David T

Independent Sommelier/Wine Educator

9.5

Bruce Phillips and his wife were pouring their 2021. Talked w/ him at length. Very nice couple.

The 2021 showed well young with room for improving with 10-25 years in bottle and beyond. It showed some evolution, wasn’t all primary. Elegant, very well balanced with excellent structure and finish. Drink 2033-45 properly stored.

The general Napa consensus on 2022 vintage will be a story of did you pick before or after the 6 days of extreme heat during the harvest window. One producer told me his would add 5% of 2023 to some of his 2022’s, which is allowed. He mentioned that he was going to add 15%. But, I think he just misspoke? Get ready for an amazing 2023 vintage from Napa. It was a cooler, not hot-hot, which was a near perfect growing season for long slow even ripening. Some say a vintage of a lifetime and others would only say exceptional.

The Saturday-Sunday Pavilion tasting at Pebble Beach Food & Wine is an excellent four hours to taste a lot wine, taste curated dishes from chefs from all over the country and meet the people behind the bottle. These short ribs were one of the top two or three things I tasted at the Pavilion Saturday. — 3 months ago

Austin Hohnke

9.1

This was firing on all cylinders tonight. Big and spicy. Earth and graphite but loads of wild, dark red fruit. I preferred this over the 2016 Fleur des Rouzes Pomerol, though that wasn’t consensus. — 2 years ago

Mike Saviage

9.5

Tasted blind. Dark tawny with good fruit, mocha, black cherry. Tannins fully resolved. This is clearly old and a CMF wine (Chateau Mind F***). The consensus thinking is this is really old, really good and something we’ve not had before. I guess 78 Guigal La La. Other guesses were equally all over the board. Great to try out an old/aged Spanish wine… one of our group is exploring more of these old Spanish wines, given the rise in cost of everything else around it. Thanks for sharing Steve! — 3 years ago

Austin Moberg

9.3

6 zin tasting lots of first place votes consensus number one took a little to open up with air but jammy blackberry, lovely red cherry, pepper notes, and dark chocolate — 4 months ago

Kevin Løk

9.4

Delectable consensus is wayyy off. This is stupendous tremendous. — a year ago

with Caroline

Eric Urbani

9.5

We tasted seven white wines from Campania and Sicily, all single grape varietals, 2009-2012. Clear standout of the group, our consensus #1! — 3 years ago

Mark Schwarzmann

9.0

Drank 3/9/23 with grilled salmon, more lush and less acidity than the typical Willamette chardonnay. No consensus on this, but leaning toward old school Napa. — a year ago

Paul K

9.4

@delectable this is DDLC estate Pinot.
Lovely evening with friends trying Pinots. This was wonderful. Tarragon was the consensus. 😄 — a year ago

with James

matei ghelesel

10

wow wow wow, picked this up after a tasting @ Road 13....was worth every penny! — 3 years ago

Aaron Tan

9.0

Enjoyed this, though it does comes off a little harsh, which can perhaps be attributed to its youth. A NAS, but as I understand, the blend is at least as old as the standard 10 year old. It definitely has a pretty similar profile - pepper, brine, peat smoke, and citrus. Would be good to taste them side-by-side given the general consensus that the Storm's essentially the 10 taken up a notch. There's a really "sweet" inner core that pushes through to peaty, somewhat-medicinal finish. Medium length. Really liking this profile (particularly the saline character) so I'm definitely going to be checking out the rest of the range. — 3 years ago