29.8.07

Twisted Oak's %@#$!, in the white context

Am I being punished? The enduring lapsed/inner Catholic in my gut feels punished:
I wanted to tease & chide Twisted Oak about their Verd@#mt!, Roussane-based white Rhone blend after drinking down the first bottle, in the following terms:
--how can this sly oenological cabal hope to keep their rustic, 'wild and crazy guys' image going while making such elegant wines?
...I missed a bit of crispness, thought it was a bit too malo-ed out, man, the seductive buttery pear not standing up too well to some spicy dishes I paired it with--
I even thought up a kinky analogy:
This wine is like the Brando character in Last Tango in Paris, playing up the ugly American thing as he works out his grief-- but even as he growls, 'Get the butta!' at Maria Schneider, it's only a displaced, wounded sophisticate's impatient, emotion-filled rendering of tradition...
I'm being punished: when I opened the second bottle of the %@#$! stuff to reaffirm or correct these impressions, I got a dense, but somehow 'flat' whiff of oxidation, a woody sherry character in the palate. I'm somewhat out of my depth here: is this what 'corking' is like in a white wine?
Or is this something else? I thought oxidation would be a general batch process, can it happen on a bottle-by-bottle basis?

(Friday the 28, September to remember...)

I just bought & opened another bottle of Jean-Luc Colombo's 2001 'La Belle de Mai', a 100% Roussanne, appellation Saint Peray...
I'd written a teaser after my last bottle a while back, & while this iteration is in better shape than my last purchase-- which seemed to be fading to thin, disjointed tartness-- it still tends to vary from day-to-day & taste to taste. Colombo's been nicknamed the 'Michel Roland of the Rhone'--for his tendency to technological, overtly manipulative oenology, even if he does source some organically grown grapes (from 'old vines'!), as for this wine.
But to begin with, Roussanne is quite the testy, finicky grape-- so... I've joined Tim Elliot's Winecast group at Crushpad to learn all I can about crafting a Rousanne-based blend...Tim referred the group to a recommended listen to this taped seminar from this year's Hospice du Rhone event. The big 'aha!' moment for me was Jacques Perrin's warning that the 'shut down' period most wines have a tendency to experience at some point in their aging evolution is very marked & dramatic for the product of the Roussanne grape: five years...

1 comentari:

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