AND a new wine shop

babel wrote: Sorry, there is no decent California wine. It is fine I guess if someone settles for Yellow Tail when they need to wash down their Big Mac while listening to Katy Pery's "I Kissed a Girl" song and watching "So You Think You Can Dance".

Your wine ignorance is astounding. I lived in wine country and have been to many wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Napa. I have tried wines from all over California. They are some of the best wines being produced in the US.

Aww forget it, sometimes I wonder why I bother :roll:

Babel is doing just that.

While I agree that Yellow Tale is more of chemistry experiment these days, if someone wants to drink it than go ahead.

As to the rest of your points...Screaming Eagle is an $1800 bottle of wine made in very small quantities. Expensive? Yes. Overpriced? Almost certainly. High density planting? Nope. "An alcohol delivery system to get drunk with? Not so much.

You rail against cheap wines and present your "$10 biodynamic Chinon" as a trophy. I haven't seen such an animal. What's the name of the wine, because I'm calling you on that one...

Your bashing of local stores is silly as well. Big Nose, RW&B, and Slope Cellars all have very good selections and offer many bottles from producers off the beaten path. Do some of them have more mass produced wines? Yeah, but that doesn't make it a bad store...

Saying that there is no decent California wine is redunkulous. Just like any wine region of the world there are great wines and stinkers...

Let's see what else....If I owned a business and knew that up 10% of everything I produced would be bad because of one aspect of making it...I would look for an alternative to that one aspect (READ: corks). Did you know that some wineries Bordeaux are leading the research of wine under screw cap?

Did you also know that many wineries, whether good or bad, add sugar (chapitalize) or acid if they're in a particularly bad year? If you ever go to a winery in Burgundy or the Loire in a colder vintage, the stacked up bags of sugar are not to make cookies with. It's not something top wineries want to do, but they do it if the alternative is to loose their crops, and that includes many of the wines on the shelves of Chambers Street.

Anyway, it seems that you're trying to present yourself as somewhat of an expert, but a lot of your assumptions seem off base, ignorant, and/or arrogant....

I personally resent the implied insult directed toward "So You Think You Can Dance" -- Katy Perry, however, is fair game.

Babel, you're painting with a pretty broad brush. You don't like any Mondavi? If you need to get rid of any Opus One, I'd be happy to take it off your hands for you.

So the wine you were talking about having didn't actually exist?

I can definately find some great California Sauvignon Blanc that is at least as good as and not expensive as a Sancere. I can't claim that it will have the exact same flavor profile, but if you're looking for a sleek, mineral filled sauvignon blanc, you should try these: Dry Creek, DeSante, Cliff Lede, or Cole Bailey Sesquipedalian...heck even Cartlidge and Browne makes a pretty tasty, organically farmed, single vineyard sauvignon blanc.

Some california cabs use science to make their wines...I'm not sure that's a bad thing...using it to manipulate wines might be. I'm not a big fan of California Cabernet, but there are some good ones out there that have California Terroir but show restraint and structure like that of their French Counterparts. I tend to look more to Alexander Valley in Sonoma instead of Napa, but that's just me.

As for Screaming Eagle, you were the one that used it as an example of swill, I was responding to your example...

Don't get me started about Australian wine...do not try to pawn off Lindeman's or Yellow Tale as good representations of Australian wine. In general I'd say the average wine drinker in the states is ignorant to what Austrlian wine is all about. We have it in our heads that they have to be under $15 and have sweet fruit. There are amazing wines out there that just don't have the marketing beind them...

$10-$15 Pillar Box, Ferngrove Shiraz
$15-$20 Nepenthe Tryst (white), Majella Musician (Cab/Shiraz), Trevor Jones Boots Grenache, The Willows Semillon
$20-$30 Teusner Joshua GSM, Kangarilla Road Shiraz, Shaw and Smith Sauvignon BLanc, Glaetzer Wallace
$30+ Loan Shiraz, Kay Brothers Hillside, Samuel's Gorge Tempranillo, anything from Kalleske

These are great Australian wines for one reason or another, depending on your palate. Australia has wines for even those with a "European" palate, although most Australian wine makers I know try to make great Australian wines, not great European wines. Not even france can boast vineyards that have 100+ vines on their original root stock...


If you want more recommendations, let me know...