WTN: Clos Pepe, Verget, Raul Perez, more

[Jenise]

2014 Clos Pepe Estate Pinot Noir Sta. Rita Hills
This wine's coming out of hibernation, and it's about as Burgundian as California wines get. Strawberry, sour cherry, cinnamon bark and thyme are showing well but secondary development's lagging. You won't regret drinking these now, but you'll be rewarded for waiting--think 2024.

2018 Raul Pérez Rías Baixas Muti Albariño
Lemon citrus and herbs with aggressive acidity. Paired well with asparagus but too tart for a fruity romesceau sauce.

2012 Bodegas Zugober (Belezos) Rioja Tempranillo
Has come into the zone since Chaz reported on it in 2016. The blackberry and bothersome vanilla notes have blended into the background and it shines with earth and roasted cherry flavors.

2006 Trust Cabernet Sauvignon Champoux Vineyard Horse Heaven Hills
Fully mature with notes of earth, blackberry pie, and sage. No sediment attached to the bottle but decanting through a coffee filter is recommended to clean up the fine silt.

2017 Verget Chablis 1er Cru Vaillons Chardonnay
Deep yellow-gold. Haven't had one in a year, but it's riper than I remember previous bottles being or would expect as a change in just one year. Still good, just more like Macon than Chablis.

2017 Savage Grace Wines Chardonnay Celilo Vineyard Columbia Gorge
Very pale for a chardonnay. Has obvious Chablis-ish intentions but would be too much matchstick (it doesn't dissipate) for some.

2019 Quails' Gate Estate Winery Old Vines Foch Okanagan Valley VQA Marechal Foch
Day one: in my glass, the wine equivalent of a blank stare. Starchy and taut, hardly any fruit. We struggled through a glass apiece then set the bottle aside for the next day, but life happened and we didn't get back to it until Day Three of Four, when we found it fruitless and really sour, not vinegar sour but like unripe lemon sour. Fed it to the rhododendrons.

2016 LangeTwins Cabernet Franc Miller Vineyard Clarksburg
M's bottle. Warm garnet red color and warm red-dirt flavors with cedar and a modicum of green herbs. Mouth filling, great finish, and doesn't show the 15% alcohol. Enjoyed this very much!

[David M. Bueker]

"Trust Cabernet Sauvignon"

Nice slogan!

I like many Raul Perez wines, but so prolific hard to keep up.
What kind of closure on Verget? They were the first (and among worst) for premox.

[Jenise]

Cork on the Verget, Dale. No sign of oxidation, just a riper profile than the previous two bottles but after this one, I won't leave the rest to chance (three more).

2019 Quails' Gate Estate Winery Old Vines Foch Okanagan Valley VQA Marechal Foch
Day one: in my glass, the wine equivalent of a blank stare. Starchy and taut, hardly any fruit. We struggled through a glass apiece then set the bottle aside for the next day, but life happened and we didn't get back to it until Day Three of Four, when we found it fruitless and really sour, not vinegar sour but like unripe lemon sour. Fed it to the rhododendrons.

You brute! The American Rhododendron Society has been notified of your flagrant botanicide!

A former member of tasting group I belonged to just loved bringing this wine out - he thought it was one of the best BC wines he had tasted. I tasted it when I visited Quail's Gate and when they asked me what I thought of it I answered honestly that I wondered why they hadn't torn out the vines and planted something decent. I couldn't see keeping a valuable area of vineyard for the few people that liked that wine. I didn't add that telling visitors from other areas that the wine was a 'special' wine gave them any credit if the tasters knew what they were doing.

It reminded me of bland Carmenere's and lacklustre Pinotages, but somewhat more offensive.

[Jenise]

Botanicide! Made me laugh out loud. Actually, I bought this for sentimental reasons--it was the first BC red wine I ever tasted. It was something recommended by the people of this forum, at least the forum as it was then, in the late 90's when we travelled to Vancouver from southern California to investigate this area as our next home. We got BTG pours at a Spanish restaurant called something like Bin 941. I recall describing it tasting like freshly made adobe clay tiles and raw sweet potato. It was starchy as this bottle was also, but there was some definite fruit. Not this time! Put me down for: over it!