennel and chocolate--all tainted, to my palate, with the bitter acridness of heavy barrel toast.

2009 Lapierre Morgon (1.5L): Fresh bright strawberry flavors with a hint of geranium; delicious. Drinking perfectly right now.

2005 Penny's Hill 'Footprint' Shiraz, McClaren Vale: Black-garnet color. Charred black fruit with a strawberry tanginess, fresh asphalt, very grilled, rustic, no MV velvet, aging into a black hole instead of anywhere good.

1996 Penfolds Bin 389 Cab-Shiraz: While miles ahead of the Penny's Hill in quality, this wine, or this bottle of this wine, seems like a fine, aged shiraz on first glass but twenty minutes the second glass drank more like a late harvest Paso Robles Zinfandel, overwrought with cumbersome porty flavors. We could not finish the bottle.

1998 La Lagune, Bordeaux: Decanted for sediment, of which there was none, and poured. At first and without food, this wine seemed a bit monochromatic and soul-less, but while relatively average for a leftie 98 it popped into serviceable form with the soft, understated but complex flavors of the main course, which was onion-braised veal chop over an orzo and brussel sprout hash with caraway seed. On the nose some age-related leathery character and sweet potpourri, with a palate of dried cherries, green tobacco and a sweetness not unlike quickly sauteed carrots with a dash of cinnamon. Great match for the dish.

[David M. Bueker]

Never have enjoyed the Belle Glos wines. Too much overtoasted wood to my taste.

Odd transformation for the Penfolds. Too bad.

mmm...Lapierre...mmm...must resist opening mag of 2010...

[Jenise]

Never have enjoyed the Belle Glos wines. Too much overtoasted wood to my taste.

We agree. I bought the first release of the Belle Glos and disliked it for this, so when I saw that a friend had brought this later vintage I hoped for some style change. Not so! Who likes that, especially on a pinot? I hate it on any wine, but at least a zinfandel, say, could carry it better. Don't get it.

"Hello my name is Bruce."

"Hi Bruce."

"And I'm an enjoyer of Belle Glos Pinot Noir."

[David M. Bueker]

"Hello my name is Bruce."

"Hi Bruce."

"And I'm an enjoyer of Belle Glos Pinot Noir."

The first step is...

Thanks, Jenise. You gave me hope. I have had limited exposure to this troisième cru. I want to like it because I like Caroline Frey, the owner, having talked with her briefly in Boston. I looked forward to insinuating myself into a visit to her chateau next spring. I opened a 2006 a couple of weeks ago because it was the only La Lagune I had. I found it as being what I think experts refer to as four-square, but lacking excitement. It was very nice, though, with sweet oak. But, I drank it by itself rather than with food. I will try a couple of other vintages with food and hopefully become enchanted.

http://www.chateau-lalagune.com/chateau ... ne-en.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ZilYDX-mo

My experience with the Belle Glos wines is that I have really liked the Clark and Telephone Pinot Noir but didn't care for the Meiomi. What I hate about the wines is the thick, impervious seal over the cork. I have actually cut myself trying to get the seal off and gave up in frustration and opened another wine.

[Jenise]

Thanks, Jenise. You gave me hope. I have had limited exposure to this troisième cru. I want to like it because I like Caroline Frey, the owner, having talked with her briefly in Boston. I looked forward to insinuating myself into a visit to her chateau next spring. I opened a 2006 a couple of weeks ago because it was the only La Lagune I had. I found it as being what I think experts refer to as four-square, but lacking excitement. It was very nice, though, with sweet oak. But, I drank it by itself rather than with food. I will try a couple of other vintages with food and hopefully become enchanted.

http://www.chateau-lalagune.com/chateau ... ne-en.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ZilYDX-mo

The generosity of friends has enabled me to taste a number of nicely mature 80's vintage La Lagunes, and there's definitely some soul there. I tend to think your 2006 was simply too young, maybe even a tad closed. A little secondary development will probably do the trick you're looking for.

Thanks, Jenise. You gave me hope. I have had limited exposure to this troisième cru. I want to like it because I like Caroline Frey, the owner, having talked with her briefly in Boston. I looked forward to insinuating myself into a visit to her chateau next spring. I opened a 2006 a couple of weeks ago because it was the only La Lagune I had. I found it as being what I think experts refer to as four-square, but lacking excitement. It was very nice, though, with sweet oak. But, I drank it by itself rather than with food. I will try a couple of other vintages with food and hopefully become enchanted.

http://www.chateau-lalagune.com/chateau ... ne-en.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ZilYDX-mo

The generosity of friends has enabled me to taste a number of nicely mature 80's vintage La Lagunes, and there's definitely some soul there. I tend to think your 2006 was simply too young, maybe even a tad closed. A little secondary development will probably do the trick you're looking for.

You have a great advantage over me. I have but one friend who would have anything interesting in his cellar. And he is so occupied professionally that I get to drink one of his bottles maybe once in seven years. The only wine I can drink is what I buy. I suspect you are right because you have the experience you describe, and I don't. In this particular case, I will just have to see if I can find an old bottle or two somewhere.

[Jenise]

You have a great advantage over me. I have but one friend who would have anything interesting in his cellar. And he is so occupied professionally that I get to drink one of his bottles maybe once in seven years. The only wine I can drink is what I buy. I suspect you are right because you have the experience you describe, and I don't. In this particular case, I will just have to see if I can find an old bottle or two somewhere.

Well, a Lagune will never have the funk of the Lynch Moussas you so like or the power and elegance of a Gruaud Larose, but it's more than decent. FWIW, way back when, my mentor introduced me to Lagune and Meyney at the same time, telling me they were Little Engines That Could, if you will, so far as lower tier classed growth Bordeauxs went. I remember thinking the Meyney had more character, and in my mind's eye that's generally been true of most Meyneys I've had vs. most Lagunes. But I might also be pre-disposed to think that way based on my initial reaction. Hard to be completely unbiased, isn't it?

What I hate about the wines is the thick, impervious seal over the cork.

Wine economist Mike Veseth says that 70 percent of the cost of a wine is in the bottle. With this particular Belle Glos, it's more like 90 percent with all that wax. It makes a Markers Mark whiskey bottles look like a rookie. I've liked the few Belle Glos Pinots I've had, but not enough to seek them out.

Regarding the thick, impervious seal, I will use this thread to tell one of my goofy stories. I have not experienced falling down drunk since my thirties. Here in the Adirondacks, last weekend, my wife Lynn and I decided to make a pretty aggressive mountain climb in 90 plus degree f. heat, up Giant Mountain to its shoulder, Nubble, and back, of course. You don’t see many little kids or old people like us on Giant. It is a territory for the young and strong; consequently an externality is passing and chatting with many very attractive young college women climbing with their boyfriends. We took the usual amount of water with us, two litres, which wasn’t enough in the intense heat. Shortly in our return we ran out. I felt a little light headed from mild dehydration near the end of the descent.

That night we had uncommonly committed to join a party of lakeside wine drinkers at a neighbour’s camp. We knew only four of the people there. It was perhaps providence that the camp’s owner jocosely asked us not to fall off the deck because we are all fighting a new deck building code. When decks are replaced we are mandated by law to make them look like cages, which block the lake view. Safety is the issue.

I think Lynn and I were reflexively trying to re-quench with wine, since we drank at least double what we usually do. Anyway, as you might already have guessed, when I stood up to leave, I in essence fainted (however, I wouldn’t have if I had not had a lot to drink. That cool Pinot Noir really hit the spot after the gruelling exercise), falling like a tree on the wooden deck, and leaving a little blood in the process. Awkward. Then Lynn got up and our neighbour escorted her down the deck stairs. When he let go of her arm, she fell like a tree into his flower bed. From my window the next morning, I saw the host inspecting the spot where I had fallen and the flowerbed. Cheesh! What a way to introduce ourselves to our lake’s society.

Oh, yes – my introduction to this post. My first rocket science act was my offer to help our hostess remove the cork from the first bottle of Pinot Noir. It had an impossibly thick seal, which I struggled with for a while, almost swearing. Finally the pretty hostess took the bottle back from this old man’s hands and handed it to her husband who presently unscrewed it. Could I have explained to our neighbours the next day that we don’t ever drink anything under screw-cap and that we had fallen from dehydration (I admit only partly)? Sure. Would they change their first impression of the Harris’s? No.

That is pretty amusing that you both fell hard! Glad you're injuries were no worse.

That is pretty amusing that you both fell hard! Glad you're injuries were no worse.

I hate to say it, but I think it is possible that we both learned something about falling without injury back when it was more common for us. You tuck in the extremities and try to land flat so that you dissipate the force over several body surfaces. And with an apology for hijacking this thread to mountain climbing, as I was writing about the deck incident yesterday, Lynn said she would like to go back to Nubble rather than canoe, as we had planned. We usually don't take the same hike after just a week, but she found it interesting enough, for one reason that I had remarked about that the other climbers on it seem to be more interesting than usual. They were again yesterday a robust lot. At the base we met a really nice uncle and his nephew visiting for the first time from Germany who we saw again on the top of Nubble. He asked if the mountain were a good choice if they were only going to climb just one. I said it was beautiful, but a person needed to be in shape for it. The man laughed and said he did a lot of hiking throughout Europe, up to 23 kilometers in a day, and he was very much in shape. His nephew had just turned fifteen and was expected to have no problem, either. We confessed that while we scaled the summit regularly a few years ago, at our advanced age we would be satisfied with the excellent view from the shoulder, Nubble. The pair like a lot of people who come to the Adirondacks with experience from higher mountain chains don't fully appreciate that most higher chains also start from higher base altitudes and that the Adirondack High Peaks have some pretty challenging vertical distances. As I said, they averted to Nubble when they discovered for themselves this last point and were very satisfied with the choice. I took the picture yesterday.

The Nubble trail is a nice, shortish hike, but what visitors forget (and you mentioned) is that some of the Adirondack peaks are tougher than their length indicates.

The Nubble trail is a nice, shortish hike, but what visitors forget (and you mentioned) is that some of the Adirondack peaks are tougher than their length indicates.

Nubble is not exactly a Yoman’s Test, he says figuratively with a hint of literalness, to mark the end of my joint issues. I had my last hip replacement three months ago following both total shoulder replacements, the other hip replacement, and two knee operations. This picture from Saturday shows me atop Haystack – maybe you have tackled that one, too – which demands a 3.3-mile one-way to a ball-busting last third of a mile pretty much straight up to the grassy top. Therefore 6.6 miles round trip for a pretty healthy test of my new body, again in a lot of heat.

But my pride is for my also 69-year-old wife, who not only keeps up with me on the trails but won’t consider shirking the makings of a decent dinner, even arriving back at the lake at 7:00 p.m. I suggested pizza, but she from scratch marinated pork tenderloin chunks to skewer with onions and serve with home-made tapenade, warm potato salad with home-made ranch dressing, fresh corn and sweet potato. I stood by the outdoor grill with a glass of cool Chardonnay to make absolutely certain the pork would be cooked to exactly the right juicy, pink consistency and surface brownness. Mixing threads like I do metaphors, I opened our last 2001 Chateau Durfort Vivens, which Lynn had loved before, as a surprise, and delightfully surprised she was. It went unpredictably well with the dinner. She said I could even evade dish washing duty if while she did them I read to her Anthony Burgess’s introduction to Frank Harris’s vulgar, “My Life and Loves,” the wording of which she particularly likes to listen to.

Following that Lynn asked me to put on a Downton Abbey CD, to which she sang along at the top of her lungs to “If I Were The Only Boy in the World,” reversing boy and girl, so that everybody on the decks on the two camps on either side of us could surly hear her. After that we got a good night’s sleep.

There is a rocky outcropping about seven minutes from Haystack’s summit. Reaching it we disturbed a young, burly biker type Hippie, his chick, with tattoos and a nose ring, and an initially snarling dog, which looked to be part Pit Bull. “How far is the top from here?” the man asked, probably considering us to be the kind of boring people who would know such an incidental thing. I told him I thought it was no more than ten minutes more. He said they had had enough and would probably start down; they just wanted to leave all the crap behind them, he said, waving dismissively at all civilization below, for a few hours. Lynn said, “You’ve come this far: if we can do it, you can.” Together they beamed and cried, “Okay!”

Lapierre sounds great. A bit surprised at the 389, Ifound it ripe but not overripe not too long ago, with some pretty good structure still.
Glad the La Lagune showed reasonably well. My 98 Bdx purchases were mostly RB, but I've had good showings from things like Poujeaux, kind of like you describe, good if not exciting.

[David M. Bueker]

“How far is the top from here?” the man asked, probably considering us to be the kind of boring people who would know such an incidental thing.

If I had a dollar for every time I have been asked that on a trail I would drink a lot better than I do now! It has nothing to do with who they think you are, it's just something people ask when they have bitten off more than they can chew without unexpected/undesired effort.

[Jenise]

A bit surprised at the 389, Ifound it ripe but not overripe not too long ago, with some pretty good structure still.

Impressions identical with our last bottle of this; it certainly left me with no concern for the future. This might have been an off bottle, but I have two more bottles that I'll advance to the drinking queue nonetheless--why take chances.