Question: Is there something like a 75 to 90 plus  percent guarantee by Alcohol & Tobacco on your wine bottle contents?

You might also like:

We started with the consistent classy POL ROGER CHAMPAGNE family house in Epernay since 1849 this one the ROSE from the highly acclaimed 2008 VINTAGE. Lovely structured full red fruits with creamy textures. Your scribe spent an enjoyable lot of time studying and admiring his fav Perrieres vineyard in Meursault from an outstanding producer Latour-Giraud  making even finer more elegant wines over this last decade. We compared:

There were some 25 different Nuits St. Georges Premier Cru wines from 2022 back to 1989 available to sample (including two en Magnum) and match with the exquisite restaurant celebrated duck and other tasty courses. Many top producers shown and different vineyard selections. Most prominent vineyard with 7 wines was “Les Vaucrains” from Chevillon (09, 08, 04, and 01) and Gouges (09 & 03) showing that big powerful muscle structured more tannic style requiring bottle age softening. Your scribe commented on the wines and was laudatory to the Perrieres but compared NSG a little bit like Bordeaux’s St. Estephe in style having early on a more rustic backward robust statement that requires aging to come together. Hard to generalize but often the northern vineyards of NSG have a more delicate floral elegance while those south of the town are tending to robust power. Liked hot year LES VAUCRAINS 2003 HENRY GOUGES and underrated LES VAUCRAINS 2001 ROBERT CHEVILLON. My favourite younger NSG was the outstanding fresh vibrant low yielding concentrated 2021 LES CHAIGNOTS GEORGES MUGNERET-GIBOURG with a fantastic best future ahead of it. Find some bottles of this excellent NSG!

Fun comparing clearly the Grand Cru wannabe LES SAINT GEORGES vineyard preferred over the others. Two examples of it both FAIVELEY with 2014 elegant but rather light while 1989 (long time last bottle cellared by your scribe) deep dark youthful singing brilliantly a memorable solo (very mature 1989 LES POULETTES CHRISTIAN GAVIGNET-BETHANIE as the sensual accompaniment).

You might also like:

Question: What are they talking about with using the term reverse osmosis in making wine?

You might also like:

Wynns Coonawarra Estate Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon has been a favourite Australian red wine of your scribe for a long time featured on this Blog several times including recently for more detailed reference on January 2, 2023 linked here and January 18, 2021 here. It always delivers intense fruit with distinctive Coonawarra minty terroir at lower alcohol of balanced elegant complex flavours with excellent ageability. A credit to the winery and their talented winemaker Sue Hodder and her team. Sue has a long fantastic history at Wynns having joined in 1993 and becoming the senior winemaker in 1998 producing some outstanding wines over those years. An excellent profile on Sue Hodder and team plus tasting the 2019 by renowned Vancouver Sun columnist Anthony Gismondi on October 26, 2024 is here. Their first Black Label Cab dates back to 1954 and a personal old treasure is the 1976 that won the JImmy Watson Trophy in 1977 for Australia’s top red wine award.

On September 24, 2025 at the Terminal City Club in Vancouver an educational Masterclass tasting was held by Wine South Australia showing “Beyond the Expected”. Some interesting wines tasted among the highlights being a lighter fragrant 2021 ASHTON HILLS Pinot Noir from Piccadilly Valley in the Adelaide Hills using 6% whole bunch with indigenous yeasts and basket pressed into French oak casks & puncheons. Also at the following reception a classy well made 2021 Chardonnay PIccadilly Chardonnay at good value from Ashton Hills shone very brightly indeed. One of the profiled wines at the Masterclass was 2022 WYNNS COONAWARRA ESTATE BLACK LABEL CABERNET SAUVIGNON – THE 67TH VINTAGE. An excellent slide presentation with details on each wine was shown to the audience and the Wynns one is posted with this Blog. It noted that the wine was “Produced only from the top quality 20 to 25 percent of Cabernet Sauvignon fruit grown in our terra rossa vineyards. 21 days on skins and matured for 16 months in new and seasoned French oak hogsheads and barriques.” It showed the retail price of $40 and the alcohol level posted at 15%. Your scribe tasted the wine and remembered my discussions with Sue that even in a warming climate she would be trying her best to keep the abv below 14. It didn’t finish with heat or alcohol that showed more on my palate with the 2022 MOLLYDOOKER WINES GIGGLEPOT CABERNET SAUVIGNON FROM MCLAREN VALE $65 at 15 abv. Your intrepid bold taster questioned the speakers that he did not believe the Wynns Cab alcohol was properly noted at 15 abv. They scrambled to the empty bottles and surprisingly to them noted 13.4 abv – not 15. Check the back label shown below. It has useful information such as “Estate was founded by pioneer John Riddoch, who planted vineyards in 1891 and completed the estate’s famous triple gabled winery in 1896.” They no longer in 2022 give the information provided on earlier vintage bottles that “Coonawarra is renowned for its unique soil and climate which provides ideal ripening conditions for Cabernet Sauvignon. Supple cloaking tannins frame all the elements to create a focused, elegant and classic “Black Label” Cabernet Sauvignon which will once again provide a benchmark for this remarkable region.” Words missing now on the back label but still so true!.

Sue and her team have successfully done it again delivering a beautiful balanced outstanding Wynns Black Label Cab at lower alcohol. Amazing how they can produce such great impressive wine at large production. Except for the Pinot all the other wines were minimum 14.5 and up including Grenache, GSMs, and Shiraz. The expectation of the slide developer obviously was for Australian rich reds to be at higher alcohol. By the way, the ten year younger 2013 (58th Vintage) at 13. 5 abv now is drinking harmoniously on a best plateau of enjoyment. So will the 2022 vintage with more bottle age. A winner. Well done!

You might also like:

Question: Is it easy for an experienced taster like you to notice the difference in quality of a Champagne rated 95 points, versus one rated 96 points?

Answer: I really like your question. As you have noticed on this long time Blog I do not score wines. I have been required to score in wine judging competitions and on other occasions. However, I don’t believe in simplifying the sensory experience of wine tasting with just a number.

Easy to do so using a 1 to 3 star system or the IWFS Vintage Card scoring conceived by Andre Simon with a maximum rating of 7. Even the 20 point range seems to work better where 17 is a pretty good score but the equivalent 85 on the 100 point scale isn’t.

A problem with the 100 point scale started successfully by Robert Parker is that it allows too much small differentiation of scores – like a 95 vs 96. This “experienced taster” as you kindly called me can’t tell the quality difference between a Champagne (or other wine) scored 95 or 96.

It is important to look behind the score to see who is the scorer. Is this someone who consistently tends to score higher or lower than the norm? Perhaps the scorer makes a big leap every 5 points so a 95 is quite a bit less quality in their eyes than a 96 – sort of like the established difference between an 89 and a 90. A big difference indeed! Much more so than say between a 92 and 93 score. Moreover scores in a vertical, horizontal, or other comparative wine tasting probably are more credible and easier to interpret as to the perceived quality of each wine among the group judged.

Also there’s just too much “wine score creep” where perfection at 100 now is all too common and generally scores are inflated being much higher right across the board than in the old days. See “What is a 100 point wine?” posted October 12, 2015 linked here and “100 Point scores should be taken with a grain of salt” on May 27, 2019. Maybe all wine scores now need to be taken with skepticism! Will AI solve this for us?

You might also like: