12/13/2023 - aegerter Likes this wine:

The perfect expression of mature Pauillac to me. Had this wine on many occasions and it never disappoints!
Still vibrant fruit, perfectly integrated tannins, everything in harmonious balance. Cassis, crushed rocks, some hint of lead pencil. Long lingering finish. Just a joy!

9/29/2023 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Arvind Sodhani is French at heart and he was looking for the best terroir when he bought the vineyard. Being a singleminded perfectionist he hired the best vineculturist and winemaker. With much patience and passion, he and his wonderful wife Beverly built a small but growing cult following around their wines.

After some years, it feels to me that the wines have evolved and grown in character and distinctiveness. The 2016 was a great vintage and the wine is drinking wonderfully complete. The early vintages were an assemblage of great ingredients, but undoubtedly the whole team have come to know the vineyard and made countless corrections and improvements. While the 2016 is absolutely flawless, the 2019 has a depth and character that’s intriguing and invites the taster to want to know more.

They are on a great journey and I‘m a big fan and looking forward to the best vintages yet to come!

9/11/2023 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Extremely complete wine, very well made - a vintage where everything seemed to go right. Very enjoyable now, but a legend in the making!

7/27/2023 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Always a favorite example of a well aged Pauillac!
Love it!

7/16/2023 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Haven’t had this for some time, but today it drank spectacularly! The perfect balance of fruit, sweet tannins with good acidity in the backbone is what we are looking for when blending. Dark fruit, licorice, graphite, cassis and some forrest floor make for intriguing discovery! A wine that’s both hedonistic and intellectual! Very curious (and optimistic) how it develops over time!

3/30/2023 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Starting to drink very well!

6/25/2022 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Always in the shadow of Materium, this 2012 has turned our beautifully and was a pleasure to drink. Stylistically it has developed a Materium like sweetness while when young Amoenus always has a big of a "darker" profile. Everything is perfectly in balance!

5/14/2022 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Amoenus has always been in the shadow of of its bigger brother Materium. I generally liked Materium much more, but now the 2012 Amoenus is coming of its own and displaying singular characteristics that habe been under appreciated when younger. Bit less fruit forward, darker, but not heavier. It was a pleasure to drink after an hour of decanting.

3/29/2022 - aegerter Does not like this wine:

Unfortunately this bottle was off. Very hard tannins and no fruit. Not sure what happened, but we had to pour it.

2/26/2022 - aegerter Likes this wine:

2019 was a great vintage for White Burgundy and Ramonet took full advantage of the perfect growing season. It’s a new world version of classic burgundy with a bit more oak and less acidity but perfect minerality and fruit.

2/22/2022 - aegerter Likes this wine:

At first it seemed a bit closed, but the conclusion is that we messed up by not decanting two hours previously! But this Solaia delivers and will only improve with age. Just perfectly balanced between fruit and oak, nicely fine grained sweet tannins delivering a long and memorable finish!

10/25/2021 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Wonderful expession of their terroir. Elegant and not too heavy. Well done!

10/5/2021 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Favored this wine blind over La Tache 2017 (but it wouldn’t have beat La Tache 2018). Has wonderful nose, richness, balance and length. Really amazing and enjoyable!

6/11/2021 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Amazing richness and concentration! Love it!

5/26/2021 - aegerter Likes this wine:

What continues to amaze me is how distinctive the Materium wines are from all the Napa cult wines. So many (even great Cabs) are just overpowered fruit bombs, but Matertium is distinctive over the vintages, offering refined drinking experience even at a young age. Fine grained tannins with a looong finish!

5/22/2021 - aegerter Likes this wine:

This wine is starting to drink amazingly well and everything is coming together. It has mellowed over the last years and has emerged from its closed stage. Looking forward to the continued evolution and believe it will deliver 100 points experience a few years from now!

10/21/2020 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Drank very nicely - exceeded expectations!

10/20/2020 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Nice mature Burgundy. Drinks well, bit austere acidiy for my taste!

10/18/2020 - aegerter Does not like this wine:

Was overly tannic, but opened up decently. Nevertheless a disappointment unfortunately.

6/24/2020 - aegerter Likes this wine:

First time I really like this wine. It’s always been the most overpriced Napa wine in my view, but today it drank perfectly. Gained weight and balance since I had it last. Will be a joy to drink over the next 5-10 years!

6/7/2020 - aegerter Likes this wine:

My very first Romanee Conti was a sublime experience. Amazing nose draws you in and gets the pulse going! In the mouth it expresses perfect balance of complexity, richness an elegance. The finish is over a minute long and allows for reflection how blessed I am to experience this. Time for the next sip, I want to learn more about the layers of taste that are all so harmonically integrated. It’s so easy do drink, so easy to just enjoy. I paired it with a sublime chicken. It‘s a singular experience and should not be enjoyed in a tasting with other wines or even be compared. Is it worth it? Of course the prices are crazy, but it‘s a bucket list experience ✅ and totally worth it!

4/18/2020 - aegerter Likes this wine:

In my opinion, is the ultimate food wine that works with a wide range of dishes, even spicy food. My favorite pairing is with a beautiful turbot! What I like is the perfect balance of minerality, acidity and fruit. Very precise wine, yet a simple hedonistic pleasure!

4/11/2020 - aegerter Likes this wine:

After a closed stage, it’s drinking beautifully!
Lots of fruit with tannins nicely integrated.
Probably even better over the next 5-7 years.

1/5/2020 - aegerter Likes this wine:

This wine has evolved nicely in the bottle and is a Bordeaux style Napa wine, given the cool and wet vintage. But I liked it more than I had expected. Very elegant and balanced!

8/11/2019 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Very nice, but did not live up to expectations.

7/21/2019 - aegerter Likes this wine:

I enjoyed this for my 50th birthday! After hearing rave reviews of this legend I was finally able to secure a bottle. I was super nervous when opening the bottle and was glad I had the Durand at hand for cork extraction. Any other corkscrew would have been a disaster. While the cork was showing his age, it had an incredible fruit smell that instantly put my mind at ease and generated excitement. The first pour revealed a dark color that’s super rare on sich an old wine. The nose revealed sweet cassis, on the palate it had brilliant fruit integrated with soft tannins that have mellowed over the decades (like me). It had an incredible richness, viscosity and concentration that is highly unusual at 12% alcohol! These wines were much lighter that what we get served from Napa nowadays, but I bet this wine was not giving much joy at a young age. Definitely my favorite California wine ever!

5/6/2019 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Very solid - drinks great now! Really enjoyable!

4/21/2019 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Overextracted, too much alcohol, losing fruit, maturing quickly. Fun to drink today, but for this price point I expect more than simple drinking pleasure.

4/13/2019 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Exceed expectations. Drinking at peak maturity. Well integrated tannins and nice fruit with long finish!

2/11/2019 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Wonderfully concentrated Chardonnay. Much more elegant than a buttery Sonoma Chard, but similar in umami and fruit profile.

PS: no connection to the producer!

11/10/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Wine of the night! Lasted only 5 min in an open bar... market is efficient and this wine is a stunner!

11/10/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Starting to dring beautifully! Lots of concentration and fruit like a 2013, but the elegance of 2012!

11/10/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Probably my favorite California Chardonnay - the viscosity of a great Meursault!

11/3/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Exceeded expectations! Was incredibly youthful yet perfectly mature. So rare to find mature Bordeaux with this characteristic! Loved it!

10/7/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

I was also at the vertical tasting and liked it better than some of the recent reviews, but I agree with their description that the wine there tasted a bit like a ripe Barolo. I have since bought some bottles and just tasted it tonight. Big difference to the wine at the tasting. Much more elegant and well rounded and in line with most reviews.

8/26/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

This was the first released vintage of fruit from the Napa Valley Reserve vineyards. The vines were only two years old. Surprisingly, the legendary 1969 Chappellet was also from baby vines and competes well with the very best wines from anywhere. I loved this wine in 2010 and it has only grown - shedding baby fat and displaying characteristics of its terroir. Looking forward to drinking it again over the next decades!

8/6/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Yet another 2009 that both impresses and pleases!

6/17/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

At first glance a bit acidic, which is unusual for Napa, but also 14% alcohol is also unusually low. Opened up beautifully after an hour and is an overlooked vintage for Dominus. Long life ahead!

1/6/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Drinks at perfect maturity and is the best expression of this vintage I’ve had so far. It’s been in my cellar for 17 years.
It’s still somewhat fat yet elegant and wonderful concentration and balance. Plenty of fruit and the legendary 1997 seems to live up to the hype after all!

1/4/2018 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Wonderful example of the Italian Petrus!

7/26/2017 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Amazing - candidate for perfection!
Explosive nose, balance on the palate with pure fruit and a looong finish! Just gorgeous!

7/26/2017 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Intensity without heaviness!

7/20/2017 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Wonderful wine for my birthday as good as Napa gets! An American dream... Korean plastic flower producer goes to Napa and aims to produce the perfect wine no expense spared and succeeded!

7/2/2017 - aegerter Likes this wine:

I was surprised that the CT community rates this wine so consistently perfect given its tender age. But upon opening it was clear to me why. I visited the Chateau some years ago and the owner explained that he was lucky to have two perfect vintages in his career - 2009 and 2010 (I'm sure he will now speak similarly of 15 and 15...) While his father and predecessor didn't have any such vintage and his grandfather fondly reminisced of the 1948. However that 1948 was undrinkable for about 20 years as it was vinified with the stems and this gave it a lot of acidity that made it last for 50+ years - it's a legitimate question if the current generation will have the same capacity for ageing, bit then again, it must have been a total shame that some many bottles were discarded and unappreciated because they were drunk at the wrong moment in its ling development.

This VCC combines all factors of what makes a perfect wine - a hedonistic sensory experience on all levels combined which leads to intellectual curiosity to learn and experience more about this wine, it's terroir and the countless decisions that had to be made to reach this level of perfection. It's clearly ageworthy, but a joy to drink now with some decanting. It's a true VCC and represents it's terroir in an authentic way, but in a modern, approachable way.

6/24/2017 - aegerter Likes this wine:

I just love this wine!

6/4/2017 - aegerter Likes this wine:

Wonderfully lush Chardonnay. Complexity and texture delivers a hedonistic drinking experience.

4/1/2017 - aegerter Likes this wine:

A wonderful expression of Merlot that combines many attributes and qualities of a perfect wine. Drinks surprisingly well at a young age.

4/1/2017 - aegerter Likes this wine:

This was a highlight and almost perfect wine for me about 10 years ago. While it's still a beautiful drinking experience, it's clearly fading.

4/1/2017 - aegerter wrote:

Quite flat and unexciting. Didn't deliver on expectations.

3/25/2017 - aegerter Likes this wine:

A superb vintage of Ca'bina! Rich, concentrated with layers of complex flavors. On the nose and palate, I find cedar box, truffles, espresso beans, cassis and forest floor along with classical dark fruit. A lingering and captivating finish!
Experiencing this wine at maturity is one of many reason to look forward to my older days!