Please use comments here to alert everyone to interesting wines you’ve seen at which stores, but which have not yet been reviewed. Please post any tasting notes in Guest Contributions, or as a comment on a main-page review, as comments here older than six weeks or so will be deleted.
You can check out what reviewers have at home to review at this sub-blog:
The magical world of wines from Grocery Outlet 
Mironia 2015 Crianza, Ribera del Duero, Spain, 85% Tempranillo, 15% Merlot, imported by Hillside Wine and Spirits, 14.5% ABV, $7. Not bad earlier, but needs a good while to really smooth out. Decanted 4.5 hours, smooth and gently supple and rich, flavors of tangy dark red cherry / raspberry, purple plum, cassis / dark blueberry, plenty of yummy wood, balsamic, brown sugar / maybe slight raisin, dusty earth, needs air but not more age. Drink soon. I liked this a lot for the price, was great especially with food, but you do have to be okay with a rather mature wine with a bit of non-fruit flavors.
Today at the Richland WA store:
– 2017 Sawmill Creek Vidal Icewine from the Niagara Peninsula (Canada) $25 and Weinhaus Schlink Reisling, mentioned by Lim13 and WORN.
– 2018 “Bloke” Riesling, Winemakers Selection, $4.99 – Cellared and Bottled by CC Vineyards Paterson WA – so from Columbia Crest/Ste Michelle Estates. I’m seeing it $11-14 in a few places, including Australia. Screwcap. I’m sure it will be a decent off-dry product worth $5 – and it says pair with seafood, or a “variety of different cuisines.”
For readers who may have missed my earlier post on that Vidal icewine, be advised that it’s $25 for a 375 ml. bottle.
Sighted at my local Seattle GO:
Aime Roquesante Cotes de Provence Rosé – this is a beautiful looking bottle. Very dry and acidic for a rose, which I prefer but some people may not be so keen on. Nothing fancy, but for $4.99 you could do a whole lot worse for a summer rose. I’ll probably pick up a second to have on hand when the summer weather starts spiking.
Lapis Luna Romanzo Moon Zinfandel – $5.99 at my local store, ABV 14.2%. Haven’t had a chance to sample and online reviews appear to be mixed. If anyone’s had experience with this Zin and whether or not it’s worth the purchase, I’m all ears.
Glad to hear the Roquesante is nice and dry – I picked up a bottle this weekend as well, but we haven’t tried it. I also picked up a bottle of 2021 La Galope Côtes de Gascogne Rosé out of curiosity.
For beer fans, I noticed that our location recently started carrying Bell’s Two Hearted Ale…I really enjoyed the one I opened and hope it sticks around.
Si Mento Rosso Verona IGT 2019, bought at Oakland, I forget the price. 10% of the grapes were dried, Amarone style, adding some body to what would have been a light bodied red wine. Not enough acid for me, but it has an elegant mouthfeel. Not a repeat buy for me but if you see a bottle of it you might like it.
Opened one of the Keira cellars wines this evening, the 2017 Red Mountain Cabernet Franc, wow it is in a wonderful drinking window for anyone who purchased them last year. Bold, rich fruit, smooth finish after being open for about an hour (needed to give it a bit as the finish began a little bitter), drinking like the $50 bottle it retailed at. I am biased because I’m near Woodinville, Wa where the winery was located, but if anyone purchased some of their wine last year, it feels like a great time to enjoy one of their reds with a good steak.
Thanks for the heads-up! I think I still have one bottle of this. I set aside 4 of the various Keira I bought before they were gobbled up in the sale.
I also cracked open a Gordon Malbec from a purchase awhile back and it was also very tasty after an hour or two.
After a downtown appt. I stopped at #81, which is an unpleasant location due to the vagrants/transients who hang out in the front, stealing the grocery carts and demanding $1 from passerby. I suspect their shrinkage rates are higher than the system average, since prices here also tend to be higher, perhaps to compensate. The wine dept is small and weak, imo.
I saw two items I didn’t recognize, perhaps of some interest.
2015 Exmoor ‘Xanadu Vyd’ Shiraz [Margaret River] $4 Screwcapped Imported by Verity Wine Ptners, NY. 14% abv. A lot of OZ wines lost their export markets when China boosted tarriffs; this has the look of a wine that lost its customer base and took some years (and price chopping) to find a new home. I suspect the current vintage has to be 2019, 2020 so it makes sense to be here at this price. Margaret River is a generally well regarded viticulture area, but I don’t know anything about this producer, and I rarely care for this varietal outside of the Rhone (and maybe Domaine Terre Rouge in the Sierras)
2017 Nova Vita Firebird ‘Shiraz’ [Adelaide Hills] $6 Screwcapped. Vegan (whatever that means) Imported by Manhasset Wines NY, which I think has a podcast I listened to many years ago. IIRC they are a paperwork provider kind of importer (customer has to find the wine, provide the capital, they handle paperwork and logistics). If GO has figured out some way of doing this that would be cool, but I suspect this is someone elses’s leftover being sold cheap, out of the core region.
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I’ve been hoping more OZ wines come in – to all retailers – as I do like the blancs especially if one can get the better ones. A few years ago a local store had come great deals on Langmeil, Leeuwin, Kumeau, Craggy Range, Giant Steps, Jancz and so on; I picked up a mixed case for a song and enjoyed them. As I researched them, after quaffing so carelessly, I realized that these were all far better than the price had implied. Unf, that deal has not flared up again, even though it seems like it ought to, since there’s a glut of OZ wine out there. And sometimes to NZ producers can tangled up in the biz problems since their agents/importers might handle both regions. Anyways I picked up a Halliday book since my information/knowledge is limited, and I suspect the best deals would be on wines that have no US presence (and thus don’t care about torching a price image). I suspect both of the above are in this general category, so perhaps interesting to GO customers.
Australia is a harder sell to conventional fine wine consumers, I think.
Aubergine, thanks for scouting out so many stores for interesting wines! Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to know which GO location you are talking about without more information. It would be super helpful to mention the address & city of the store. I tried Googling “Grocery Outlet Store #81 where is it located” and nothing helpful pops up. Thanks in advance!🙏
#81 is at 1700 Capital Ave, basically 17th & Capital. Parking is wonky. Location is not recommended.
Popped open the Lapilli 2020 Aglianico Beneventano.
🕰2020
💯88/100 🌟3.8
👁️Deep opaque ruby
👃Nose of brambles,earth,smoke
👅Dry,blackberry brambles, earthiness,savory,black cherry, pepper,herbs,garrigue,a bit rustic but in a very good way,pleasant acidity,assertive tannins,full bodied,lip smackingly enjoyable.
🍇Aglianico IGT
🏞️Avellino
🏞️ Italy
⛽ 14%ABV
Agglomerated cork.
💵-$19 online $6 GO
Nice to find a super affordable Aglianico!
Not L’Ecole Apogee but at a fraction of the price, oh yeah, baby!🙌
Need to buy more!
🏃🏽♀️🏃🏽♀️🏃🏽♀️🏃🏽♀️🏃🏽♀️🏃🏽♀️
I’m kinda kicking myself for buying only a single bottle at this price 🤦🏻♀️but I hate returns 45 miles away.🤷🏻♀️
This answer is in response to JJs question why wine pricing is not treated like a commodity like corn, wheat, oil. Re: nationwide economy, wine is not a commodity necessary for national economic functioning, but an acquired “luxury product”. Wine is not an absolute daily need, strictly speaking, no matter how we feel personally about wine.
The majority of Americans do not drink wine regularly, but corn and wheat are in our everyday products, and we need oil for transport.
Personal luxury items like wine, are status signalers.
Wines that are at the peak of desirability, often have years’ long wait to even be on their allocation list, (ten years for Cayuse). These bottles start at $100 or more.
Why don’t the wealthy want to wear Timex watches, WalMart clothing and drive Toyotas? They buy Patek Philippe watches, the latest European designer clothing, and drive luxury vehicles like Rolls Royce, Aston Martin.
Status signalling.
Bringing a bottle of Menage a Trois to a dinner party is almost a guarantee you’ll not be asked again. Bringing a coveted wine you can’t buy at Safeway, signals the host you appreciate their invitation.
I’m reminded of a GO story around Thanksgiving 2021. I was in the Pullman GO, had previously bought 4 Graham 2016 Vintage Port and was back for the rest. A couple from Australia were in the store to pick up wine for a Thanksgiving dinner they had been invited to in town.
I graciously advised them to buy a bottle of the Vintage Port ($34/750 ml) to Thanksgiving dinner, explaining it was the best bottle in the store and a huge discount to boot.
They elected to buy a bottle of 19 Crimes! 😂 I wish I had been there to see the look on the hosts’ faces when presented w a bottle of “The Banished”! 🤣
(I took the rest of the Vintage Port home.)
* Perhaps the Australian couple thought bringing an Australian wine would be a sign of their antipodean ambassadorship.
* Close family friends actually gave me a bottle of Menage a Trois for xmas this year. I’ll admit I was a bit miffed, but didn’t say anything. I’m sure it was just a regift, which I expect from my family, but not friends. My spouse tries to encourage people to NOT give me wine, since I have enough, and its rare that I’d actually appreciate it. The MaT went into a superb coq au vin though, after I tried a jammy/sugary glass.
* Some wine is a status representing signal, a Veblen good. But it’s an achingly small sliver, and too many producers think that slapping a $100 sticker on their OWC 3 pack puts it in that category. If it’s a bottling that a cellar consultant from Winebid, John Hart, K&L etc. will call a seller back about, then its in that rare air. If it’s ever been sold on WTSO, LBW, supermarkets, GO etc. much less likely.
Aubergine, I feel your angst re wine gifts. It’s hard to fake enthusiasm for bad wine. You are brave for trying the MaT. A friend had a bottle of MaT Dark Decadence at her house and absolutely insisted I try it.
It tasted like shoe polish & cherries. I couldn’t take more than 2 sips. Second sip after 30 min to see if shoe polish would air out, nope. 🤢 She thought it tasted fine! 😵💫
JJ, I forgot to mention that oil, corn, wheat are uniform commodities, whereas wine most definitely is not.
If one is advocating that the price of wine should fluctuate according to external forces:
1. No independent winery owner is going to risk investing or taking out loans in the millions, to start a serious wine business if they can’t set their own prices to guarantee what is usually a slim return on investment, at least in the beginning. (ie, a vineyard acre in Napa costs $1M, in Walla Walla, $100K. Takes 6 years for newly planted vines to produce decent fruit, so have to contract fruit from established orchards for years. One wine barrel costs $1.5K, can only impart flavor twice, three times max, hiring a vineyard manager, a seasoned, well respected winemaker, other staff, bottling, corking, storage facilities, costs mount quickly.)
2. Govt price fixing so all wine prices stable – The only businesses that will agree to this are the huge wine conglomerates like Constellation, Gallo, Franzia, Chateau Ste Michelle Estates, etc. They’ll cut even more corners, no thinning of clusters, no canopy management, go for as many grapes you can get per vine, no oak barrels, think oak dust/chips, no handharvesting at all, machine harvest only (bugs, mice, lizards are in grape bunches and will be crushed as well. Added protein! 🤢), forget glass bottles/corks, wine boxes only, decrease varietals/numbers of wine available in order to make a slight profit.
You’ll end up w much worse wines than the Kim Crawford you drank recently.
Most small, independent, unsung winemakers operate from year to year on a slim profit margin. Some go bankrupt if they have a few bad years in a row.
The ones who hit big, sell to large conglomerates eventually, all or at least part of their business for various reasons. Retirement (family succession and tax issues), cash influx to start a new business. Think Robert Mondavi, Dave Phinney (Prisoner Wine Co), Joe Wagner (Meiomi). All sold to Constellation.
“(bugs, mice, lizards are in grape bunches and will be crushed as well. Added protein! 🤢),” ever seen paper thin tomato caterpillars? Those hydraulic wine presses are amazing.
DARRELL, I helped sort through a couple truckloads of wine grapes (a couple tons) during crush about 8 yrs ago with a volunteer team at the local winery where I’m a member. Hard, messy, slippery, dangerous work removing MOG (mostly leaves, stems, sticks) and too-raisinated clusters. (We were standing on a narrow elevated platform, I was fearful of a slip and fall due to grape juice). A slow, steady flow of grapes down an angled open air chute from the grape truck’s tilted bed came between two groups of volunteers on both sides of the sorting table. Did not see worms, mice or stinkbugs. The hand harvesting crew did a great job getting rid of critters!
We got compensated w pizza & wine for lunch and a bottle to take home. My arms were aching after 4 hours work, hair & clothing sticky from grape juice, found stray grapes in clothing once home.
Also volunteered to help bottle, cork and wax the same year. Now the owner has students from the WSU Enology Dept assisting in crush/bottling/waxing/labelling.
Informative & interesting, both times, but not experiences I care to repeat. Too much labor!
Makes you appreciate the hard work that goes into small batch high quality wine.
I’ve always thought that the concept of vegan wine was a misnomer. Unless the grapes are picked and crushed virtually individually, there are always going to be little bugs and non-vegan bits in wine, even if isenglass or other non-vegan finings are eschewed.
Flitcraft, you are very right! A long time ago I read about the governmental allowable amount of insect parts, maggots, fly eggs, rodent hairs, droppings in every day processed foods, benignly called “food defect level”. 😳
Pretty much no food processed (included frozen) is truly vegan. It’s impossible to keep bugs and vermin out of the food supply completely.
I find its best not to dwell on it! Out of sight, out of mind. 😂
A close friend often serves her dinner guests home grown salad.
I’ve watched her picking earwigs outta the gathered lettuce then washing the leaves. I can’t bring myself to eat her salads after being confronted by insects just moments ago. 🐛 🪲 🌿 🤮
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-in-food-wellness/index.html#:~:text='%20but…-,For%20every%20%C2%BC%20cup%20of%20cornmeal%2C%20the%20FDA%20allows%20an,thrips%20for%20every%20%C2%BC%20pound.
Flit, you are correct about the vegan designation misnomer when one thinks about gelatin and egg white fining. Never thought about isinglass. Maybe wineries stating vegan just use bentonite.
Wine may not be a uniform commodity, but it’s a fungible commodity for the majority of consumers. Even businesses. A bar, club, etc. pouring something BTG may not be overly picky about what the house blanc is, as long as it hits their price point.
Aubergine, yes indeed, you are so right of course!
Friday, a bunch of us went out to dinner at the most renown restaurant in town that made the James Beard List for Hospitality in 2022.
No one else wanted wine, I didn’t feel like paying $15 for a possibly stale glass of wine from their limited BTG list.
I asked what is their $8 House Wine label. “Hacienda!” the waitress replied cheerily, with no sense of shame.
Absolutely not.
The bartender comped us a couple ounces of brandy from Bolivia to try, since someone at the table had ordered a Rotating Well Brandy (Korbel).
I don’t drink much Brandy, but that stuff was truly awful, clear, super petroleum-y, like lighter fluid, very pine resin-y like retsina.
Nice gesture, on the bartender’s part, though! (Not sure if he tried it first or not, said they just received it.)
Was it by any chance called Singani 63 or Rujero Singani?
JJ, the bartender quickly flashed the bottle at us, strange graphic label, it was Singani63. No one at our table liked it. Maybe we’re just not brandy people!
WORN: I thought of you when reading this article in Sunday’s Seattle Times (assuming you haven’t already seen it). Hopefully you’ll be able to open this:
https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/how-an-obscure-wa-college-town-restaurant-became-a-james-beard-award-finalist/
And I received this in email tonight:
Outstanding Hospitality
A restaurant, bar or other food and drinking establishment that fosters a sense of hospitality among its customers and staff that serves as a beacon for the community and demonstrates consistent excellence in food, atmosphere, hospitality, and operations while contributing positively to its broader community.
WINNER: The Quarry, Monson, ME. Chef and owner Marilou “Lulu” Ranta worked as a maid in the Philippines before immigrating to the US in the 1980s. Her Maine fine-dining restaurant has been lauded for its hospitality since its debut in 2018.
The Black Cypress, Pullman, WA
Bottega, Birmingham, AL
Lula Drake, Columbia, SC
Sepia, Chicago, IL
Lim, thanks for thinking of me and posting the article! Unfortunately can’t read it unless I subscribe
I have no idea how our little town’s restaurant came to be noticed by a famous big-time foundation in NYC! It was a thrill, I’ll admit.
We’ve been going to the Black Cypress since it opened, usually a few times a year. (It’s pricey for the region.)
I’m very happy for the owner Nick and wish him continued success!
(He married one of my daughter’s classmates years ago. They have 3 small children.)
I am sipping a glass of the 2020 Rock Wall ‘Blanc de Blancs’ sparkling [Clarksburg] which tastes pretty much just like the 2019. Maybe they put vintage labels to help convey a premium image, but the cepage and abv are the same as the 2019. It’s good, and was worth the discounted price, since it was acquired during the spring sale. I would note that I think these are more demi sec bubbly. The bead is as fine as a typical Champagne AOC, which is one of those aspects where coarse Prosecco ‘feels’ different than French peers.
I hardly ever see Rock Wall wines in any GO now, as they have mostly sold through, but if one likes off dry sparkling, $8-10 for this is pretty fair. It’s only a couple bucks more than mega bulk Cava.
Ugh, just broke the beautiful Mikasa flute that I had that in, while handwashing it. This is back from when they were still made in Japan, and had not become a homewares store brand with gimmicky embossing/visuals. Thinnest stem I’d seen on a bubbly glass, and somehow this one had survived at least 15 years, without getting knocked over by any of the many pounds of pets here.
Until my clumsy hands this am.
Aubergine, I rarely use my 1980s Orrefors (Prelude) or Daum crystal, too nerve-wracking plus tiny bowls relative to present stemware. Last used Daum 2/11/21, to celebrate 2nd COVID vaccine shot.
I refuse to buy overpriced Zalto. A good compromise for me is Schott Zweisel. Marshall’s has them for $25/4 stems, now and then.
For large gatherings, or when I feel too busy to hand wash, I use my decades old Libbey balloon wine glasses (I bought 2 sets of 8 at Costco for $12, sturdy workhorses that fit in the dishwasher, if one breaks, no big thing).
So sorry about your Mikasa! 😢(“Taps” on a Kazoo playing gently)
Did you miss the Schott Zweisel glasses that turned up at GO a few years back? A crazy bargain, though I can’t recall the price offhand. We ended up buying about a dozen of them and haven’t broken a single one, though they get used pretty much daily. I wish I could say the same about certain much pricier glasses…
Flitcraft, our GO has never had wineglasses for sale since opening in Fall 2019, let alone Schott Zweisel. My daughter gifted me one set from Marshall’s in 2021 ($25), I played the waiting game and bought 4 more on clearance at $12. They are too tall for my kitchen shelves, no room for a hanging wine glass rack anywhere. I know, I know, “First World Problems”.
During the dot com crash, a local food delivery service called Web Van went bankrupt and all of its stock was blown out by GO. One day my wife bought Riedel glasses for $36 a box. We still have the Bordeaux and Champagne stems.
I have a lot of stemware (4 closets full) and I would stylize SZ as having somewhat thicker stems than German/Austrian peers. I have maybe 10+ shapes of theirs and like them, but part of their value is they are slightly ‘tougher’ and more survivable.
My favorites for when I am by myself are thin stem glasses, on the smaller side if anything.
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Stemware always seem to be on sale somewhere. Costco tends to have something in the Thanksgiving/Xmas time frame; last few years it’s been Stolzle or Nachtmann. Before Luigi Bormioli too (I find their feel too heavy). World Market used to have white labeled Spiegelau’s years ago, and would sell them for $20 a six pack at holiday time too, but they ended that deal, and shifted over the Schott Zwiesel for white label, and whatever that specific lineup is are fairly coarse. In the last couple of months I’ve picked up Riedel two packs for $10 in their 002 and 003 line. I wasn’t familiar with those, and although I like the geometry and sizing, there is a somewhat of a commercial food service feel to them (i.e. can survive dishwashers and busboys). Keep an eye out for those since perhaps those are discontinued?
Aubergine, here, only the wineries in Pullman/Moscow area use Riedel as service ware. There are approx 42K college students btw the 2 towns vs 17K townies total. Even the James Beard awarded restaurant has inadequate wineglasses. The local wine shop uses stemless glasses from WalMart/Dollar Store for its weekly tasting. I bring my own wineglass to many places. I suspect too high loss due to breakage and theft to use good stemware.
Aubergine, I, too, tend to drink French sparklers, Crémant de Loire, Crémant de Bourgogne, Cremant d’Alsace, Blanquette de Limoux, etc. Never any bulk process/ Charmat Prosecco nor Sekt and Cava is ever purchased. If a Franciacorta is seen, I’ll give it a go. If you noticed the cepage of the Rockwall, it had an addition of Muscat Canelli, which I find is cheating amongst a whole host of white wines. Larger wineries often add a small admixture of high proof fortified Muscat juice to some of their whites for that fruity, terpene quality. While on sparkling wine, I was in Costco where wines tend not to be bought by me, there was a Cremant d’Alsace by Ribeauville for $11. Picked one up since my sparkling wines tend to run $14-16. The wine is probably off-dry since the dosage runs 9.3 g/L.
Went to Lewiston GO today (#59), 45 miles away, definitely better wine selection than in Pullman.
Double asterisks indicate purchased.
**Gabriel Meffre 2015 CdP St Theodoric ($9 vs $35)
**Gabriel Meffre 2015 Gigondas St Catherine ($9 vs $35) (90pts WE)
*Gabriel Meffre 2018 Rasteau St Didier ($9 vs $16)
**Aridus 2019 Malbec (last bottle) ($8 vs $50)
**Lapilli 2020 Aglianico Beneventano ($6 vs $16) (Steve McConnell raved about it)
**Karl’s Scepter 2020 Shiraz ($10 vs $35) (heavy bottle, deep punt)
*Pleiades 2019 Rosé ($5 vs $20) (tried & reviewed)
*Ch Lavabre 2017 La Closerie ($18 vs $35) (92pts WS) (tried & reviewed,still have 2)
*Villa Stellaria 2020 Primitivo & PS ($12 vs $30)(tried&reviewed,still have PS&Zin)
*Feuerheerds 10 Yr NV Tawny Port ($15) (have too much Port)
Conservative in purchasing, as still had to stop at Costco.
Spoke w Carlos the Lewiston GO store owner/winebuyer, says he has a lot of the Aridus coming in a few weeks.
This is the same store that had the Force Majeure 2012 Collaborations II & IV, back in 2022, so Carlos definitely has an eye for the good stuff.
Super nice guy, friendly, loves to chat. Last year, invited me to his private wine tastings to go over products in store but I live too far away to make this feasible.
Have seen none of these at the Seattle area GOs–maybe Oly or Renton might have some of them? On the Aridus, I can’t fathom their wines going for $50. Unless it’s the “Hey, ever had a wine from Arizona?” factor. We plan to spend a few days in the Phoenix area this fall, so I will stop at their tasting room in Scottsdale if we have the chance. But, honestly, $50 for a Malbec?
Is Aridus growing the grapes on estate, or just trucking juice/fruit in? I’ll be in Scottsdale too this November for niece’s wedding…thanks for that tip.
But honestly, if they want to charge me an exorbitant fee to taste their stuff just because they’re the only ones making wine in a region where it probably doesn’t belong….forget it.
Why are they being sold at GO, for example….
Anyone able to really recommend the integrity of their winemaking?
JJ, according to their website, Aridus does grow some of their grapes on a 40 acre estate vineyard in Pearce, AZ, but also trucks in grapes from California and New Mexico. They are one of Arizona’s largest wineries, apparently. Started in 2009.
Tasting fee is not disclosed, but they have monthly schedules of what wines are included in a that month’s tasting flight.
There are several reasons for Aridus to sell to GO at a much lower price.
1. Clear out temp controlled storage warehouse for new vintages of wine being bottled, getting rid of previous vintages that they have too many bottles of.
2. Quick cash infusion to pay bills due to a large bulk buy. They have 3 tasting rooms, lots of bills to pay.
3. There are no Grocery Outlets in Arizona, only WA, CA, PA, ID, OR and NV.
So, it’s unlikely their membership base in AZ will run into Aridus wines in WA or ID.
I’ll post a review of the Aridus 2019 Malbec eventually.
Malvasia was reviewed positively by Stephen McConnell, Tank 48, a blend (2019) was pretty good ($5 GO, late 2021), according to Vivino pals in WA.
http://www.wilcoxwinecountry.org lists 9 member wineries including Aridus. When the No Cal GO stores got some Aridus wines maybe 2 years ago I bought every last bottle of the Sauvignon Blanc I could find. An absolutely lovely wine. My wife took half a case of it to her college swim team reunion last year and everyone loved it.
Never saw the SB up here, SB.
I can vouch for the quality of the Aridus wines. Purchased quite a few bottles of their Grenache during a couple of sales ago. I know SB and Lim liked other of their wines. Had doubts since the winery was in Arizona and just wondered where their grapes come from in AZ. Thanks to WORN, the grape sources are known.
Flitcraft, Carlos informed me Aridus is not going out of business, just clearing out their inventory of old stock to GO. Perused their current website to get their pricing on Malbec, they are asking $54 at the winery for the 2020 vintage Malbec. Their reds run from $39 (PS) to $100 (Holiday Blend). Aridus has 3 tasting rooms, one in Scottsdale, two in Willcox. Gotta pay those bills, somehow!
Catching up again, as I continue to get no email notification of new GO posts. This has happened before, a few years ago, and I never did figure it out. Just somehow fixed itself. Don’t like it though. WordPress…or my old PC? Who knows???
Selling wines at GO for wineries that are a going concern is not always viewed positively…especially for winery club members. I wasn’t happy to see Gainey selling their current vintage Chardonnay at GO about 7-8 years ago for a third the price I was paying through their club where I’ve been a member for 30 years. And I called them on it (after I bought a bunch of that Chard). They have no distributor in WA, so were just looking for ways to introduce their wines here. Not very well thought out. That ended abruptly, so I suspect other club members expressed their unhappiness too.
My wife and I visited a number of wineries in New Mexico 10 years ago. Found a few very good and some pretty bad. There weren’t any or many in AZ last time we were there for Spring Training. But the web says there are now “120 wineries and tasting rooms”.
https://www.visitarizona.com/experiences/eat-drink/wineries/
https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/2b29c9dafd9f2ce19ed17253174de5b0/wine-tours-testing/index.html
if Gainey was trying to ‘introduce’ their wines to PNW consumers, teaching them that the price point was 1/3 the club deal isn’t a victory strategy. and I suspect that the typical GO shopper is unlikely to be a member of any winery club (and paying full price / buying wine online) with the scant exceptions of people here on this site.
fwiw, I’m not a member of any club, and rarely buy online nowadays, at least in the last 18mos-24 mos or so.
From my viewpoint…I WANT those wines at GO!!
Sorry about the wine club prices, but we want to get as much quality as possible at our GO’s, don’t we?
If in the future you are a wine club member and see your club’s wine show up at GO, maybe….remember all the good deals at GO you’ve gotten out from under other people, and just smile.
It’s the biz.
I have mixed feelings about that, JJ. I’m fine with more quality wines at GO, but GO is generally not in a segment of the wine market that sells current vintage wines from top quality producers. I think I’d have felt differently if they had been selling an older vintage of that Gainey Chard. There’s a fine line between wanting more quality wine at GO and the effect that has on quality wineries selling new vintage wines at a group of stores generally perceived as being discount (and salvage) based. We’ve had numerous discussions on this blog about how in the world the wines of certain well-respected wineries ended up at GO. Though few of those wines were current releases. I tend to look at the issue from both a consumer’s and a winery’s perspective…as I have some dear friends in the winery business.
. Lim, I know what you mean. The only winery where I’m a member, has their flagship blend at Costco 45 min away in Lewiston for half price ($18 vs $36). (If it was 1/3 price, I would buy cases!). I found it easy to forgive in the past, as they were extremely generous and let members bring multiple people to their release parties/holiday barrel tasting for free and once, a nominal $5 fee (full tasting & free food 🤯)
The one time they charged $5, tasting & food came with one stemless logo’d Riedel wineglass included. My treat, so everyone decided to give me their Riedel, 7 total! I’m not crazy about stemless, but hey! Riedel!
(I noticed the winery is now selling the same stemless Riedel for $12)
Post pandemic, they shut down extra freebies since around 2021, so I’ll probably drop membership soon.
Hmmm…..
I’m trying to understand why the wine business should have some kind of economic structure that works differently than any other in our capitalist free for all. If a grocery store’s packaged fresh spinach gets near the expiration date, it gets highly discounted to move it out quick. When there’s a glut of crude oil on the world market the prices drop due to supply and demand.
When there’s a hurricane in Florida at the wrong time of year, citrus will spike up in price.
Wondering why the wine business should be any different.
A ‘decent’ winery has too much of a particular vintage, it’s deemed inferior for some reason, didn’t sell well, or they mis-figured their yields–or the economy is tanking. There’s fortunately a Grocery Outlet known for its ability to sell discounted wine, that they can move it through. (Or maybe a TJ’s or a Costco that they can slap their own label on–or would that be more acceptable because the ‘quality’ winery’s name isn’t on it?)
It doesn’t go to waste, but instead hits another strata of our continuously hollowed out middle class, making it available to those who would not afford it otherwise (or choose not to).
Wine clubs kinda seem beside the point.
This is a relatively new type of marketing that many wineries now can sell all their product in a closed circuit without ever being on the open market. That’s cool, but they must bear the burden of that decision too…just like any luxury product that will have to exercise its flexibility (and its pride?) when the economy hits the skids. The same for the labels which do also use the open market to sell wine, as well as their clubs.
Either way there’s a multi-tiered market which catches products as they fall, while also serving those who want to ‘club’ it for best choice, first option, etc. Seems kinda like a loyalty program, or a CSA….and the customer must be willing to weather the frailties as well as rejoice in the bounties.
Most products/services we consume need to follow the laws of the ‘free market’. (I’m squeamish even saying that since we don’t really live in a free market).
Why not wine?
That is quite a haul. Thanks for the notes/commentary.
Just realized that somehow I stopped getting email notification of GO posts about 4-5 days ago. So just finished catching up on what folks have posted in that period. This has happened to me before for some unknown reason…and it pisses me off.
Tried a bottle of the 2022 Cathedral Cove NZ Sauv Blanc for the first time today. Brilliant pale green/golden; typically varietal nose and flavors of NZ SB…grassy gooseberry…but it’s much drier and more lemony tart than any NZ SB I’ve had in some time; high acidity is rather puckering; for me, not a sipper, but a definite food wine…most likely with shellfish; should do great with fresh raw oysters or clams. Personally, I much prefer the Kirkland Ti Point NZ SB at Costco for about the same price…or the Mud House that GO had a few years ago (and is still available in other retail outlets now, but at twice the price of the Cathedral Cove).
Agreed.
The Cathedral Cove was not a buy for me during the sale, though I so wanted to find another juicy yummy NZ SB…
I did have one of those Mudhouse just last week…mmm good.
I’ll have to try that Kirkland Ti Point…must have had it before, but probably long ago.
Speaking of Costco, years ago (maybe the last time I tried one?) I thought Kim Crawford was a hallmark NZ SB, but recently drank the little half bottle which came in that 4 pack–anyone get those? The sale took it down to $10 for four varied half bottles. The Meiomi Pinot Noir was quite nice 🙂
Thought the Crawford was terrible tho, no real gooseberry or grassy…just acidic and uninteresting.
I was so surprised.
Wasn’t Kim Crawford bought out some time ago? I think the name is the only connection from what once was. I used to really like the Kim Crawford unoaked Chardonnay back in the day.
That would explain it.
JJ, awhile back, I replied to Darrell re Cathedral Cove NZ SB. Here is an excerpt of that reply regarding Kim Crawford SB.
“A Forbes article re: Kim Crawford entails how relatively inexpensive and quick it is to make NZ SB, in comparison to red wines that are aged in barrel for years, so making a popular SB is extremely lucrative. US is NZs main market for SB.
Kim Crawford sold his eponymous brand to Vincor in 2003, then Constellation for $50M, a 10 yr noncompete clause prevented he and wife Erica from making wine but not from growing grapes. They bought a lot of land and planted grapes. The Crawfords then started Love Block in 2013.
Kim Crawford SB $15-$20.
Love Block $20-$28.🤯
Too pricey IMO.”
Constellation owns Meiomi, Kim Crawford, Prisoner Wine Co and many other labels. It’s likely all 4 halfsies in the Costco quartet were Constellation products.
Definitely too pricey when you can get a dozen other great NZ SB’s for $7-12.
I’ve never seen a regionally produced wine/grape with such predictably good results.
The 4-pack wasn’t from Costco, it was at GO….and during the sale too.
A Mondavi Cabernet and a Simi Chardonnay round out the quartet.
JJ, you mentioned Costco in the paragraph regarding SB and the quartet of wines, hence my confusion.
All 4 labels, Meiomi, Kim Crawford, Mondavi & SIMI are owned by Constellation. Constellation also owns several of Charles Smith’s labels, Kung Fu Girl Riesling, Eve Chardonnay, Boom Boom Syrah, Velvet Devil Merlot & Charles Smith CS.
Constellation’s MO is to take buy brands that have some repute, and then dilute the heck out of them preying upon consumers who might have had a positive experience a decade before.
I love Costco but half their wine selection is basically the equivalent of ketchup or peanut butter.
I’m sorry I led everyone astray on the 4 pack….it wasn’t from Costco, though I sure made it sound like it was. I had mentioned Costco cuz I was thinking of the Kim Crawford SB, which was the only place I ever bought them.
The 4 pack actually came from GO.
Surprising to hear the opinion on Costco wine selections.
I don’t buy them now I’m such a GO fan (tho there’s a Frenchie or two I’d try when they come back in), but many folx on here have spoken highly of them, certainly with some exceptions.
Sorry, aubergine…but I beg to differ re Costco’s wine selection. While I don’t buy often from our local store, I find their selection to offer some really decent deals on name brands and their own Kirkland labels. I’ve had a number of delicious wines from Costco. And though I can’t afford them, last week when I was there, they had a fine selection of first growth Bordeaux and high end Napa Cabs in a locked glass case.
And unfortunately, most shoppers buy “ketchup or peanut butter” wines, regardless of who’s selling them.
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. Costco caters to the mass market, AND the enthusiast, in most warehouses. They’ve got stacks of wine in the Menage a Trois sugary category, AND usually an aisle of fine or enthusiast wine too. And depending on the location, might even have niche offerings. One warehouse near me has – at least a couple times a year – some deal with Amador and Lodi wineries – and has a standalone island with a dozen local producers’ offerings. That’s something a little differentiated.
I love Costco, just picked up a Fleurie there a week or so ago, and a KS premier cru Chablis before that….
Hey! You out there, Darrell? Please tell me that the Cathedral Cove Sauv Blanc you really enjoyed was NOT the 2022 vintage. My wife and I poured the last of ours tonight from the bottle we opened with dinner last night. It was virtually undrinkable…like drinking straight lemon juice…a mouthful of acidity. I know many whites hardly benefit from sitting over night, but this wasn’t much different when first opened. And I take back what I said last night about it being a food wine. I can’t see it being consumed…period. Unfortunately, I have one more bottle. I pray that maybe it’s GO bottle variation.
Evidently, 2022 was a difficult vintage for Marlborough. Here’s a link for an article about that. https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2022/07/2022-harvest-was-a-vintage-of-challenge-says-marlborough-winery/
Thanks for the link, Vinotarian. Certainly the rains and underripe fruit could explain the seriously tart, lemony unbalanced Cathedral Cove SB that I described. I’ll be curious to try some other NZ SB’s from that vintage as a comparison.
Lim, it is the 2022 vintage and I agree with your first evaluation of the wine being a good accompaniment with raw shellfish. Hard to believe the wine changed much, especially if returned to the fridge and as you said “but this wasn’t much different when first opened.” Maybe some oysters and clams on the half shell might help.
Two True Myth wines, cab and chard, showed up at the relatively new Nipomo GO for $6.99. Both 2019’s and wearing gold labels, a 2020 Ryder Cup logo, special reserve, partnership with the PGA, etc. Cab is Paso and the chard Edna.
Cab is typical Paso, lush and plush while the chard has comparable oak to their 2020 offering but with less white peach. I picked up a case of the cab and 1/2 of the chard.
IMO, the store is still trying to find its way with what wines to order. I spoke to Harold, stocks the wine/beer section, and suggested they pick up local wines when available. He agreed but it seems the owner is more interested in throwing around AVAs as a sign of a good wine. I’ve heard Sonoma quite a bit.
BTW, Harold is one cool cat. Always look forward to chatting with him.
The issue with trying to get local wines is that the wineries themselves may not want their ‘catchment’ area to get the idea that their products are all $7. At least some of their business has to be one regional folks have a day off, or out of town visitors, and maybe someone says let’s pack a picnic basket and visit Winery X. And presumably selling them a six pack at the full $38 price.
In my region a ton of the food products are all from grocery chains that are NOT in my region, so they probably have some deal like the items can be sold in a way/place that doesn’t impair the core biz. I see stuff from Stop & Shop (New England chain) Food Lion (mid atlantic/south) as well as Harris Teeter (i think Midwest banner?).
Can anyone comment on the various Grandin French sparklers they might have tried. I see a bunch at all the stores – via the Boisset connection – and for $6 or $7 I wonder if these can sort of be used instead of cava for low end applications (French 75’s, mimosas, uncrictical gulping etc.) Normally Mrs Aubergine is picky about bubbly (frustratingly!) so I have to be mindful in what I pick up.
The house “champers” used to be Roederer Estate, but after it moved from $16 to $23 over the years, I’ve been more open to trying other comparables.
also at #366
St Holda Spatlese Rheinhessen bottled by Gebruder Steffen 8.5%. no mention of varietal so presumably some blend of later picked whites from the Mosel.
2012 Shale Oak CS Paso Robles $8 Pretty old, wonder what the backstory is.
2018 Hatt Creek CS Sonoma Cty $10 that’s a pretty big AVA, so it doesn’t mean much to me.
2019 Sunce ‘Sangiovese’ Santa Giodano Vyd [Sonoma Carneros] $15 Back label is pretty detailed, claims its Brunello like. Winemaker is Frane Franicevic. For the same price one can get a decent Chianti Classico Reserva, so hopefully its fairly priced. The last California sangio I had – Robert Biale’s ‘nona vyd’ – was very very good enough so that a year later I still remember and it’s the only reason I looked closely at this Sunce. The big Tuscan outfits are making just oceans of wine; this bottling is only 18 barrels. So sometimes this niche varietals – even if they don’t make economic sense – can end up ok since its a labor of love for someone at the winery.
Also I took a close look at that Luis ____ something Rioja. It’s being vaguely presented as related to the well known bodega, Muga. I doubt that its really related, and suspect the confusion is deliberate on the part of the retailers, as they might expect that buyers will assume a linkage if they google something long enough. A good rule of thumb in Rioja is if the label is old school looking, it will be a traditionally made / tasting wine. And at least that kind of seems it would fit into that camp. Hopefully someone will taste and report back!
Hi aubergine! These were my thoughts on the Sunce 2019 Sangiovese, 1.5 years ago:
BW, whatever you were trying to do there did not work.
I have generally liked the Sunce wines. They make small quantities of a large number of wines, and many of them end up at GO. They had a tasting room in Kenwood that closed during the pandemic.
Hi Seedboy. Thanks. When look at the list of comments as editor, and click on the link in my comment, it works perfectly. However, when I click on the link to the comment itself, the window does not display the link. Anyway, I’ll duplicate it here:
at #57 today, I saw some new items
Fortant Coastal Select Chardonnay $7 There have been a bunch of Fortant wines in/out of various stores, but I don’t recall seeing the Chardonnay. This is a large French co-op that I’m astonished to still see is being imported. I might have last had any example in the 90’s. I see the Boisset’s are now involved which explains the GO connection.
2020 Feudo Zirtari Nero d’Avola Syrah [Sicilia] $6
Terre de Chietti Sangiovese [IGT] $6 no vintage on front label I can see
Etrusca ‘Bella Vita’ Toscana $8 This might be an appasimento, as the label mentions it.
NV Feuerheerds Tawny Porto $15 Never heard of this and the price isn’t wildly low or anything (most of the big English shippers tawny’s are basically $14-$20 in my region, at least for the entry level ones). the tech sheet is good and it seems strange that its in the western markets since the importer/distributor notes its only for sale in a few northeastern states. if it survives to the fall sale, maybe I’ll buy one, but there’s already of regular VP / LBV / Banyuls to plow through when it gets cold.
https://www.regalwine.com/pdf-generator-wine/?id=7487&type=wine
That Tawny is the 10 Year Tawny btw
Feuerheerds is a reputable second-third tier port house, around since the early 19th century. In Portugal, their 10 year tawny is sold under the Barao de Vilar name, so I am surprised that they bottle under a different name for the US market.
For a ten year tawny, the price is not bad; it is what you’d expect to spend for a tawny with no indication of age by one of the top tier houses. Though, for about 16-17 dollars at Costco you can get the Kirkland Signature 10 Year Tawny, which is crazy-good for the price, and bottled by Fonseca, though the grapes do not come from their estate vineyards. If the Feuerheerd shows up around here, I’ll buy a bottle and taste back-to-back with the Kirkland Signature.
Yes you’re right I had mentally forgotten about the 10Y aspect. I picked up a lot of vintage Banyuls, as well as LBV porto, in recent years, typically for a song and I need to chew through those. At least they don’t go bad or anything, but my occasions and consumption of those are not comparable to dry wines.
I had that KS Tawny either last xmas, or the year before, and liked it, but there was so much consumed over the hoiidays that time, that it didn’t stick out. But in general, all their Kirkland imports are super good deals if one is not a label hound that needs to flaunt a bottle at a banquet or something.
I’m not currently in the market for red wines, but wanted to share a few wines which the Silverdale GO owner texted me photos of in case any locals were interested or if other readers wanted to look for them in their stores:
Berceo Rioja (label photo doesn’t show vintage) $6.99
Castillo De Eneriz Crianza 2018 $6.99
Irati Garnacha (Navarra) 2021 $6.99
La Vigne du Roy CdR 2022 $7.99
If you’ve already found and tried any of these, feel free to share your comments. The last two would be of interest to me…if I was buying.
I think that CdR comes from this CNDP negociant
https://www.hachette-vins.com/guide-vins/producteurs/35833/la-compagnie-rhodanienne-1/
The brand might just be for the US market?
No results on that French negotiant website mentioned by Aubergine for “La Vigne Du Roy”.
On a hunch, I searched on Public COLA Registry for Jan 1, 2022 to present day.
Shows up several times, three for red table wines, labelled once by Plume Ridge in Claremont CA dated Jan, and twice in April labelled by Day Diamond LLC based in Lawrenceville, GA.
Plume Ridge Imports list shows several names familiar to GOBM customers, 7 Colores (Chile), Ch Mayne Guyon, Ch Noyaux BDX, Dauphin Cellier. La Vigne Du Roy is not listed in regular products, the January bottling was possibly a one time thing.
Day Diamond LLC is listed as real estate and “other activities”, filed by Yuling Chansard. Both addresses, PCR label and “real estate and other” business address are the same.
Possibly someone dipping their toes in the wine biz, importing bulk wine from France to hopefully turn a quick buck. Bottled for GO specifically? Quite possibly. No GOBM in Georgia state, closest stores in Maryland.
Not promising, too risky considering many aspects, will pass on this particular “King’s Wine”.
Guide Hachette is sort of like a French wine guide, maybe comparable to the old Wine Connoisseur book. Not a mainline guide. They probably would not have rated/reviewed the bottom end bulk CdR level wine. The reason why I believe that is the blender of that is I looked up the brand name (le vigne du roy) on google and noticed it was on some old wine.com pages, and on those pages, they had ‘other wines from that producer’ and saw that it was some kind of negociant that started in the 60s. presumably sells to French market mostly, and must pack off excess to the US periodically. i included the link so that people could see what the overall gestalt of the maker was. but folks could also look on WDC pages themselves (might be easier if one has a login)
$7 is kind of where Costco will close out real estate bottled CdR, or sell their KS house brand. Or people can keep an eye out for random sales/closeouts and so forth. all that being said, cotes du rhone tend to be a good value in a world where many california wines are pricey and not memorable.
I didn’t think CdR AOC rules allowed bulk exports, and rebottling by buyers? Next time I see one of those bottles I will inspect the back label closely. I’ve noticed that Fetzer (old school CA organic type of producer) now has removed the word ‘California’ from some of their Sauvignon Blanc bottlings, and subbed in Chilean SB instead! It’s bulk exported, and bottled up at their facility, and the consumer who might have assumed that Fetzer was a Mendocino low end producer is now getting Chilean SB (which tends to be watery / vapid) instead. Fetzer is owned by some big Chilean wine conglomerate now, and perhaps this was an easier way to move up the price ladder, rather than branding and all that hard work.
Firm is called “LA COMPAGNIE RHODANIENNE” which sounds like a Northern Rhone producer, but seems to have been founded in CNDP in 1963
I was in #366 today and took a look at the back label of the ‘La Vigne du Roy’. It states ‘Imported by Plume Ridge, Claremont CA. Bottled by Vignobles & Compagnie, F30210-073, France’
WineObessedRN – All alcohol importers have to get label approvals from the Feds for everything that they bring in to the country, but that doesn’t mean they label the wines themselves. I’m quite sure that even the importer’s name gets put on the label overseas. (At least writing that a wine was “labelled once by Plume Ridge”, etc. seems to imply that you think otherwise.)
sometimes importers put stickers on foreign wines that were intended for local consumption, as their way getting into compliance. this is when one gets all the French tax stamped bottles (green/red/blue stickers on the top of the bottle) for (usually) grey market imports. that’s also when the really vague labels are seen like ‘abv 9-14%’ or it denotes table wine on a dessert one….
Stephen McConnell discussed the Vigne du Roy yesterday.
He included a link to the negociant’s website.
There are a number of Piemontese wines by Molina at the GO right now, all from recent vintages, all $5.99. I have tasted the Dolcetto, Barbera Superierore, and Nebbiolo-Barbera blend, and like them all. Good fruit, balanced by sufficient acidity, nicely made. The Nebbiolo blend is pretty elegant. Apparently there is another Barbera that is really good but I have not tried it, and a Moscato I probably would not buy.
Do you mean Mauro Molino? or someone else….not familiar with Molina….
Correct. My bad
hmmm. those sound like good deals, but are not varietals I consume all that much of. well i do like some nebbiolo, so if they had a pure play Langhe that might be interesting. thanks for the heads up
There is one, I’ve just not tried it yet. The blend is quite nice.
Kennewick WA GO. Lots of bare shelf space in the wine aisle.
– 2020 Les Allies Grenache Rose, 3L box for $8.99. Also come in bottles for ~$12 (not at GO). CT 90, Vivino 3.9 (The 2019 was 4.1). “A powerful rose, boasting a firm spicy aroma and delicate dried berry and cherry flavors that linger with creamy notes. It finishes with a rich minerality. ” Produced for WINEFORCES, Arradon France. This sounds like it would be a great summer party wine. Dry,
– 2021 Scandicci Poggio Tosco that aubergine mentioned – scanned as a merlot $6.99. This is not their Reserva nor classico (Vivino went to that). Says DOCG on the front and back labels, plus the neck band (and no rooster). 13% Vivino 3.8 (maybe, Vivino confusion on this wine)
Some items at greater SMF stores
#6 Elk Grove For those who have not been, this is a well run store, more like a Trader Joes in style than an inline, shopping center one Deals on food items are scant but the wine dept is more extensive and better sorted than peers.
still a few 2016 Collines CNDP $17 I think. not a good reputation, but pretty label, and that AOC is generally $30+, even at Costco. I thought these had sold through 1.5 yrs ago.
still some of the Ch. Lavabre left $17
2020 Laurel Cellars PN Monterey $6
2017 Borrellie ‘Grand Reserve’ CS [Knights Valley] $13 heavy luxurious bottle, no google info that I can find. Perhaps a private label from a club, golf course, restaurant etc.?
some of that Wente monterey PN with the weird front label (Clones?) is still there $15
2020 Stemmler Lawler PN $15
2018? DeLoach ‘1950’ PN $12
2017 Divum PN $7
2017 Ferret Lambert Bordeaux Superieur $13 wow this is actually a real insiders bordeaux, that is kind of like the way Lanessan or Sociando Mallet was 20-30 years ago. Not a great vintage but fair price and likely to surprise to the upside.
Generalizing there is a half dozen Bordeaux of lower rung AOC there all in the $6-$15 zone. One could pick blindly, and it would be like hanging out in the Air France lounge, sampling stuff.
San Benedetto Chianti Colli Senesi $6
========
#46 South Sacramento. This is a standalone store, near the Costco. Not many deals in food. Wine selection is ok, I suspect turnover is slow. They are opening up an Asian supermarket across parking lot from this, should be up and running in a couple of months and that would make this whole complex (Costco, GO, Asian mkt) a worthy adventure for those not closeby
2019 Crystal Cruises ‘C Reserve’ PN [Santa Lucia Highlands] $7 lots of commentary on this, just hunt through comments.
2018 Everett Ridge ‘Los Carneros’ Chardonnay [Napa] $10
1996 York Creek Meritage [Spring Mtn District Napa] $15 This has been floating around for a while. K&L was selling it years ago for $20. Interesting, but I passed after a long inspection of the bottle.
Is the York Creek a 750? I opened a magnum last night that was delicious.
yes 750ml
btw, wine1percent blog, which has a link on the right here, does have a review on that york creek. i found it later on; he’s not enthused. his whole blog is very entertaining though. i read through many amusing reviews.
Search of Public COLA Registry from 1995 to 2023 (2 separate searches, limited to 15 yr span per search inquiry) shows Borrellie is a label used by Smith-Anderson Enterprises, first used in 2015, twice in 2019, once in 2020 (Chardonnay), many times in 2022. The physical address is the same as “Top It Off Bottling” in Napa.
I’ve run into that last name a lot while doing searches for CA wines, ie “Napa Heights”. It allows businesses using that bottling facility to state wine made in Napa.
Smith-Anderson has several labels on their website, this is not one of them.
Smith-Anderson may have contracted to make white label wine for a company.
Vivino ratings are all over the place, from 1 to 4.
v2017 scored 3.3 average which is quite low, 71 ratings.
Total ratings all vintages of Reserve CS is just 113, which is not a lot.
Price hovering at $9 per Vivino.
The 2017 vintage bottled in 2022 hints that some winery had surplus wine in 2017, sold off as bulk in 2022.
The heavy bottle and elevated price relative to GO may indicate a higher end winery made the wine initially.
2017 was a heavy forest fire smoke taint year for Napa and WA.
Worth the risk? Maybe. You can always return the bottle for a refund.
None of the bottles you mentioned are in Pullman. 😢
Thanks for the color on that. The issue (for me) with ‘returning for a refund’ is that if I squirrel the bottle away, and it sucks later on, then I have to find the receipt and go back to the original point of sale. Some of these GO’s are not particularly close by, and were just stopped in because I had some errands to run in that area. There was a charity event nearby, so I swung by, but normally I would not be near that location.
And, I already have tons of other reds in the ‘drinking queue’ before that. $13 doesn’t seem like an especially cheap price for something I know nothing about, although I suppose if one was valuing it based on the AVA/varietal that might seem ok, since Napanoma CS is costly.
This might also be some proprietary label / bottling schemed up for the Underground Cellars, Winc’s of the world – who have both gone bankrupt.
Kermit Lynch?!
A definite buy whenever his name is on the bottle…and rarely is it.
Thanks for the tip…I hope we’ll get that in Olympia!
Meyer-Fonne Edelzwicker d’Alsace 2017 (complex white) . Kermit Lynch. $6.99/20 1L Tri-Cities WA GO Stores – Floral dry, and stones, minerals. Buy if you see it.
https://shop.kermitlynch.com/product/detail/20LMF52.html
That is surprising. I thought KLWM had their own quiet ways of getting rid of stock. Perhaps this was a retailer / restaurant that had closed?
This would not be the first time Kermit wines appeared at GO. Back in the 1990s the Lapierre Morgon ended up there, because it was flawed. I have not seen this Alsatian wine at any California stores, this might be a local distributor’s wine
Tintero Elvio Rosso NV has popped up in Pullman for $6, a Kermit Lynch wine.
Various vintages reviewed on Vivino.
According to Vivino, a blend of CF, Nebbiolo, Barbera, Dolcetto, unsure if bottle indicates this.
Screwcap closure.
Last PCR label approval for Tintero by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant dated Jan 2022.
On sale at Whole Foods for $10 in past, according to one reviewer.
Vivino overall rating 3.5, average wine.
Latest review dated Jan 22, 2023 (2.7), mentions flat taste, tasted old, out of date, off aftertaste.
Storage issues? Bad bottle?
Could be why this batch of KLWM bottles ended up at GO. Another pass for me. 🤷🏻♀️
I bought some of the Tintero wines – paying full list price no less! – in recent years mostly based off the glowing descriptions in the KLWM (paper!) catalog which they have been dutifully sending me for decades. I took a snoop in one of the fridges to see if I had the rosso but could not find it. Maybe I only got the Barbaresco.
If the wine is sound (not cooked etc.) it’s probably a good deal for $6 even if it’s likely a ‘sausage’ kind of blend of whatever is laying around after the DOC wines are produced. KLWM tends to be careful of what they bring over, and stick their name on.
We don’t have it in Olympia….but I told Stan to nab some if he sees it come up on the buying list.
I went back today for a case and talked to the wine guy who said he’d ordered plenty from the GO order book (so not local distributor). That is one heavy case of 12 x1L, aligned horizontally. Richland WA
I fail to understand how this whole ordering thing goes….why you would have it as close as Richland, but we don’t in Olympia, but it seems to happen over and over that way.
You must mean 750ml. bottles, and not liter?
I said Liter, not 750ml. Heavy case (like 33% heavier) . Alsance is weird, just as Austria is weird (Gruener Veltliner in 1L bottles). OK, Grocery Outlet stores get an order book every Thursday of “one offs” to fit their demographics, to include wine (plus cheeses, salami, chorizo, yogurt etc). The GO warehouse has 100 cases of x wine, 30 cases of y wine, 150 cases of z wine – the stores then buy these limited products. Most GO stores don’t bother and just take what corporate ships them. Or they are out of Moscato and will buy any Moscatto. A few GOs have very knowledgeable folks ordering (for Western WA, West Olympia, Renton Skyline, and I’ll add in Yakima)
thanks for that insight. explains why there can be such wide divergence between the GO ‘experience’ in both food/wine from one location to another. some are really like old school TJ’s and others feel like run down bodegas that have convinced locals that $1 for a box of macaroni is some kind of deal (and not what the mega chains or costco sell that for…)
Below is a link to a little more info on the Edelzwicker. I’ll be checking today to see if they have it at Silverdale, but won’t be surprised if they don’t…even though along with Olympia and a few others have some of the top sales in the district…and owners who love wines and selling them.
https://shop.kermitlynch.com/product/detail/17LMF52.html
As expected, no Meyer-Fonne Edelzwicker d’Alsace 2017 at Silverdale. I’m going to text the owner of the store to ask about that wine and send her rgardner’s comments about ordering, just to see what she has to say.
In the meantime, Silverdale finally got the oft mentioned Weinhaus Schlink Riesling (2022 vintage) for $6.99, so I picked up a bottle to check it out. They also had 2017 Sawmill Creek Vidal Icewine from the Niagara Peninsula (Canada)…an excellent region for icewines. But $25 for a 375 ml. bottle is too “sweet” for my blood!
Lim, Pullman also received Weinhaus Schlink Riesling ($7) but v2021, plus the Sawmill Creek 2017 Vidal Ice Wine at $25/375 ml. I agree, too steep. Costco often has the Chateau Suduiraut Lions de Suduiraut Sauternes for $10 (375 ml) during holiday season which is a much more reasonably priced dessert wine. (Their entry level Sauternes, so I’ve been told). Looking forward to your review on the Weinhaus Schlink Riesling!
The Schlink is a decent buy for $7, but a bit sweeter than what I’d prefer. Fortunately it has a pretty good dollop of lemony acidity to balance the sugar and the wine finishes sweet/sour. Shows green apple with peachy notes, but not particularly well-defined. My wife and I agreed that it’s pleasant enough, but something’s missing. I’ll have to wait a day or two to decide whether or not it’s worthy of buying more for the cellar. I’m mostly just happy to see a German Riesling find its way to GO. Likely doesn’t help too that I’ve recently been drinking a truly delicious Piesporter Gunterslay (Mosel rather than Rhine) from Total Wine…but at three times the Schlink price.
Sent my text to the Silverdale GO owner and very unexpectedly got a phone call from her. She told me when the GO buyers make wine purchases, those wines immediately show live to all stores. So it’s important to check for new products multiple times throughout the day each day if you want to get any of those wines…which is what the most wine savvy owners or their employees do. But she also added that there are other considerations such as warehouse space (many stores prefer to give maximum space to grocery items, as that’s what they’re really in business to sell). And many (most?) stores don’t have a serious interest in wine sales. I’m sure this is just a part of the whole process. At any rate, my source will be checking in the morning to see if the Edelzwicker shows up on her order guide.
A handful of new things showed up at the SLO GO this week. Nothing extremely exciting, but I did grab a bottle of the 2016 Enériz Crianza and a bottle of 2020 Opta from the Dão – both $6.99.
on the way home from the vet (long tiring visit) I stopped at #123 West Sacramento. For anyone looking, they still have some Divum, RD&MM, Phil Leonard. The Stemmler and DeLoach appear to be gone, as are most of the good French rose. They have some Joshua syrah/grenache blend – ten years old – for $5. It looks like a bulk product.
The store had little interesting regular products, nor deals, and the lines were long/vexing. This location is normally tightly run and worth a visit since the wine department tends to have a few items of interest. But today was a disappointment.
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Costco members might swing by a warehouse and look at their low end offerings. I saw the Precision bulk wine outfit is selling ‘Embroidery’ a Monterey PN for $7 there, This is also a 2019 Cotes de Bourg from a producer I didn’t recognize for $7.50. Every warehouse has different inventory of course – reflecting local market conditions – but it always helps to understand what value benchmarks are available. I picked up a $14 Fleurie, which I probably didn’t need.
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I’ve opened, and am sipping, the 2020 Windy Gap Viognier. I’ll add some comments on that later.
Side note: Anyone visiting Costco might want to check out the 2019 Bordeaux selection. There are some excellent deals there – various wines much below current market prices anywhere else, although certainly above the typical GO price range. I’ve picked up a few each of Laroque St. Émilion ($23), d’Issan Margaux ($47), and Saint-Guirons Pauillac ($26). The Saint-Guirons is the one I’ve tried, and we thought it was excellent for the price. All the remainder are now going to be put away in storage for at least a handful of years – out of sight, out of mind.
The warehouse I went to on Sunday had nothing left. I purchased a hotdog and that was it.
Sorry to hear it. They’ve seemed to arrive in waves, and it seems they might be close to gone soon in some locations. The Saint-Guirons has been around for a while and was still there as of a week ago, but the d’Issan disappeared shortly after it arrived, and the Laroque and a couple of others didn’t show up at all until a few weeks later. I was happy to find any at all, since the selection of European wines here is often lacking.
Almost a year later, I stopped in to #123 under the same circumstances as before, and they are *still* sitting on a pile of the 2016 Phil Leonard Pinot, at $15. I have not seen that in quite some time, at any locations, and if I might have been lukewarm to its value once, in an inflationary world it has probably gained in value if the price stayed the same.
Those who might like a lighter, brighter, lower ABV Carneros styled PN ought to keep an eye out for that when the spring wine sale kicks off. $12 would be ok for that, in our crazy high priced world.
Some new items at #366 today
Stony Ridge Zinfandel [Livermore] $9 back label notes that it’s Jammy, and I missed the vintage (if any)
2021 magnums of Gerard Bertrand’s ‘cotes des roses’ rose $20 pretty bottle but this is kind of pricey for last seasons rose, the regular size bottles typically go for $5-6 by the time they hit GO
2011 Impuls [Columbia Valley] $8 I think this has been floating around for a while so perhaps this was here before. Weird label. This is pretty old I’d think.
2021 Poggio Tosco [Chianti] $7 the shelf talker claims its Chianti Classico but the neckband doesn’t have the DOCG label.
2016 Lava Vine Grenache $11 also a 2015 Lava Vine Petit Sirah [Napa] never heard of this , nice looking label. They are vineyard designated on the front label which I don’t recognize/know. 3 different bottlings on the shelf, at least as of a week ago, might be less today. I just noticed this.
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For the rest of this month, this location fits into my travel/errand patterns so it will get more mentions than normal.
And the non-magnums of the Bertrand Cotes de Rose have shown up at 5.99 at the Lake City GO in Seattle. It’s not a fantastic deal, but is nevertheless a serviceable French rose, and given our area’s recent heat wave, will be welcome. I like repurposing the bottles and stoppers for shrubs and limoncello!
Have not seen the Lava VIne wines here in the Seattle area, at least not yet, but I recall them coming through a few years back and if I recall correctly, they were very good wines.
Lava Vine is the second label of a good Napa winery whose name I cannot recall. I will be on the lookout for those. That is a lot for the Bertrand; Oakland had half bottles of that wine for a price that was not appealing. I have nothing against a rose being a year behind vintage, but $10 a bottle is pretty high for GO.
Out of curiosity, looked up the wines via Public COLA Registry. Could not find anything under “Impuls”, but the label “Impulse” in WA has been used by Precept in the past.
“Lava Vine” is a label used by 3 different wineries in Calistoga: Teale Creek Associates (Von Strasser Winery), Four Winds Estate (which bottles for frats/sororities/sports teams) and occasionally Cuvaison Winery.
I’ve noticed in the past, dif wineries on the same road use the same label for dif wines, kind of like a neighborly business agreement. One sells their excess PN, the other winery their excess CS, PS, and so on.
“Stony Ridge” is an actual winery that appears to be struggling to sell their wines at full price of $35. Multiple wines in multiple vintages – $100/case for white, $144/case for reds. Their Zin may be worth a shot.
I had thought Cuvaison was down in Carneros? I’ve only had a few wines from in the 90’s, which were actually pretty good with age.
Cuvaison has two locations, one in Carneros and one further up valley. I think they own the Brandlin vineyard, a mountain vineyard with zin and cabernet.
aha. I have been seeing their Chardonnay at mass market nowadays but have not tasted it.
Lava Vine:
My dim recollection of the Impuls wine is that it’s a Syrah – Cabernet blend which had decent
and typical WA flavors, but which to my taste didn’t have the fruit to balance the rather strong acid. Also, as you suggest, I think 2011 was the first vintage which I saw at GO, and there have been more recent ones since. But who knows? It didn’t seem too old when I tried it, and maybe it’s finally ready to show the fruit it previously withheld.
Thanks for those links
Took a chance on Sentero 2021 Tinta de Toro ($3.99)
🕰️2021
💯80/100 🌟3.0
👁Dark ruby
👃Dry, black fruit, spice, clay, earthy, rough tannins, rustic Tempranillo.
Not a rebuy for me even at this bargain price.
Apparently also sold at Trader Joe’s.
🍇%Tempranillo not disclosed
No tech sheet available.
⛽14%ABV
Brought this as well as several better bottles to a large departmental party BBQ (BYOB) I was invited to, this was red #4 after others were consumed. No one complained, hey free wine! 😂
(I brought Viña Marichalar Rioja, Gurpegui Muga Rioja, Guardos Rios Red and 7 Colores SB as well, for those curious)
A single prized bottle does not last long in a large crowd and how do you decide who to share it with? Will it even be appreciated and savored or just gulped down from paper cups? I find it more relaxing to bring multiple affordable bottles to mass soirees and let the crowd have at it.
Other items at #366 today included
22 La Vigne de Roy [Cotes du Rhone] $7
3-4 vintages of Pug Cabernet [Chiles Valley, Brown Vyd, Napa] $20 I think they were 2016, 2019, 2020 but not sure since the labels are all different. I suppose if someone has this breed, it might be a cute gift. I’ve never heard of this and Google is slim pickings for info.
2016 Woodenhead Bertol Vyd Zinfandel [RRV] $13 Unfined/unfiltered.
? Bodegas de Rosario Estratos Monastrell-Syrah [Bullas] $7 Estratos appears to be the brand name for this, and it has a little James Suckling sticker score. This is probably ok; I’ve had some of those Finca Sandoval blends (long time ago) that were local grapes+syrah, made in a big Parkerized style, and they were pretty decent, just too pricey up in the $30ish zone.
? La Treille de Candale [Bordeaux] $7 the vintage is strangely not on the front label which is unusual for this area.
2019 Ch. Guillou [Montage St. Emilion] $18 Has a WE score sticker. Probably ok, but honestly the price is feels a couple bucks high for a satellite AOC.
2017 Ch. Bleyzac [Bordeaux Superieur] $7 not a strong vintage or anything, but this is supposedly a Michel Rolland merlot. It might be left over grapes or regional stuff, vinified somewhere else. I think the name is just a trade name. Price is right, most bottom rung basic BDX runs $10+ here.
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I was pleasantly/happily surprised to see some entry level BDX available. The region has lost a lot of American consumers who think the only options are $50-$100 classified growths. But global warming, better winemaking, and reefer containers have made the small estates a fairer bet now. There are a lot filters that happen before someone sends 56 cases in a pallet across the ocean, so the basic level tends to be at the very least, as good as $10-15 supermarket ones, with more earth/scorch/grip.
Two thoughts:
Pug Cab – been lingering around NorCal GO for 2-3 years…most are still peddling at $20. Not worth it for the 3 I’ve tried (years ago). Even at $10, still mediocre Value.
Woodenhead, otoh – I bought a bunch of their PN when at GO, still drinking fine. The Zin should be outstanding as well.
Zoel
#366 Rosemont (Old Placerville and Bradshaw) had lots of the Divum this afternoon. Later on I will post some other items they had that appeared new.
While we are tripping down tastings of yore and BVPR and others, it seems like those tastings were for potential purchases for aging. I can imagine my tongue and red stained teeth after some of those tastings of 1982 and 1985 Cabs. mentioned recently. Tried the first three vintages of Dominus and didn’t care for the ’83 and ’84, but found the ’85 much better. Price has gone out of my purchasing power, deservedly so. The age of the vines and maybe Christian Moueix’s figuring Napa fruit helped elevate the wine to where it is today. The 1985 MV is a special label for what the winery thought was a special year. Joe thought very highly of his 1974, with a concomitant price hike, and made an especially nice label for that vintage. Now that 1974 bottle will get you quite a lot of GO wine. The standout for 1985 Napa CS was the first Parker 100 pointer, the Groth Reserve. Luckily I had a friend in the trade save me a few bottles since I didn’t have my ear to the ground and knew there was a run on the Groth. Finally opened a bottle about 25 years after the vintage for my son’s birthday and not expecting much, but WOW can Parker prognosticate. Had a new found respect for his tasting ability.
Old BVPR’s have aged very well. Nowadays the BVPR bottlings are from different vineyards and the release was always 5 years after the vintage and some time back, BV released after 4 years. If you check the date on the bottle when it was made, they were always 5 years after the vintage. Things have changed quite a bit at BV. All the extra new blends and bottlings. There used to be just BVPR and Napa CS. Now there are blends of CS, BVPR, Napa, Rutherford and Rutherford Special. My head spins.
The contributors here seem to not age their reds for very long. If one likes a wine and buys enough to age, it’s worth the time to age a red so it acquires bottle bouquet as long as one has the space and conditions for aging. The trouble with aging is the need for decanting to which I’ve been accustomed. Old Louis Martini redwood tank CS still live. Old Santa Clara Valley Cabs are alive and continue to have a Cab character. These are ancient wines. I can only guess as to the aging conditions in the PNW, but the climate is much cooler than CA, depending on the distance from the coast. Does the Sound have a moderating effect inland? There is one rather expensive way to get those wines you missed and that is to buy backwards the wines from yesteryear and hope the wines were cellared well. On occasion the nose, tongue and memory have loosened the pocket book to pungle up the requisite fare to enjoy what should have been purchased in larger quantity way back when.
The vast majority of the time, I’m drinking stuff with 10-25 years of bottle age on it, usually from my own purchases at release. It’s actually very unusual for me to open a red that I had just purchased (like the Divum mentioned below). In the last few years I’ve had the 84 Dominus, 85 Cardinale, 88 Opus One and so on. Farther back I remember a lovely 68 Louis Martini, 68 BV GdtL, lots of 70s era Chappellets, 78 Freemark Abbey. (Those were either from friends or acquired later to be clear) These Napa flagships have all gotten kind of richly priced at release now, and I’m not sure they will age/keep/develop as the ones of yesteryear did. And as as you note, the vineyard sources have changed, while the branding get jazzed up. It seems like both Mondavi and BV are constantly reshuffling their lineup and what each brand/pricepoint is suppose to be, making it more confusing for their long time, but non wine geek customers.
All that being said, most wines aren’t automatically entitled to getting better with time. And unfortunately, especially not what I tend to see at GO, but there are stories of people finding vintage port and Chassagne Montrachet there, so hope springs eternal.
I don’t care for the taste of most bottle aged whites, rose, bubbly, so don’t cellar the stuff, generally just buying / consuming it casually so those are categories where I’ll add a few bottles each month.
I have two bottles of 1970 Louis Martini Cab in my cellar, which I bought at the store in which I was working at the time…in 1975…for $2.95 a bottle (price tags still affixed).
Back then there was a local SF columnist, Herb Caen, who talked to Louis M Martini about the 1970 CS and which Louis said it was the best since the 1940. That created a run on the wine. I tried to stock up on all the 1970 Cabs because I knew the wines were low yield due to a May frost where all the fruit was lost (no frost protection back then) so any subsequent grapes were well nourished and concentrated. The Louis M. Martini CS wasn’t as fine as some of the other wines from Napa of that vintage. I especially liked both the BVPR and the BV Napa. The Freemark Abbey Bosche had oodles of Rutherford Dust and dyed your teeth purple. Inglenook 1970 was better than usual.
Funny you mention that, Darrell…because we had to place a sign near the 1970 Martini Cab, limiting customers to two bottles each. And store employees couldn’t buy any until day 2. I managed to get one; the other was given to me by a fellow employee, years later. I read that there was also a LM Cab Special Selection from that same vintage.
I’ve enjoyed these missives reaching back to the 70s; indeed LM did make a Special Selection ’70 Cab and I was graced by serendipity at the winery circa ’80-’82 when they had 1.5Ls on sale by the closed case. I bought 2, cannot recall the price but it was <$20/mag, net. It became the family special occasion wine for a few years.
I had the good fortune in those days to taste and collect many superb Cabs, including '68, '74 & '85 Martha's among others mentioned above, and was particularly fond of '76, a first year drought vintage that produced some wonderful wines like the BVPR, Mayacamas, Ch. Montelena North Coast (they blended their Sonoma and Napa grapes as it was such a meager crop), and Mondavi Res. Cab. Many of these wines held up well beyond 15 years from the vintage, especially the Mayacamas.
Those were the days my friend . . . .
Doon, nice to reminisce about these wines and I hope it isn’t just reminiscing but rather further anticipation of those wines. Of the Martha’s bottles, I would like to add the 1969, 1978 and 1984. The initial Spring Mountain CS bottle was a NV blend of 1968/1969 MV. Not quite as good as either Heitz MV ’68 or ’69, but definitely strong Martha’s character. As mentioned above, the collection of 1970 Mayacamas is still going. Drank the 1/2 bottles for quite awhile.
There was a 1970 SS and the regular bottling was a better wine. Back in the 1980s one could get those old LM cabs at auction for less than $10 a bottle and i bought a mess of them. I have a 1974 left from that.
Seedboy, nice to hear I didn’t miss out on the 1970 Martini SS.
I bought a couple bottles of a nearby vintage (maybe it was 1973?) in the 90’s for maybe $15. I had friends in the auction business and they would loop me in on ‘passed lots’ or non payors, which would get sold at the reserve a couple weeks later. I remember the weird almost plastic labels, and the extensive sediment, which needed a coffee filter to clean up.
But despite the aging, the wine was not complex, although it was virile enough to have survived. And a low end 2013 L-M Sonoma Cab – their mega production grocery store bottle – over the last summer was basically the same. I was reading some material last night that suggested the UC Davis style of inoculating yeasts in the vats meant that there was not enough diversity in the fermentation results, which ended up manifesting in less complexity decades later. A comparable cru bourgeoise Bordeaux estate can be surprisingly alive and layered in comparison, at ages 10-20.
GO #85 (which is at Watt & Whitney) has 5 bottles of the Divum as of this morning. They also have a few of the Mas de Gourmande ($7) left as well. There are a few other random French wines left on their single bottle odd lots barrel too.
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For anyone considering this location: I’ve observed this has the highest ratio of mistagging of any franchise. It’s always against the consumer as well. The typical profile of the issue is a $X price in front of some product with multiple flavors and variants, but only 1 or 2 will ring up at the tagged price; everything else rings up at some crazy ridiculous price. Only two ways to fix: 1) ask the clerk to go check the price by walking back, and make an adjustment manually 2) don’t buy the item, and have it voided. Both require a manager and turn a two minute transaction into a ten minute one. And of course, one has to watch them ring everything up, and know (in their head) what the tagged prices were supposed to be. I have a good memory for prices so not an issue for me, but this happens so much here, and its a downmarket socioeconomic area, that I have come to believe this is not just incompetence, but low level grift, like a butcher who puts a finger on the scale when weighing a package.
I’ve mentioned it a few times to staff & owners and they DGAF.
Don’t message on my phone at all and so not with it when it comes to acronyms. Was about to ask you about that DGAF, but that was easy to figure out. Learn something every day. Maybe the management at that GO will learn that backing up customers waiting behind you isn’t good for business.
so we’re making home made pizza’s tonight, and I was looking for something casual, so pulled a 2017 Divum PN picked up a few days ago at the GO wine sale. I almost never drink wines that I just bought, but I wanted to see how this was, and I was expecting that I’d be looking for something else after a taste.
But the other commentators here are certainly fair in their assessment – this is an enjoyable, true to varietal, pinot that was a great value given that it didn’t get a WE (or any) rating this year. So basically a commercial $15 PN could be had for $5ish, and if one doesn’t need aging, it’s nice. It reminds me of the Wyatt negociant PN from a lifetime ago – some herbal, rhubarb, spice, pepper on a higher acid, lower 13.8% abv frame. The label specifies natural yeast, French oak (who knows how many turns the wood has had) but no matter, it’s a lot of bang for the buck.
If one likes southern CA styled PN, at this price, this screwcapper is worth a look. I was very skeptical, given my poor history with this regions reds (it’s hard to ripen here) but am happy to be wrong, and pleasantly surprised. I’d give it a solid B grade, maybe it could be notched higher, but for the money, that’s a very solid deal. Normally, Au Bon Climat’s Santa Barabara bottling is a safe choice in $18 good CA PN, but is not all that far behind – maybe less zip/depth – but in the same overall elegant/delicate/AFWE style.
Sure wish I could have gotten in on the Divum…sounds up my alley.
Where are you located again, aubergine?
Our buyer Stan said he never had that, I believe.
I wanted to try the Divum after it was first mentioned on the blog, but it never showed anywhere up here in western WA.
I’m in the greater SMF area, but have seen this in multiple outlets in the region, although I’m not sure if any have had it recently. This bottling has all the attributes of a good one time GO deal (when before I had not realized that)
New producer – a grower just getting into vinification, only 4 vintages under their own brand – and surely limited ‘installed customers’
An AVA of limited consumer power (Monterey isn’t going to lure buyers in like RRV or Carneros or Sonoma Coast) but importantly not bulk ‘California’ wine
Vineyards named, even if not legally SVD eligible
Soft critical reviews, even in the years it garners those, with nothing for this year
Pandemic issues overall
A producer website of modesty
Not a super well regarded vintage (like 2019 in Sonoma PN)
Tastewise, it’s not a full throttle pinot like a cola laden supermarket type (Meiomi, Boen etc) so consumers weaned on High Fructose Corn Syrup might overlook it.
Anyways, if one sees it, worth trying for the less than Bogle price tag.
Hi aubergine. What is SMF? You’ve mentioned being in the 916 area code (Sacramento, CA, and surroundings), so.. Sacramento – ??? – Folsom? or farther south Stockton – Modesto – Fresno?
Well, I feel much better now that a Californian has asked the question I was about to ask. Thanks BW. For us Washingtonians, it would be helpful to tell us specifically what CA regions you’re referencing…rather than giving letters or abbreviations.
SMF is the acronym for the Sacramento International (!) Airport. Generally is a reference to the catchment area for a region. So if someone says they are a MIA or ATL person, we’d understand they were broadly in the Miami or Atlanta area, rather than having to figure out (or know) all the weird wacky little suburbs / neighborhoods there.
Back in the olden days, people could just say “I’m from the 212 or 916” and people would understand what that meant, but now that everyone ports their cell phone numbers, and people can get vanity #’s, it’s less intuitive (to younger people) what area codes imply anymore.
Anyways, the greater Sacramento region has tons of GO’s and I frequent 5-10 of them, some more than others of course. Sadly, when I think of the sheer time wasted in looking at their wines, versus the scant few I purchase, it’s probably a bad deal when time is included in the cost.
PS:: On the Costco chat boards/threads, we refer to the warehouses by their numbers, but I don’t quite yet feel like the GOBM community is ready to memorize all those. Using initials or acronyms is confusing since no one has come up with a unified code for that, but every warehouse (and GOBM) does have an official number that we can incorporate.
Wow. Thanks for the explanation! I suppose I should have guessed it was a airport code, but I have never flown to or from Sacramento, international or domestic. 🙂
How do you find out warehouse codes for Costco warehouses? Also, not being a Costco shopper, why does this matter?
Costco Warehouse codes are on the receipt, just like GO’s. But I think the customer base is more used to using them, and since items have product codes, one can call up and ask ‘is 934587 in stock?’ and the service desk will say ‘no, but there are 7 units at #88’
There are some inefficiencies/inaccuracies of course e.g. if a service desk they have some wine ‘in stock’ that doesn’t mean its actually anywhere a normal customer can find. A decade ago, I had to literally crawl around in the underspace in a warehouses wine stacks trying to find the last 10 bottles of a Barbaresco that was being offered at 50% of market price. And even more magically, it was the third bottling run, when the producer had decided NOT to bottle up their single vineyards, so they just poured those vats into a 3rd lot of the normale. So kind crazy, and worth the effort once the Costco cognoscenti had learned about this. I was never able to get the OWC that contained them though.
Unfortunately, the whole parking situation at every Costco I have ever been to anywhere in America – with maybe one rural exception (Edwards, CO) is so stressful and road ragey that I feel that should be baked into the ‘cost’ of whatever one buys there.
(I was not able to reply to BargainWhine below, so I posted this above their post)
Bargainwhine – Costco’s wine selection in many locations is good and well priced, and their house brand of Kirkland Signature can be an outstanding value in imported wine, especially if one is not label sensitive. They have tons of KS wines like their Rioja, Cotes du Rhone, NZSB, Chianti etc. that are at GO price points, and come from good producers who are consistent year in / year out. If one gets up to the sawbuck price, Brunello, CNDP, Premier Cru Chablis, Barolo are all typically offered once a year too.
On the domestic side of KS, I have less familiarity. They have lots of bottlings, which tend to cycle through quickly. Strangely enough, the Wine Spectator tends to provide ratings, but by the time its in the print publication, they most likely have sold through.
The same from an Oregon reader, who appreciates news from afar. Local abbreviations fade from meaning over distances and borders. Thanks for your clarification, aubergine.
I found this interesting, so thought I’d share…
https://www.northwestwinereport.com/2023/05/how-much-cork-taint-comes-from-sources-other-than-the-cork.html#comment-4614
That is an interesting article, that comes from the author’s personal observations, so is worth more than a random opinion. Unfortunately when TCA is coming from a non cork source, it can be much more expensive to root out, and can destroy a brand’s image for a long time. Bordeaux fans might remember the wretched run that Ducru Beaucaillou had during the late 80’s when perhaps 30-40% of their releases were affected. And closer to home, Beaulieu Vineyards (BV badged now) was reputed to have had sanitary problems in the early aughts. I wasn’t buying either houses wines during that era (only buying D-B from 94-00) and BV during 80s / 90s until I reconnected with the latter with their fine, and now sanitary, 2013’s.
I’ve listened to a few podcasts on DIAM (you can find them on Xchateau on all the major podcast engines) and it’s a pretty good product. Especially for white wines that are expected to handle some aging, lets say 5-10 years, where cork might offer something that screwcap doesn’t, but premature oxidation and TCA are greater concerns than with reds. (I find TCA easier to notice in whites)
Spanish wines might only be 10% of my consumption…but are disproportionately represented in tainted bottles. DIAM and are advanced closures do not seem to have made inroads in the Iberian peninsula, sadly. I think that imposes a natural price ceiling on the wines though, hard to want to spend $$$ if there is a real chance it’s going to be off.
Definitely a problem with BV at that time. I bought 3 bottles of the 2001 Georges and only one was drinkable.
I haven’t had a BV Georges De Latour (or any other BV wine) since the 1981 vintage…so missed all the TCA issues…which is a good thing. I did notice that one of the reader comments at the end of the article did address BV’s problems.
Me too, Lim! Or just about….
I think the last BV G. LaTour I may have had was in a great and raucous night of lateral 1982 California cab tasting in Anchorage, just as we were beginning our (adult) lifetime journey into wine.
Others I remember that night were Stag’s Leap, Groth, Heitz (Martha’s?), Caymus, Carmenet, Mayacamas, Joseph Phelps, Diamond Creek, Trefethen, Leonetti (ok, not all Cali), maybe a Freemark Abbey or Far Niente…
Sigh.
All familiar names from when I was spending “too much” on wine…and still working, not retired on a fixed income. I have but three bottles left in my cellar from those days…a 1982 Eagle Series Sonoma Cab (before young Sam left for his own endeavor…and to get away from brother Don), and an Opus One and Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cab from 1985. The attachment means too much to me to drink them…though I am curious as to how they would taste. Those were “the good old days”. Thanks for reminding me JJ. I might add Sterling, Shafer and Mayacamas to your list…and Woodward Canyon from WA (which I feel has aged better than Leonetti over the years). Another BIG sigh!
Oh Lim! You can’t mean that….
You must give in to your curiosity, and not be too sentimental to drink the ’85 Heitz Martha’s and Opus One!! That was a GREAT year!!
They will probably be among the greatest viniculture experiences you will have. And you can always save the empty bottles and let them sit in your window or stick a taper candle in the top….they’ll always ‘be there’ for you.
And….if you need any help with that, I will be glad to drive straight up the Kitsap Peninsula and accommodate…. 🙂
But I doubt you need any help, a special occasion–a grandchild’s birth, a wedding, a retirement, a special dinner with wine friends, the reason to launch a great conversation….could there be any good reason to let them turn to vinegar?
And I remember that time too…of spending more than we ever would now.
But actually…they weren’t all that much then.
That 7 or so of us could buy all those quality wines we did for an evening of tasting revelry, was so delightfully possible then.
And have you checked the prices of these three wines of yours lately?
If you won’t drink them (and I know you will), you could make a tidy sum that would buy many a GO bargain for the rest of your days!
’85 Napa Cab vintage indeed, JJ. Drank some others years ago…like ’85 Dominus. As for the Martha’s Vnyd, you sent me Googling and I found this, which made me think the continued cellaring might not be a bad thing. Who knows? No one…until you open the bottle. I just love the most unique label.
https://www.klwines.com/Products/i?i=900207
Charming label. Didn’t remember that one….just the later pen and ink with the casks and winemaker.
The notes look like it’s drinking beautifully 🙂
Treasure!!
I really liked the 91 BV GdtL, as well as the 94 and 97 versions. Back then, they did not cost an arm and a leg. I suspect Treasury will move the pricing on these to $200 soon enough. Given the high production, and (now) modest cachet they have, versus their historical repute, it’s been an easy pass for a long time.
I haven’t had it, but Wine Spectator annointed the current release BV Napa CS as their value wine of the year. Probably $20-$30 zone, and ought to be in all the mass merchants.
Sadly for real Napa ‘estate’ wines rather than sausage blends that’s the going freight.
Summer finally hit the Palouse region of WA state so opened up a chilled bottle of Cathedral Cove 2022 Sauvignon Blanc!
Yummy, fresh and gulpable!
I heard this is Darrell’s favorite SB!
🕰2022
💯88/100 🌟3.8
👁Pale straw
👃👅Dry, crisp, tropical note of passion fruit, green pear, grapefruit zest, green herbs, racy acidity, med finish w slate minerality.
Thirst quenching and delicious!
🍇-SB
Screwtop closure
🌄Hawke’s Bay, Marlborough, NZ
⛽ 12.5%ABV
💵-$12 MSRP $7 GOBM 😍
Excellent summer porch pounder w great QPR!
🌞🏝️🥂🌞🏝️🥂🌞🏝️🥂
WORN, I am going to reply under the Spring Sale.
I had to take a pet to a specialty vet in the Davis area, so stopped in at the local GO on the way home. It was not only slim pickings for wine, but it has very awkward access both for the store and parking lot. I also noted that deals were few and far between, along with prices that were moderately higher than in my core SMF region. I don’t think there are any GO’s within 10+ miles so clearly the owners don’t have to compete much on inventory, nor pricing/amenities (like shopping carts/baskets etc.).
========
Last week I did a flyby at the 1700 Capital Ave location (17th & Capital) which has the crazy parking lot, and saw two low end import blancs that might be of interest. 2019 Cesari Pinot Grigio [IGT Della Venezie] $5 which seems like a DO offering. It has a blue appellation band on the cork sealed neck which are usually good cues.
And Vicente Gandia (big multi appellation Spanish negociant) has the El Pascaito screwcapped blanco for $4, which is a low abv (10-11%%) viura/sauvignon blanc from Valencia (although badged as Spain). Tends to run $5-$7 in Europe, don’t see US sellers. No vintage label on front of bottle, but the logo doesn’t seem to be the current one (on the producers website) so figure it’s a vintage or two older.
Aubergine, I travel the I-80 corridor quite a bit and you are correct about Davis GO. Went there once and that’s it. I like the Rocklin store. My guess is that there is good, sophisticated patronage due to Highway 65.
I was in the Rancho/Riviera store that is on Bradshaw/OldPlacerville which is different than the one I was in yesterday, and this seemed to have a few wines that were not in other locations in the greater SMF area. First still a few Rock Wall wines left – the SRH Chardonnay, the Malvaisa, and the sparkling Rose. This location has bumped the prices on them to $13 rather than the $10 these have been going for at other locations. ($10 for whites, $13 for reds) They also had a still rose. I was underwhelmed by the estate chard at $10 previously so I passed on all those. There were some ‘Bakers Lane’ 2015 Syrah which appears to be as estate bottled syrah from the Sonoma coast, for $15. The Graff Family ‘Consensus’ 2016 vintage from the Chalone AVA was here too, for $10. I think I saw it for $4 in West Sacramento maybe over the winter though, some kind of syrah blend IIRC. 2017 Monticello Vyd ‘Presidential Red’ $10 never heard of this but seems to be sold at Total Wine and wine.com in some vintages for 2x to 3x. And some 2019 Sunce Sangiovese and Cabernet Fance monovarietal bottlings for $15, with a list of $48. Appear to be real estate wines, But obviously DTC is not working well, if they’re here.
So I can’t really tell if there is more TLC paid to the wine dept here, or stuff moves so slowly that last years inventory is just looking like its fresh….still plenty of the obligatory Clos Argentine 2014 vintage too which is slowing turning into GOBM museum pieces though….
I stopped in to the Rancho Cordova GO #57 today while I was in the area and I would note that it’s unusually large, spacious, well stocked/signed, and tidy. The wine department is a shade above average. They do have some of the Stemmler / Lawler PN for anyone looking for that. Interestingly, they also have the 2016 Cassamatta rosso and the 2018 Cassamatta bianco, for $6 and $5 respectively. These are made by artist/vintner Bibi Graetz who has a full suite of fancy Tuscan/Chianti wines, although those two are only badged as IGTs. I had the 2015 rosso a while ago, and it’s a high acid baby Chianti like creature. The bianco has a good reputation, but I’ve not tried one, and would by leery of buying a 5 year old Italian white since $5 is not really anything super low for a kitchen rack quaffer (Costco sells oceans of Friuli Pinot Grigio for $5 for example, and I have plenty of faith in their KS branded bulk wines, if I wanted that ilk). Cassamatta’s have been in/out of the various stores over the last year or so, but perhaps they’ll be coming. 2016 is a strong Tuscan/Chianti vintage so that rosso is worth trying if people see it.
Other items of interest at that location: 2022 Haut Domingue [Entre deux Mares] $9, 2021 Bouchard Rose $6, AG Perino Sweet Vermouth $8 (good stuff that I buy at normal specialty liquor stores).
I bought a lot of that bianco. The last bottle I bought was past its prime.
yeah, that would be my concern. it’s kind of strange how there aren’t really that many true deals on whites/blanc at GO, compared to reds IMO. They just stock all these ‘california’ bulk wines that are ‘buyers own brands’. i’d have to think there is more fading whites sitting in warehouses needing to be sold?
I’ve been seeing some industry level data for alcohol sales, and wine sales are off a bit (by volume) from the prior years. I’m hoping that eventually translates into a few better ‘real’ wines falling into the GO system.
In the last few years I have dramatically cut how much I spend at fine wine retail stores (K&L etc.) They’re great but I have enough of the ageworthy stuff, and if anything, never seem to have enough blanc around.
Pulled out one of the wines I chased after (driving to Silverdale from Puyallup and then home to Oly that day, IIRC) several sales ago — 2012 Bomb Cabernet Sauvignon from the Columbia Valley.
I was digging through my cases and the case with this bottle was on the bottom. Decided it was time to see where this one is at. Not sure if others still have any, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.
This is still a pretty big wine. Cassis, Cherry, high octane – with plenty of room to mellow out still (i.e. should be good for awhile still). Nose of maybe a little pine, leather, dark cherry. Nothing funky to my taste buds anyway. Should be a good bottle to keep for a couple of days to bring more flavors out.
Glad I still have a couple of bottles from that mixed case. There’s two more 2011 Carden in there, too.
Thanks for your notes on these–I still have a few bottles of each in the cellar. The Bomb, in particular, I think can age some more, whereas my last Carden was improved by being blended with a younger, fruitier wine (!)
I’ve got 3 more bottles of the Bomb in my cellar…and have been opening my stash of about 9 original bottles every 4-6 months. Had a bottle last August and my notes stated: Clear dark ruby color; nose of mint and camphor along with cedar, tobacco and earth; typically varietal flavors show cocoa, cassis and espresso; while I suspect this wine will hold fine for a few more years, I don’t see it gaining anything.
I have 1 more bottle of the Carden Cab and just opened one on the 10th of April. Still very deeply colored dark garnet; nose and flavors are very varietally true; still has decent tannins and texture and higher acidity which should make for a long life in the cellar; flavors of cassis, cedar, leather, dried cherry and espresso; an excellent buy at $7. I originally favored the Bomb, but my opinion seems to be changing.
Interesting on the Carden. We last checked in on it in January, in a blend-your-own-adventure party. Consensus was that an 80-20 blend of the Carden with an Airfield Merlot was the wine of the night; the straight Carden was second, and the 50-50 blend came in last, Mind, I didn’t notice any glasses being dumped, so all were consumed appreciatively.
Apropos of the earlier discussion here on scores, I think for our next wine party I’ll do a blind ‘guess which wine was rated 91 points,’ but I plan to cheat a little and have all four wines ones with 90+ point ratings. Attendees will get a scorecard to pick what they believe is the 90+ point wine, and rate the others by what they think their point score is. I suspect the unveiling will either undermine reliance on point scores or else encourage our guests to shop more at Grocery Outlet. Or maybe both!
Hi Lim, I tried the Carden 2011 CS a couple years ago but wasn’t enamored by it. I lack patience and gave away the other 2 bottles.
Here’s my review FWIW. Also did a bit of research on the winery.
Carden 2011 CS
Tasted June 2021.
🕰2011
💯85/100 🌟3.5
👁Purple ruby
👃👅Dry,black fruit,graphite,juniper berries,oak,sharp edged acidity, well integrated tannins, high alcohol, unbalanced, definitely needs food.
🏰Carden Cellars
🌄Vinted Willamette Valley OR
⛽ 14.5 ABV
🍇100%CS, Horse Heaven Hills & Red Mountain, WA
🕰️Stainless fermentation, aged 16 mo in 63% new French oak barrels.
Best from 2016-2020 estimated, so a bit past prime drinking window?
******************************
Carden’s first release 2010 CS scored 90 by Wine Spectator.
Tony Rynders winemaker, worked at Argyle, Hogue and Domaine Serene.
The 2011 vintage scored 90 by WS, 89 by WE Sean Sullivan July 2015.
Last vintage is 2015.
💵$48 website $7.99 GOBM
The 2011 released in 2014.
Last known vintage on website was 2013 in 2021, presumably released 2016, then no additional vintages.🤔
Winery owners were James Carney and Susan Weeden.
There is no mention anywhere of a tasting room being open, no address anywhere.
I’m assuming the business folded.
One can still order online at full price.
Lim, Out of curiosity I looked up Bomb on Public COLA Registry. Tony Rynders the winemaker at Carden also applied for the Bomb labels, so he’s the wine maker of Bomb as well. Tour de Force Wine Co out of Gaston OR is the business. Just thought y’all might be interested.
I did know that, WORN…but I appreciate your research. I think that came up in discussion when the two wines first appeared at GO.
Lim, was curious about Tony Rynders. Most of us not in the industry rarely hear about specific winemakers unless they make the pages of a popular wine publication such as Wine Spectator or Wine Enthusiast. Discovered Mr Rynders is the winemaker behind Panther Creek, Tendril, Saffron Fields, Child’s Play, Open Claim. Started winemaking in 1989, worked 10 years at Domaine Serene producing some of their best PN. Decided in 2008 to become a wine consultant, offered to help in the transition. He was instead fired and sued by Domaine Serene for 75K. Settled out of court, non-compete clause of 3 yrs prohibiting him from making white PN. His Tendril tasting room in Carlton opened in 2019, the year before COVID. His wines run $40-$100. Domaine Serene prices start at $100, to over $350.
I’m glad I got a chance to try one of Mr Rynder’s wines at a bargain price. Hope to try one of his highly regarded Tendril PNs in the future.
There truly are A-holes in the winemaking business if I am to believe the above. I have heard other examples of these sphincters decades ago.
As someone who was in the Oregon wine industry, I have had a fair amount of experience with Domaine Serene. Let me just say that “the Oregon way” in the wine industry is collaboration, and they only collaborate for bragging rights. I never had much interaction with Tony, but he certainly didn’t not deserve how he was treated.
Far more to the story than I was aware of, WORN. Because I have no idea what actually occurred, I hesitate to lay blame on anyone. Two sides to every story. Appreciate your sleuthing!
I’ve never really cared for the panther Creek nor domain serene pinots. I’m also not much of an enthusiast for Oregon Pinot noir. Interesting backstory on all the corporate machinations and litigation thanks for sharing that
OTOH, and veering off topic, I would support the current Federal Trade Commission effort to ban non-compete agreements. (I believe they are already banned in CA.)
Lim, Out of morbid curiosity read more on Domaine Serene & the Evenstads (owners). Seems like the family is suing each other over the estate worth billions. Mr Evenstad started a pharma company in Minnesota before investing in the Oregon wine industry. Their daughter, Serene is suing the remaining shareholders after Mr Evenstad passed recently. They are accused of cutting her out of her share which was purportedly 25%.
Sounds like a script from “As The World Turns”.
One of the very worst wines I’ve ever bought at GO was a Panther Creek pinot noir that was horribly flawed.
Ah, seedboy, the Panther Creek fiasco, I remember it well. Winery with fine reputation and history ends up dumping horribly mis-made or mis-handled Pinot at Grocery Outlet. The winery had been bought by a private equity firm, which seldom means good things for anyone but the private equity firm. Apparently PC’s owners then hired Tony Rynders (!) to serve as a consultant for a year. No idea how that went, but one can guess…
I recall when the Bomb/Carden wines mysteriously appeared at GO speculating that there was a storyline somewhere that would make a good Coen Brothers film. Still think so, actually.
A couple years ago, we in Oregon had the chance to grab a bunch of Carden Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs, 2 styles each – bold vs. elegant – of the 2014, 2015, 2016. They were well made wines…just not worth what Carden wanted for them. I bought 1/2 dozen each of the elegant side, and wished I’d gotten more…I think they were $7.99.
Cracked open Springtree 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Yakima Valley for dinner.
🕰️2017
💯75/100 🌟2.5
👁Ruby purple
👃Funky Granny’s purse nose, funky purple floral
👅Dry, sharp black fruit, cigar box, vanilla, snarky aftertaste, high acidity, med tannins, unpleasant Yakima Valley CS.
Bad vintage, record setting forest fire year, who knows?🤷🏻♀️
🍇80%CS, 20%ML
Screwcapped
🌄Airfield Ranch Estate VY
🌅Yakima Valley
🕰️18 mo new & neutral French oak
⛽ 13.9%ABV
💵$14 MSRP $7 GOBM
Made by Airport Ranch Estates in Yakima that includes labels Airfield Estates, Lone Birch and Springtree.
Airfield is their high end wine, this label was probably intended for sales to restaurants, online wine clubs, retailers, etc.
Avoid this particular vintage.
I can’t speak for other years.
I’ve had various wines by Airfield which were pretty good, Lone Birch wines have been adequate.
At the time, did not know the two labels were linked.
👎🚫🍷🍇👎🚫🍷🍇
I’ve subscribed to the Washington Wine Report for years and the article linked below came to my email this morning. I felt inclined to share, as I stopped supporting competition wine scores years ago. Actually, I’m not big on any kind of wine scores. When we were doing regular posts with label/bottle photos (which ended up taking too much of my time and money), BW and I decided to just go to the thumbs up or down system, which have also been left in the dust. For me, thorough descriptions are what may sell me on any particular wine…and you folks do a great job of providing that. Here’s the link: https://www.northwestwinereport.com/2023/04/wine-competitions-have-jumped-the-shark.html
Thanks for the link; it confirms much of what we’ve seen even at GO lately, with wine labels pre-printed with 90+ point scores. In fact, why bother even going to a competition when you can hire someone who styles himself an Advanced Sommelier to give all your wines 90+ scores, with most on the higher end of the 90’s at that. If you check out the website of one of the distributors of about a dozen or so brands seen at GO, you’ll see exactly that. And then there are the websites featuring vastly inflated prices for wines that are selling at discount for dramatically less–and sites like vivino don’t show any evidence that anyone ever actually bought at the inflated prices.
The fundamental problem is that there are thousands of different wines, and no one has the time or liver capacity to try more than a tiny fraction of them, so some kind of marker for quality is needed by the consumer. Scores and price are the two big quality signals for an unfamiliar wine, but what we are seeing now is score and price mimicry signals. As Lim13 says, they are not worth relying on, compared with details by contributors here. Of course, the notorious bottle variation that sometimes leads to wines ending up at GO is a problem even for that.
Although I broadly agree with your points, for some kinds of wines (i.e. imports with a long lead time for travel etc) it’s not unusual for lower end wines to be exported *only after it’s won some modest critical acclaim*. So they get labeled then, when some bare minimum score can be slapped on the shiners.
Unless one is an importer like Kermit Lynch, Dan Kravitz, Terry Thiese, Jorge Ordonez, Eric Solomon etc. whose taste/label themselves are a good badge of quality, the normal firm will need some external validation that the quality is good. Sure they can pour out samples on Saturdays, but that won’t scale as well as getting 90something review.
And putting that sticker on the bottle!
One issue with looking at crowd sourced TN’s, especially from tasters you don’t know well, is that it’s difficult to calibrate palates. Someone else’s ‘fruitless’ wine might be totally TCA tainted to you, for example. Additionally there can be the problem of groupthink whether online, or at a tasting table, where people just nod their heads at whoever posts the most, or yells their opinion the loudest.
Seen in Lewiston ID store Saturday:
Gabriel Meffre 2015 Gigondas Saint-Catherine ($8) and
Gabriel Meffre 2015 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Saint Theodoric ($8).
Phone wasn’t working in store.
Bought so many bottles during sale didn’t want to risk more💸, not familiar w this producer.
Anyone try these out?
(Once home, found WE review dated 2018 gave 90 pts to the Gigondas.)
That is a good albeit commercial producer, and those are good vintages. I would have loaded up! The Meffre’s are famous for really going industrial all out with machinery in the So Rho (bulldozers to rip out scrub and all that) but I think that’s more jealousy at their success and knack for selling.
I bought some of the Meffre’s St Julien (du Glana) recently which was also being offered cheaply, at a different store / retail chain.
Bought 2+ dusty cases of the du Glana St Julien from a regional grocery chain (NH?) a couple months back for a pittance. Quite happy with it, but wouldn’t touch it at retail.
That’s funny, mine were super dusty too. Du Glana is a real producer, real St. Julien, but back in the olden days I considered it a wine to pay $15ish in a good vintage, that was kind of my tops, for years like 1996 or 2000.
Anyways, I got the 2015 and its pretty solid, a B grade cru bourgeoise.
Sounds like somebody hit a nerve! Even if the Sorting Table example is not specifically applicable in this instance are you telling us JAWS that the wine buyer Vinotarian referred to isn’t telling the truth in any way, shape, or form?
The wine buyer in question is relatively new, and he admits that he doesn’t know a lot about wine. Maybe the store owner told him that to keep him reined in.
I had a revealing conversation with the wine buyer at my local Portland store yesterday. He told me that the GO’s inside the city limits can only bring in wines from the company warehouse, whereas stores in other parts of the state can also buy directly from various Oregon distributors…this seems to include those as close as the Portland suburbs. That’s why those interesting Sorting Table wines showed up in Springfield…I think that I saw as many as 10 of them on the shelves…and not my local. (Also, a store just to the west of Portland brought in about 4 of them.) My guess is that this policy might have been set by the distributors themselves so they can keep the controversy level down with their everyday customers. This certainly will affect my approach to looking for wines!
This is not correct at all. That buy through the Sorting Table was a VERY small limited buy and there was not enough wine to go around to all the stores in Oregon. We targeted the stores with the best sales of imported wines and distro’d those wines to said stores. As simple as that!
Okay then…thanks for the correction!
This is something we did frequently in the retail wine and liquor system from which I retired. Odd lots and tiny buys (hardly enough to distribute widely) were sent to those few stores that we knew would quickly move the product. Most of the time it worked well…though it always pissed off a few store staffs (those that got none!).
That sounds like an eminently reasonable and plausible explanation…
So I did some further digging on the DeLoach ‘1950’ bottling – that is the year Legal Sea Foods started doing business, so it would appear to be just a brand name to signify its that restaurant’s house red. I picked up two bottles of the 2018 today during the sale, unfortunately the 2019’s had sold through. (When I was young, and lived in Boston, I went to Legal’s a few times a year. Good basic seafood was their trade). I guess $10 for a Sonoma Coast PN in an ok vintage from a real producer is a fair enough deal. I’d hoped it was a real single estate wine, but this is likely just bought in grapes, or possibly leftover vats from their SVDs, mixed in with other items. But at Legals was keeping them honest.
========
I saw some Post House Road wine today, and there was something about the label, back, and name which all kind of seemed like it too was a steak place’s house wine.
Legal Sea Foods is a fine organization and I like this wine. If you are ever at the airport in Boston and need dinner Legal has a restaurant there and it rocks.
One more comment on the availability of California PNs in GOs stores up here: For many many years, California wineries have found it quite difficult to sell their PNs in the state…grocery store bottlings being the main exception…so they have stopped trying. Some superstars can still find sales here, but those don’t need to sell off any. CA Chardonnay, Cabs, and many other varieties are quite viable of course. Since I like PNs from many different areas, my tongue hangs out a bit when I see what’s available in California, but…oh well!
Please remind us, Vinotarian…you in WA or OR (the Pinot capital of the NW)?
lim13…I live in Portland, so I check out stores in both states. (I was also in the Oregon wine business for 30-some years….)
Sadly, there is a bit of protectionism in WA and OR to protect their local wine industry. Kind of sad since most of the west coast states are generally consumer friendly in a lot of ways.
I’m not striking an attitude, but there’s actually protectionism in CA as well…it’s not very fun to try to sell OR wines in any part of the state except SF and LA. But that’s just how things go (smile).
i mean legal protectionism in the state legislature as well as alcohol/shipping enforcement. consumer preferences, and the 3 tier system, create plenty of barriers but i would not consider them the exact same.
in any case, as consumers we’d all be better off with a more free market in wine, but realize that could blow up some of the blowout deals we get locally as those can be created by all the regulatory thicket we live in
Post House Road is another one of the Cal-Wine trading Co family of wines, like the Latitude 38, Bit Wicked, I01 Barrels, Loose Moose, Cal-Fresco, Owl Block, etc. As far as I can tell, Grocery Outlet seems like its only customer–at least, there is no indication online of any sales of their brands elsewhere. Note the similarities in the labels…that’s a tipoff that the wine is a Cal-Wine product. Not that they are necessarily bad, many here have enjoyed them–but at least, take the ‘elsewhere’ price with a pound of salt.
Ahh thanks for that color.
Is anyone planning to use the new chat forum for the Spring 2023 wine sale chat board? Just wondering. Also thought by using the app, Jetpack you could post pics….haven’t Found that function yet
That would be so great, Raul.
Hard to remember names, but visuals would stick with me beaucoup better.
Maybe one of the moderators can instruct us, though I think if we could post photos we’d already be doing so.
We are trying to report for the sale.
But, I think most are underwhelmed with selection, so we may have to try super hard.
You might read through a few entries and see if anything stands out.
And report back on the good…or the bad!
I just brought home a case and a half to try out….most of them mysteries, but some definitely reported on here.
Today I got pretty close to 30% off at our GO, and the same deal awaits next Monday….so I need to be hittin’ this stuff, reporting back and scooping up any winners.
Tonight I’m trying the Ortigao Nektar (Portugal) bubbly.
I’m afraid it’s nearly scentless and flavorless. 😦
I follow the site quite regularly. It seems to be heavily favored towards PN and Riesling’s. Those are not in my wheelhouse since I’ve been disappointed in Pinots from GO over and over…..my price point is $10 and under for the fact if I need to dump it I don’t feel so bad. Yesterday I bought 6 cases, 3cs mixed reds and 3cs mixed whites. My average price across the board was $5.46 a bottle. Not bad when one is a dud. I use the Escondido, San Diego North County store. We also have a nearby San Marcos GO I have yet to investigate their offerings. I would suspect the similar. Lately the Spanish reds, Argentinian Malbecs both with “Reserve” are usually very good. Much better than what you can get from
Grocery store chains from large distributors. I think there is only one other San Diego member here to report out from SD.
I’ll report out on my first 2023 Spring purchase on the other thread.
Cheers
Hi Raul. I shop Oceanside, San Marcos, Escondido, and Mira Mesa. IMHO Escondido has the poorest selection and my impression this sale is that they did little or nothing in preparation. Mira Mesa and San Marcos are OK but Oceanside now has the best selection and has many labels not found in the other 3 stores. You might want to give them a try once they re-open SR78 West at College. Yesterday’s find in O’side was a 2020 French rose from Bouchard Aine & Fils @ $5.99 (pre-sale). Did not see it in any of the other stores. Quite “austere” in style…kind of heading towards a Tavel rose. They only had two cases and now only one.
Nice to connect with you! I noticed Escondido has a change in ownership. The Fall 22 sale was nothing to be excited about. I met the new owner and discussed the wine section and the “lack of” condition. He said on the contrary that they have more SKU’s than last year. Increased Beeer Sky’s as well. I shop for small winery white, not too many Rose’s but I’ll pick a few Provenance style every now and again. I gave up on French wine, I have a whole closet full of duds. I’ll check out San Marcos but definitely Oceanside, I need to make a trip down there. A buddy opened his second Frida’s tacos down there. Cheers and thanks for the Rec.
Provence, Provençal style?
@ Darrel L. To answer your question. Both 🙂
Thanks for pointing your superior
Wine knowledge.
FYI, delmartian…I posted the following about the Bouchard rose’ on April 3rd under the Wine Sale 2023 tab of the blog: “I was sadly disappointed with the 2020 Bouchard Pinot Noir Rose’. I found it to be rather bland and tired, soft and uninteresting from a decent old producer. I’ve had older rose’s that have held up much better.” And aubergine added the following: “That could have been sitting on a warm sales floor for the last 18 mos, and deteriorated. I’m generally super skeptical about buying anything but the most recent, or prior release if I trust the storage. Usually there isn’t any dark glass, tannin, or acidic spine to preserve the pink stuff.”
Please try to post wine sale notes under the Wine Sale tab, rather than What’s New, so our readers can look in one spot for the best and worst of the wine sale.
I did a side-by-side comparison with the 2021 Aime Roquesante Cotes de Provence rose and decided on purchasing the Bouchard as more fitting with my preferences for ultra dry wines.
I don’t see a Wine Sale tab….and didn’t realize there was another place folx were talking ’bout stuff!
My apologies to you and our readers, JJ. Talking through my hat…too long on this blog…or perhaps too much wine over the years?? There is no tab, as I led you to believe. If you go to the top of the blog page and click on “Home” (in the upper left corner), the first thing you see is “Spring 2023 Wine Sale…”. Click on the heading and you should see all the posts. Every sale (twice each year), you’ll find this page where it’s easier to track what folks are buying or hoping to buy during the sale…and notes about those wines.
The Bouchard definitely fits that profile, delmartian. And I will say that it tasted slightly more forward with more texture the next day.
GOWL is in SD, I think, so he scouts SD which is fur apiece for you, but you might try the downtown GO store if you head south.
So I decided to pop into the Pullman GO to use the early discount code they sent to the app. I picked up the French rosé that someone mentioned, and also a couple of reds that looked interesting, and that I decided to try tonight with some cheese and salami.
The 1864 Castillo de Olite Navarra Reserva 2016 ($8 before discount) was first up. On immediate opening too much – too sharp and fruitbomb. It opened up over the next hour or so, and I think quite decent with the 20% off. I chose it because someone here mentioned how the Navarras often get a bit overlooked.
The other one I tried (again because I listened to someone on here who pointed out that there are some good Portuguese wines to be had that fly under the radar) is the Fonte dos Setas 2019 ($6 before the discount). Smooth afternoon drinking straight out the bottle, and perfect for midweek pizza quaffing I think. It maybe a bit one dimensionally fruity, but sometimes that’s OK, especially for $4.80 a bottle.
The GO in Springfield, Oregon, has just received a large and varied shipment of Italian wines–red, white, rose, sparkling–all imported by “The Sorting Table.” Does anyone have experience with this importer, or clues as to what quality of wines they may be sorting our way? The few labels I looked at suggested more wines “typical” of their regions, rather than DOC wines.
The Sorting Table is a very fine importer. Looks like I’ll be coming south on Wednesday!
Thanks for your good information, Vinotarian. I went back to the Springfield store the day before the sale start in Oregon, and bought one bottle each of Sorting Table offerings that seemed promising. My favorites were two Italian whites.
Vigne Marina Coppi “Fausto” 2014, a nine year old white that still had much to offer, made from the ancient Italian grape Timorasso, said to be wayward in its youth, but aging into an elegant wine after several years in the bottle. My nine year old sample seemed elegant enough, with mineral and fruit aromas and a honeyed sweetness cut by sharp acidity. However, tonight’s bottle (my second of this wine) seems somewhat flatter, suggesting that there may be some variation in these nine year old bottles. Newer vintages are available online for $40-45, so it may be worth a gamble at the $4.80 sale price.
The second is Marrone Langhe Arneis “Tre Fie” 2018, also $4.80 sale price, a classic Italian seafood wine with sharp acid and rich minerality, which proved a good match for scallops.
I thought Portland had all the interesting GO wine stores. However, if you go exploring downstate, in my traveling days before retiring, I often stopped at the West Salem store. Its owner took a strong interest in her wine section and stocked it well inside the GO strictures. She would often come by during wine sales to see what was in my cart and what I thought of them.
Another wine enthusiast told me she thought Sweet Home had the best GO wine selection in Oregon. Again, lit was an owner who took interest in his wine department. It’s about a twenty minute diversion from I-5, but mostly rural and scenic.
I used to stop by the Roseburg GO when heading south, because they were close to I-5 and sometimes had a good wine long after it was gone from local shelves.
And Medford once rescued a wineless trip to the Ashland theater by having a wonderful Portuguese Douro among the usual unmemorable GO standards.
Of course, my information is some years out of date. Please tell us what you find if you explore Oregon GOs .
Really have enjoyed their wines in years past. Quality website with wine info. Seems like the wines were nearing end of best drinking age, but still great. My favorite importer at GO, haven’t seen in several years.
Also totally separate from GO – if you have a BevMo in your region. Take a walk through their wine aisles. The character has really changed over the last year (since their hookup with GoPuff). It is now infested with tons of closeouts that really look like they belong more in a GO, than in a conventional wine/snacks store. I’m talking about things like 13 year old Monsants for $9, a spectrum of decent OZ reds that 4-5 years off the run from release all at $10ish, good Lodi / Sierra Foothills producers that would be $30ish on site / tasting room all in the teens (albeit 9-10 years old now). 9 year old wines from the Languedoc. And so on. They have 6-9 year old rose too.
It’s really nuts, these are really hard core ‘inspect the label closely and the vintage’ before buying in person type of stuff. But I’m assuming most of this is sold online to drunk/stoned customers who don’t know any better. Bevmo/Gopuff are not the kind of online sellers who present the vintage on web / mobile pages.
The Camus GO…Camus is a town a few miles east of Vancouver WA….is often the place that importers dump interesting wines in our part of the NW. This doesn’t happen that often, but with the sale looming, I decided to check it out…and see what’s going on with the BevMo in Vancouver proper on the same trip. The GO has the DeLoach Block 1950 PN at @12.99 + the 8% sales tax (Oregon doesn’t have such). In looking at the back label, I immediately saw that it is a produced exclusively for an important East Coast seafood chain called Legal Sea Foods. So that’s what makes it different. Also, I noticed a Canoe Ridge Vineyard 2017 Merlot called The Explorer (not a name that implies seriousness of purpose.) It’s in the Horse Heaven Hills appellation. The winery still has it listed at $24.00…it is selling at this GO for $12.99. I will check both of these out before the sale starts next week. HOWEVER, I won’t be going to the Camus store if I decide either of them need some bulk purchasing, because the store RAISED THEIR PRICES AT LEAST $1.00, and maybe $2.00, per bottle!!!!
I then cruised by the BevMo, and the change that I noticed there is that more than half the wines seem to be negociant brands…which I try to skip.
Those Camus GO prices look high to me; the Canoe Ridge Explorer Merlot is 6.99 pre-sale at Kenmore, and the DeLoach Block 1950 is 11.99 pre-sale at Crown Hill. I can’t vouch for the 2017 vintage of the Canoe Ridge, but GO had the same wine, 2015 vintage, a couple of sales ago, and I thought it was a well-made HHH red at a very good price. The Explorer is Canoe Ridge’s mid-range wine label; their lower tier, the Expedition, turns up at GO fairly often (and, incidentally, is the wine being served on Alaska Airlines in first class, cheap bastards…)
DeLoach sold out at the GO I was planning on getting it at. Only item on all their shelves with nothing …. I even had them look in the back for me. No luck. I suspect someone hid the wines or something.
flitcraft…I looked at the receipt again, and I had the DeLoach correct, but had the Canoe Ridge wrong…Camus is selling it for $8.99. So…I’m not going back to that store!
Well, glad to hear that the CR pricing at Camus is not so out-of-whack. Still, it is perplexing why they seem to charge more than other WA GOs. I get why urban stores may need to have higher prices, since in-city rents are going to exceed those elsewhere. But Camus? Really?
On the other hand, maybe out-of-the-way GOs are worth visiting if they are less likely to have the good stuff quickly plundered. I recall a few years back watching somebody buying a half dozen cases of something or other during a wine sale. Probably going to end up as expensive wine-by-the-glass somewhere.
Camas, WA
Agreed about the less-plundered wines in out-of-the-way- GO’s. But their higher prices don’t surprise me…like gas stations in those same areas…where else ya’ gonna’ go when you don’t want to travel?
Ok, just to be clear….Camas, WA is just a hair east of the greater Vancouver area, and just north of the greater Portland area.
Not an out-of-the-way location!!
As for higher prices, I’ve snorted about it here previously–our Olympia GO also raises prices often by a dollar or two above what others here report…because they see their store as a big seller, and that translates somehow to “the market will bear it”.
More supply and good demand does not necessarily mean the free market gives you better deals. And it’s particularly cheeky here since we pay another 10% on top of that for sales tax.
This is in response to what JJ has been posting below. Camas’ prices have been in line with the other stores, but just before the sale, they bumped them. For another example, that Rioja that was discussed a couple weeks ago…the 2018 Vina Marichalar Reserva…was going for $10.99 at this store just like elsewhere, but now it suddenly is at $12.99. So now one’s actual savings is 60 Cents…so about 5%.
I remember your being perturbed with the sometimes higher Oly prices, JJ. And for me out-of-the-way doesn’t mean boondocks. The gas station just up the road from me here in Silverdale is 20-30 cents a gallon more than in town…9 miles away.
Vinotarian: what you’re saying is not unlike the grocers BOGO sales, where they raise the prices before those sales…so you’re not really saving anything.
I stopped in to the Folsom GO on Friday 3/31 to see if anything new had arrived. Also I spoke with the manager/winesteward (?) for a few min.
* the few Divum PN they had previously are selling through fast, only 1 left on the shelf. Personally, despite the low price, and positive reviews here I’m not all that enthused about Monterey reds.
* the shelves are a mess, for whatever reasons it has not been restocked/tidied up in a while it seems. Or maybe Friday afternoons are just busy.
* the manager said they had a ton of new wines and restocks in the back that he was hoping to get out on to the sales floor by the time the sale starts on Monday, which didn’t have any signage up. So maybe its just word of mouth?
* still a few Rock Wall Rose sparkling floating around
* Lots of Gallo closeouts (Stella, San Martino, Cupcake) are still floating around. A Raleys manager told me these are related to some lawsuit settlement from the summer.
* There was a new PN which has been mentioned before 2018 Phil Leonard PN [Sonoma Coast] cellared and bottled by Barowsky Disesa. The label looks weird, and the bottler doesn’t exactly have a name that rolls off the tongue. As far as my 3 minutes of internet sleuthing turned up, it doesn’t seem to really be sold anywhere, so take the $15 GO price vs. $60 “list” with a circumspect shaker of salt. I’m assuming this a custom crush facility, of some vineyard that didn’t find a home for its lesser plots/vats. 13.9% abv. Everything about this sort of sounds like something that is sold through the private label companies. I guess during the sale, if its $12, one can take a chance and hope that the GO buyer has selected well enough for its price point. The ugly label is a good sign though, as that might explain why its on the sad stacks of GO.
* Don’t recall this rose before but there are stacks of the 2021 Aime Roquesant [Cotes de Provence] at $5. Looks nice and its the current release for rose, which is the most important thing. 2022 should be coming soon so presumably this has a natural reason for being sold cheap. Most Cotes de Provence rose in this area, assuming they are fresh/crisp/cold are sold $8-$18 with only a few highflyer exceptions so that looks good.
* And another new red Spaniard unseen in the system by me: 2016 Castillo de Eneriz ‘limited collection’ Crianza [Navarra] for $7. The label notes that it is 92 Pts Wine Enthusiast, and its 14.5% abv. Given the limited consumer appetite for that DOC in the US, it likely tastes good. One cannot sell that region by simply saying ‘hey its Navarre, just buy it’. Pretty classic looking label.
So I didn’t buy any wine, but did pick up some whip cream cannisters, for a $1 per. This sounds nuts, but one of our pets loves that stuff.
I love the Divum PN. They have the 2017 at the one here in Paso. Will stock up tomorrow for wine sale.
I saw the Wilhelm Kraemer Riesling at the Folsom Sacramento GO and picked it up hoping it was like a GO piesporter I’ve bought previously that I love (which I can’t recall the name of at the moment). I really liked it, but I don’t know much about wine. I do know I will probably be buying a bunch when the sale comes if I can find it. :). Would be curious to hear the thoughts of others who are more knowledgeable.
If you like dry Riesling, check your local Bel Air, Raleys, Nob Hill etc. they might still have some Dr Loosen ‘dry’ riesling on closeout. Very good producer, roughly $7 net. It’s been on sale for months, but that is not a category local consumers care about.
My preference in that varietal is for the off dry German style. Fortunately recent vintages 2019, 2020, 2021 are all pretty fantastic – right up there with 2001 in reputation.
Thanks for the tip! I live in the Bay Area but am in Sac often (although my usual grocery run when I’m there is Corti’s for treats and GO for deals) and will keep an eye out.
The GOs near me have gotten a number of German Rieslings from Kraemer and Schlinck (including a Beerenauslese for $17.99 that I haven’t yet jumped on since I can’t find any reliable reviews), neither of which I’ve been too impressed with–kind of muddled, not very acidic, sweet (though not too much) in a kind of cloying way. They also have had Schmitt Sohne 1.5L magnums recently for $9.99 and occasionally get some legit-looking Piesporters, though again not too impressed with them.
In terms of US Riesling, I recently found one off-label Riesling from 2018 from somewhere in Washington State for $3.99 that was surprisingly decent for the price and another for $4.99 from Koehler Estate in the Santa Ynez Valley that was also pretty solid (though superb for the price since it’s normally $24). One consistent good quality/value that I’ve found is waiting for Kung Fu Girl Riesling to periodically arrive since at $4.99 that’s generally an excellent value. There’s also a Rancho Soledad Riesling at $3.99 that I’ve seen more than a few times that’s surprisingly solid as well.
That said, Reichart from TJ’s is pretty darn consistent (also the Joseph Handler too), so can’t go wrong with those for cheap, consistent value.
And where are you, SA (“the GO’s near me”)? I haven’t seen the Schlink wines in my local western WA GO’s. We used to sell the Schmitt Sohne wines in our stores 20 years ago and they’re definitely at the low end of the spectrum. I’d have no interest in them.
I personally have found few CA Rieslings that do much for me, but I’m a big believer in WA state Rieslings. WA has been producing decent Rieslings for 50+ years and at one time it was the state’s flagship variety. The Kung Fu Girl is good stuff and I love Ch. Ste. Michelle’s Dry Riesling (for cheap), which I always have on hand.
Years ago, I purchased a case of I think it was Pacific Rim Dry Riesling
at GO. Can’t remember if I got it in Mount Vernon WA or somewhere in
Portland. Wish I had bought several more cases. We hope we learn. Give
me a dry Riesling; Bone dry.
So on a different note. I’ve read lots of posts regarding Pinot noirs,
which I have to say, have been a serious problem for me over the years.
I quit trying to buy them at GO because they were so uniformly
disappointing. But I can’t even tell you how long ago this happened.
I had been seeing this weird label on the shelf at the Mount Vernon GO
that just didn’t move forever. “Lost Coast Pinot Noir”. The label was a
wraparound with a very odd simplified bottle shape thing that was tilted
at about a horizontal 15° off the horizon. And on the backside there was
the face of a black cow with a white marking in the shape of a question
mark. yes, really. About a year after I first saw it, I bought a bottle,
thinking that well, somebody ought to try it. I can’t even estimate how
many cases of that I bought after that. More than a dozen, at least. I
passed it on to a friend (yes, you)in Oregon, and he bought too. It
absolutely established PN as one of my highly desired varietals. There
were two vintages, 2012 and 2014. Sad to say, results have been, at the
least, mixed.
I’ve been to the Lost Coast twice. It is south of Eureka CA in that
place where highway 101 goes inland. You can get there in only two ways.
One is to go south from Ferndale. The other is in through the Humboldt
Redwoods from Highway 101. The first time we went, driving through
Honeydew, there were probably a hundred people lined up along a fence,
looking at us with a rather aggressive suspicious attitude. We drove
through, looking neither to the right or the left. It was uncomfortable.
Later, a friend with some local familiarity, told us that our suspicions
were correct. Marijuana workers waiting for their checks.
Another friend wiped out his oilpan going in through there. After he
told us that, we bought a metal panel to protect ours.
The second time we went, we asked at the BLM office whether we could
leave our trailer at the county park that’s in there. “Sure, you could,
but when you get back to it, everything will be gone and someone will be
living in it”.
My wife, seeing a ranch with several zebras, got out to photograph them.
They came over to greet her. Since she photographs with a strange non
refractive optical device she couldn’t do anything with it because they
wouldn’t stand still.
The store in Petrolia had a blackboard. It said “No Sandwiches This
Week. Can’t get bread.”
But ever since, I’ve wondered whether anybody on Grossout had even tried
this wine. I absolutely loved it and I have to say it changed my life.
Ever since, I have been looking for a pinot noir that I can afford that
measures up to that standard. I think that the winery is still there.
Can’t wait to go back. I’m sure I can’t afford the wine.
I’ll never forget driving on the Lost Coast road…felt like we’d entered another dimension and had an aggressive all-in-black Darth Vader motorcycle on our rear end for quite a bit of it. Totally checking us out, but also threatening. The place was like the backwoods of Arkansas mixed with the Topanga Canyon. This was over 25 years ago, and I’ve always wondered if it’s still like that.
If I’m remembering correctly, we ended up after a narrow and winding drive for many miles through the forest, at the sea’s edge at a wonderful tucked in lighthouse with a live-in caretaker….but I’ve failed to find this location on Google when I’ve looked. Maybe this wasn’t at the Lost Coast, but was on that same Highway 1 trip….but I sure thought it was.
If anyone here recognizes that description, please share where it is I’m remembering!
I too would love to go back on a wine-tasting tour in that area.
I would also really like to try that Pinot you’re talking about from there!
The local weekly GO email I received today shows a 2021 Wilhelm Kraemer Riesling, Germany for $5.99 at the Bremerton, WA store. I know BW and a few others have mentioned German Rieslings on the blog somewhat recently, but I gave up trying to search for the notes. Anyone tried this wine?
I just bought a case of 2021 Emma Reichart dry Riesling Qba at TJ’s for $5 a bottle. It’s a little spritzy, but blows off and I really like it for the money because it’s bone dry with great fruit and tangy acidity…nice food wine.
The Kraemer looks like a QbA, which I typically would pass over, but 87 on CellarTracker and 3.9 on Vivino, worth a try for $6 I’d say.
I have no issue with QbA’s for everyday consumption…especially at $5 a bottle. And finding ANY German Rieslings at GO anymore is astounding. I had read and paid little credence to the CT and Vivino reviews because there was only one review on CT and many of the Vivino reviews were for other vintages. I’ll just have to try a bottle.
Hey Lim –
Sorry, I just realized that may have come off as snotty since you just said you’d bought a case of QbA! But ja, I had been trained to look for QmP as a badge of quality + ripeness level & ABV as sweetness indicator, but it’s not a guarantee. German wine labeling has always been confusing for consumers, and has not gotten any better with the introduction of Feinherb and Halbtrocken. A Kabinett can still be anywhere from bone dry to cloyingly sweet.
Many years ago, when I was a fledgling connoisseur, I read Parker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide (1st edition!) and have told many people since to just read the intro chapter and you’ll be a more educated wine consumer than most.
One thing he stressed was identifying good producers; while a good vintage can lift all boats, some producers make good wine year in & year out.
On Germans, he recommended at the time looking for the badges of two producer associations: Charta Rheingau and VDP, which since merged as VDP-Rheingau. I later discovered Terry Theise’s yearly catalogs at Skurnik Imports, and I think Parker said “Terry Theise Selection” was as close to a perfect guarantee of quality on a German or Austrian bottle as you’d ever get. But Theise left Skurnik, and the import business, and blogs on his own site, A Word to the Wines). You can also read his old catalogs there.
Never seen either on a label at GO…but we do OK 🙂
Haha…I’m a snob too I guess.
Looking for QmP is what I look for too, though to be honest–it’s not like I’ll pay the price generally.
The Kraemer is a Pfalz, and my wine training also taught me that’s going to generally pale to a Rheingau.
My brother said to pass on it…
I still might get curious enough to try it….though would rather hear about it first.
Has anyone reviewed the GVLTAT Gruner Veltliner lately here?
They had an earlier vintage of that same wine about two or three years back. I only bought one bottle to taste, then it was gone by the next time I got back. My notes said, “Pleasant, a nice complement to sesame noodles.” Sorry that’s all I wrote, but the fact that I recall it being gone later means I probably would have repurchased if it had been around. But the fact that my recollection is not tinged with serious regret probably means that it wasn’t one I seriously regretted missing out on more of.
Has anyone reviewed this Wilhelm Kramer Riesling?
Would like to hear about it….
I found the post from last year about the Rieslings that came in:
Looks like lim13 reviewed the Kraemer, though it may have been an earlier vintage. My overall recollection of the six (I think) Rieslings that came in around the same time was that the Kraemer was my least favorite. I liked the Kreuznacher the most (seems long gone), then the Günther Schlink, St. Boniface, and Weinhaus Schlink, sort of in that order. The Weinhaus Schlink is still on the shelves in Medford (worthwhile at the sale price IMHO), last I saw, as is the Kraemer (I’ll pass).
Thanks rpr, much appreciated.
And here’s the follow-up post: