Where to start with this guy’s brand. First red flag: I walk up and he’s drinking something the color of Sweet Vermouth. I think to myself, “Gee, that looks alarmingly like 20yo CH.” Guess what it was? Second red flag: I’ve never heard of him before and he’s been making and selling wine in the area for 24 years. Third red flag: He sells almost exclusively to Asia. Fourth: He releases wine after “a minimum” or 10 years. Fifth: He collects REALLY BAD art reproductions. Sixth: He makes a SS cab. 7th: He decided in 05 that it was pointless to bottle the wine after 24 mos and then sit on them for 8 years so why not just leave them in the barrel for 8 years and bottle a couple years before he wants to release? Brilliant. “And you are not concerned about oxidation?” Oh no. The wines are just as fresh–and even MOAR concentrated–than what I am used to selling. RIGHT. THERE. I shoulda walked out. But no. So many bullshit sirens going off, I was drawn into their eerie glow and wrote him a check for 50$ and tucked under my arm a shiny bottle of 1999 cab fished from somewhere behind the bar and affixed with one of the worst labels ever to roll out of a laser-printer. Oh god, now the nose has gone more squished-caterpillar and brown lettuce. Don’t make me drink it.
In the mouth… fuck it I’m done. It tastes exactly the way it smells. Warm flat bullshit gaggingly oxidized putrid acrid skank-ho toejam rotten lemons dipped in kerosene. This dude needs to be drug out behind the barn for the crimes being committed against wine. Just another wanker in Paso, giving Paso Robles a bad name–well: all over Asia at least. Do these guys exist in established wine areas? I have never run into them the way I have in Paso. Any fucking cow-poke hick can make wine up there, it seems, and the half-dozen or so I have run into all have seem to have: Incredible barrel-lengths, high prices, and a rabid cult following. Oh, wait. A wine flawed beyond belief. They have that in common.
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1999 NICHOLS Meritage Trio Paso Robles Cab/CF/ME 30/30/30ish 14-1
