WTN: Pavie Macquin, Cavatappi, Hart, Sorin (best $10 red ever)

[Jenise]

1994 Pavie Macquin
Only my second wine from this producer, the first was a very early maturing 97 a few years ago. Nothing about that one prepared me for this. Plummy fruit with a little Kirsch, dried herbs, well-done roast beef, black olive and graphite, open and drinkable but taut. Not one of these words would have applied to that 97.

2005 Cavatappi Sangiovese, Wahluke Slope, Washington
Bright, medium red color. Pleasant berry nose and taste, with the most distinctive feature being its softness. No tannins or structure whatsoever, strictly a quaffer. A pleasant one--its easy to drink--but this isn't serious wine. Alcohol's 14% but doesn't taste like it. $13.99.

Hart 2005 Chardonnay(Un-oaked), Niagara
Made by our very own Howie. The first thing my husband said after tasting this was, "why can't Chuck (a certain friend of ours) make wine like this?" Chuck's homemade wines--made from real grapes--taste like homemade wines. This doesn't. It's lovely. Well-delineated pear and apple fruit with a touch of lemon and gold raspberry, with perfect acidity. It's so well-balanced that it's both refreshing and elegant, and it's hard to get those two descriptors in the same sentence. Served it with an after dinner cheese course to wine-savvy friends who were just blown away that this was home-made. Thanks, Howie, I now understand why everybody who tastes your wines heaps such praise on you.

2005 Domaine Sorin, Cuvee Tradition, Cotes de Provence I cannot remember when $10 bought a wine this delicious. Robust red and black fruit, roasted meats, herbs, ripe tannins--exuberant flavors that are kind of lush and rustic at the same time. It tastes like every sun-drenched painting you've ever seen of south of France--yellow fields, red houses, blue-blue skies--and it takes me straight back to Provence, to a little white tablecloth restaurant we lunched at one day, where the most expensive wine on the menu was $20--and mindblowingly good. Buy again? Yes, case purchase!

Chuck's homemade wines--made from real grapes

As opposed to??

[Jenise]

As opposed to wines from concentrate/kits. Very popular in this area--there are a lot of U-make stores on the Canadian side of the border.

As opposed to wines from concentrate/kits. Very popular in this area--there are a lot of U-make stores on the Canadian side of the border.

Aha. Thanks.

Thanks for the note on the Pavie-Maquin. What was the '97 like? I have only experienced a small taste of 2000 Pavie-Maquin and would have purchased a bottle if it were in my price range. I remember it as being quite elegant and smooth with ripe fruit and some complexity but not the roast beef note.

I liked the '94 Pavie Macquin, too.

Re the '97. One of my favorite wines of the vintage. Good concentration for the year, ripe but with some good structure. BUT Chateau and Estates put a bunch on the market about 4 years ago that rumor has it sat for several years in non-chilled warehouse. Some kind of temperature control, they weren't obviously cooked, but they were far more advanced and less graceful than ones that folks bought on release. If your purchase was in last 4 years, that might explain result.

[Robin Garr]

Cavatappi

Is this actually the winery name, or a proprietary name for this bottling? It means "corkscrew," as you probably know ... can't help wondering if it's also a family name or if they just picked it for wine-related reasons.

[Jenise]

Cavatappi

Is this actually the winery name, or a proprietary name for this bottling? It means "corkscrew," as you probably know ... can't help wondering if it's also a family name or if they just picked it for wine-related reasons.

Actual winery name. Don't know anything about them, though, other than this one bottle. I should have mentioned in my notes, btw, speaking of the winery, that the label said "Cellared and Bottled By". Don't know if they make any of their own wines or not.

[Jenise]

I liked the '94 Pavie Macquin, too.

Re the '97. One of my favorite wines of the vintage. Good concentration for the year, ripe but with some good structure. BUT Chateau and Estates put a bunch on the market about 4 years ago that rumor has it sat for several years in non-chilled warehouse. Some kind of temperature control, they weren't obviously cooked, but they were far more advanced and less graceful than ones that folks bought on release. If your purchase was in last 4 years, that might explain result.

Mine could well have been one of those, Dale; I purchased it on Winebid about five years ago, a little longer ago than you say, but I remember well that the wine was only medium red with orange rim for color and drank more like an old Burgunday than a Bordeaux. Don't usually see that kind of light pigmentation in a wine only four-five years old.

The Sorin, how were the tannins? The Bandol was way too tannic when I posted here months ago.

[Jenise]

Ripe and mild, Bob. Drinks superbly straight out of the bottle.

I'm glad my wine made it's way across the country OK and that you enjoyed it. I still have to get the '06 bottled. They do grow some nice Chardonnay in the Niagara Peninsula. It's almost too bad the area only seems to be known for Vidal Icewine.

Jenise,
it could easily have been 5 years ago, I guessed 4 from memory. I don't have purchase dates for any of the wines I had before I started using Cellartracker.

I have 1 bottles left of the '97 Pavie Macquin; no best guess as to if one of the original purchase or dumped wines. I have learned my lessons and now put some kind of marker if I buy wine (that I already have cellared from another source).

[Jenise]

I have learned my lessons and now put some kind of marker if I buy wine (that I already have cellared from another source).

I do the same. By the time we figure out the difference it's usually going to be an unreversible moot point, but at least if you find something off or unusual, you have a semblance of an explanation.