In lieu of a proper post, here are some quick notes on four wines I’ve had this week:Mitchell Riesling 2002 [Clare Valley]: Although this was once the Penguin Wine of the Year [if memory serves me right], it isn’t holding up particularly well. If there’s ever a criticism I’ve had of Clare riesling in general, it’s that it’s too stingy with the residual sugar. Six years after harvest, there’s little left to love: some kero on the nose, acidity still very much present, something like lime, and… that’s it. I was seriously tempted to add a bit of simple syrup in hopes of a Frankenmosel but decided against it. I still have half a case, so here’s hoping this either improves or I learn to like it better.Petaluma Hanlin Hill Riesling 2002 [Clare Valley]: This is, I’d think, probably about as good as Australian riesling gets [it’s either this, Grosset, or Steingarten, I suppose]. Six years on, the nose was strangely absent both straight out of the fridge and after warming up a bit. Eventually, I think I smelled something like hay or dust on a lightbulb. In the mouth, however, this wine is an absolute delight: so light it’s barely even there, ethereal, stony, citral… fantastic.DEWN Gonzo Pinot Gris 2005 [Bonny Doon Vineyard]: If you’re teaching a class in wine faults and need to show your students with reduction smells like… grab a bottle of this. Smells like someone dumped a load of sulfur in a barn stall. Ugh.Bonny Doon Ca’ del Solo Muscat 2006: If you’re going to drink a muscat, and if you’ve decided against Moscato d’Asti because you can’t stand bubbles or want more alcohol in your wine, then this is probably one of the best bottles you’ll be able to find. Truly beautiful stuff: all orange blossom and jasmine perfume, beautifully balanced, not sweet, and a lovely greenish yellow in the glass. Highly recommended.

While the other half is enduring a regrettable alcohol-free period, I have been scouring the cellar for inexpensive tid-bits that I had hoped would generate enough interest to write up. Alas, no mixed success so far, although the experience does highlight how much one’s impressions of a wine can change over time.
I purchased a few bottles of the Seppelt Chalambar 2005 a little while ago after tasting it once and finding it sufficiently delicious. My second bottle, consumed last night (and around six months after the first) was not nearly so interesting. It was generous enough, and distinctive in character, but I found it unattractively blurred and thus utterly unrewarding to contemplate as anything other than a tasty quaffer. Perhaps I was in a bad mood, as it’s not a bad wine by any means. Or perhaps it was a dud bottle.By contrast, the Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz 2006 has never tasted so good as it did the other night. The last few tastings of this wine (a personal favourite) have been ever so slightly disappointing, as I have found the wine to be lacking in clarity and ever so clumsy. Although it still feels like a gangly teenager, on the basis of my latest tasting it may yet achieve a more harmonious maturity. An intense blast of purple jubes, licorice allsorts and pepper on both nose and palate characterises this wine, which is of significant flavour density. The structure is not quite resolved, with acid sticking out a bit, and tannins feeling a little chunkier than one would like. But my experience of this label is that it drinks best with several years’ age on it, so it’s certainly heading in the right direction. Good drinking.

Cameron Hughes Lot 51 [Malbec from Lujan de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina, 2004]: The only way to describe this wine was something like “all treble.” Fairly lovely, higher altitude fruit without much in the lower octaves. Good value, but nothing mind-blowingly good.Cameron Hughes Lot 25 [sparkling wine from Carneros, presumably 1999] Hate to say it, but a poor example of California sparkling wine. The fruit was too heavy, too rich, too ripe; the bead was anemic and it all felt like an overwrought California chardonnay that had been forced through a soda fountain. On the other hand, it didn’t smell too bad… but seriously: if you’re gonna buy California sparkling wine, there are better options. Beautiful bottle, however.St. Benno sparkling scheurebe [around $22] – Found this in a department store in Berlin. I thought it was intriguing with notes of lemon and pepper, but my partner felt it smelled and tasted like rotting celery or a dirty greengrocer’s. Definitely an acquired taste.Rotkäppchen sparkling pinot blanc (Weißburgunder) [around $27] – Rottkäppchen was the premier producer of sparkling wine in the GDR, and they’re one of the very few businesses to have prospered after German reunification (I think, but I’m not sure, that they now sell more sparkling wine than anyone else in Germany). This is their high end product – méthode traditionelle wine from Saxon grapes, no corners cut. It displayed definite varietal characteristics, but not much else: of course, proper stemware would have helped (I was using hotel room water glasses, what can I say?). Of course, for the money, there are probably better options available, but I was feeling adventurous.Franz Keller [?] Baßgeige Spätburgunder [pinot noir] – You want proof that climate change is a bad thing? Well, here you go. From Baden – ordinarily home to reasonably good Riesling – comes a German pinot noir that has all of the jammy, overripe lameness of too-warm California pinot noir. Very disappointing, especially compared with a pinot noir-gamay noir wine from the Valais that was drunk on the same evening.

From time to time, I suppose it’d be a good idea to briefly mention some wines that I’ve purchased that don’t really deserve proper blog entries for one reason or another: they were too boring, faulty in some way, or I just didn’t feel like writing about them at the time.Here are a few to get started:Merryvale Vineyards ‘Antigua’ Dessert Wine NV: I saw this in a local bottle shop for $14.99, and it looked interesting: a half-liter bottle filled with dark brown liquid and a badly scuffed label talking about fortified Muscat of Frontignac. Hrm. Plus, it was a Californian producer. The poor bottle looked lonely so I took it home. As I put it in the fridge to chill it down a bit, I noticed that the bottle had a huge amount of incredibly gross looking sediment swirling around in it; when I poured it a bit later, my partner asked if this wasn’t a health risk to be drinking this stuff. Well, probably not – I’m still breathing – but it wasn’t good. It shouldn’t have been that color – it was badly oxidized, and had obviously been sitting around the bottle shop for years and years falling apart. The taste wasn’t horrible – somewhere between Rutherglen liqueur muscat and oloroso Sherry – but two small sips was enough to send it down the drain.Segura Viudas ARIA Sparkling Pinot Noir NV – This is a $7 sparkling wine produced by the Freixenet folks strictly for the US market. It smelled like dying robots having sex in a puddle of stagnant water – awful, truly awful. It didn’t taste of anything other than weak strawberry cordial, the bead was lame, and it was overly sweet to boot. Blecch. This joined the Antigua in the sewers of San Diego in no time at all.Bonny Doon Le Cigare Blanc 2005: I shared this with my extended family at Thanksgiving, and I don’t remember much about it other than it was delicious and that both bottles were the first to go at the party. It had kind of a vague waxy, honeyed taste that wasn’t particularly strongly flavored; very pleasant and OK value at around $16. 60% roussanne, 40% grenache blanc.Redwood Creek Cabernet Sauvignon 2005: The polar opposite to the Cigare, this was revolting in every way, truly disappointing after other wines that had been drunk that evening. At $6, terrible value: the worst in industrial wine. Generic fruity alco-juice with totally unconvincing “new oak” flavor.