Red wine

Nice choice and agree with your review. I had this to pair with Valentine’s dinner.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Very nice!


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

The 2018 Blankiet Mythicus is $275 plus tax and shipping.

Vinous
Review by Antonio Galloni

Rating: (100)

Blankiet’s 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Mythicus Paradise Hills Vineyard is magnificent. Inky, deep, and soaring in its intensity. Mythicus is a blend taken mostly from well-exposed parcels in Blocks 1, 6, 7 and 8, which feature variations on volcanic ash soils that are starkly delineated in the separate components. The Mythicus is one of the most tightly wound wines of 2018, but in the very-best way. It will be absolutely thrilling in another few years’ time once the tannins soften further. Purplish black fruit, gravel, spice, menthol, licorice, and dried herbs linger on the intense finish.

 

Wow. That’s such a shame! I hope you do get to enjoy some of what is left. I would be happy to be a taste tester for the Petrus. [emoji1] I’ve always wanted to try it, but at $3,400+ per bottle, it’s a little steep for me right now.

Having lost two people close to me, I have a “life’s short” mentality. I don’t hold onto wine/things or only use them for special occasions. Every day you’re alive is worth celebrating. Open a good bottle on a Tuesday for no reason...enjoy. Drink all of that wine and try to appreciate every bottle the way the person who cared enough about you to leave them to you would’ve wanted you to! I think your idea to plow through the last of the collection is fantastic and I hope you have lots of fun doing it!

 

Image Unavailable, Please Login


Some delicious Bond and Penfolds about to go into the cellar.




Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

2018 Scarecrow allocation is next week. Anyone interested in my 5 L at $5000 ? Going to take everything else.

 

I have had them go away pretty quickly sometimes. Best after opening and drinking within 30 to 45 minutes.


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

That is an odd bottle size. Haven’t seen many of any 5L?


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

F12--I made a mistake-It is a 3L. A big premium for the bottle when 750's are offered at $450

 

These tremendous high end wines posted above are fun to read about. I'd like to offer my recommendation for two high quality, reasonably priced daily drinkers. I have had several cases of each of these wines through the last 3 or 4 available vintages.
Saint Damien Plan de Dieu Cotes du Rhone. Currently 2018. This is a lovely, ready to drink, soundly made wine that is 80% grenache and 20% mouvedre. This tiny appelation is next to Gigondas and carries a 14.5% alcohol. This is a hell of a buy and I am getting it for about $ 20 a bottle with case discount.
Isole e Olena Chianti Classico. This is the entry level CC from this terrific vintner. Currently 2017 is available, weighing in 14% alcohol. Located between Florence and Sienna, this is a beautiful example of sangiovese from the heart of Tuscany. Bright and ready to drink, about $25 here in Raleigh. This winery makes some higher priced wines, and they make a Chardonnay that is very Burgundian that I can highly recommend (even though I rarely drink Chardonnay.) It's about $50 a bottle IIRC. Worth a try.

 

There’s some expensive pee going on in this group... wow !

 

Cheap and very good:

Image Unavailable, Please Login

Not so cheap but great:
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Well today was my second try at one of the aforementioned bottles.

I wish I could tell you it went well ...

However as much I would have loved to enjoy this great bottle of wine, my hopes were low from the start. There was wine missing from the unopened bottle, either through leakage or evaporation ... I'm guessing the former as I could see a hole poking through the cover. Once removed the cork was wet and rotten all the way to the top.

I opened the bottle around 2pm. Decanted it in a recycled bottle of Old Fitzgerald for good luck. Like last time I poured a hefty amount into the glass in order to let it breathe. All to no avail. This wine has fully turned beyond recovery. Haven't had the heart to do it yet but its unceremonious destiny is the kitchen sink.

Again this was my expectation, not only because of the visual condition of the bottle but also from repressed memories of its siblings. I started being down about it but then remembered why I've decided to finish this journey, namely for closure and to enjoy what's left of that batch of wine.

So although the above all sounds a tad over-melodramatic, and of course I wish it was still good, it is still a good day.

Image Unavailable, Please Login

Image Unavailable, Please Login

Image Unavailable, Please Login

Image Unavailable, Please Login

I'll regroup and try another bottle in a few days.

 

Image Unavailable, Please Login

This 2016 is THE BEST EVER from Nils Venge, he’s Legendary- he garnered the 1st Ever perfect score from Robert Parker.

Retail on this little gem is $75, you can get it for cheaper if you look around.

Extremely pronounced flavors, high acid, high-low tannin. Wonderful black fruit flavors and well balanced.


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

Nils is a buddy of mine. Crazy dude. Good wine.


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

Very cool! The man can make some good wine!


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

Very unfortunate


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

Sorry Serge, on the 82 but please do keep posting, painful though it may be.

 

Serge:

That’s a crying shame!

I opened a btl of ‘82 Margaux last Christmas and it was sublimely beautiful. It was stored in my dank, moldy N.J. basement (without climate control) since release in the mid-eighties. A wine I won’t soon forget:


Image Unavailable, Please Login

Alan
N.J.

 

Image Unavailable, Please Login

This was an experience!




Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

Tonight’s sampling... Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Ok so a couple of updates ...

After the disappointment of the Margaux, I picked out the other two bottles in the lot which had wine missing. They were the two Latour and they were predictably poison.



No pics of me opening them, demons flying out of them cartoon style, or of me chocking at the smell of whatever died in there.

So by the end of that nonsense, my score was 1 win 3 losses, not great.

Onto today, again around 2ish, and the opening of a slightly more consequential bottle of 82 Cheval Blanc.

The first bit of good news was that the seal was intact and the top of the cork was dry with no rot. By now it's pretty clear that if this isn't the case with a bottle its chances of goodness are slim to none. The second bit of good news was that although the cork did break in two, the bottom still had enough structural and moral integrity to be pulled out. Not sure if this is consequential but I for one considered it a personal victory, so please don't take that away from me. The third bit of good news was the wonderful color once poured ... none of that awful browning that usually foreshadows depressing things. The forth bit of good news was the wonderful aroma that exploded out of the bottle as it was being poured into the decanter.

Image Unavailable, Please Login

Image Unavailable, Please Login

Image Unavailable, Please Login

Image Unavailable, Please Login

Image Unavailable, Please Login

The only bit of good news that matters ... it is one of the most wonderful wines I've ever had the pleasure (and relief) to drink.

I'm now 2 for 5.

 

Serge: without prying or asking you to divulge anything that should be kept private, can you share some more on the circumstances of these bottles? Did the original owner not know what he/she had? Were the wines put away in those terrible conditions and just forgotten? A dispute that caused these wines to be abandoned? I'm happy for you that some of these beauties are still OK, but immensely sad at the loss of these monumental bottles.

 

This is what remained from my stepfather's collection at the time of his departure. He was a great wine connoisseur, travelled the world with his Tastevin confrères drinking and collecting wine throughout his life. Most of my memories of him are of great meals and incredible wines at the dinner table, some of which he let me have at times and at ages where I couldn't possibly have appreciated them. Thankfully before his passing and with his trajectory increasingly clear, he had drunk and enjoyed most of what he had owned but for that last batch of a hundred or so bottles. Most were just really good dinner wines, some were very special.

I think the best way to describe what happened is that the person who inherited the bottles, namely my mother, didn't know anything about wine and what it takes to preserve it in a tropical environment (Bermuda), and she was too busy and emotionally fragile to care enough to look into it, or even to let me know about it ... it just was the last thing on her mind at a traumatic time. By the time I realized what had happened it was probably too late to do anything about it and the wine sat in horrible conditions for almost a year. Then to add to its plight, through a shipping mistake by the carrier on its way to me, it sat in a crate at the dock for over a month in the middle of summer. Quite frankly I'm surprised that any bottles made it through that ordeal.

Of course I wish my mother had told me about it so that it didn't come to this, but since they've been here I've always told her that I've been drinking them and that they're all fantastic. I don't have the heart to tell her the truth nor is there any reason to. As far as she knows this is a positive outcome.

This is what I was trying to avoid sharing because it's all a bit sappy, and I honestly let go of the emotional connection years ago when it became clear what had happened to most of it. It just was too upsetting to carry that every time a bottle failed. So now I just want to close this chapter, enjoy the few bottles that might have miraculously survived, and let the bad ones fade from memory.

Today was a good one, so I'm very grateful for that.

 

Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to to seeing how the rest unfold for you.