2016 Cayuse Camaspelo wine review: Oh what a bad wine this is

 There is one thing to like in this wine: It has olive notes. But it's still a fairly poor wine, because you need much more than olives to make a good wine.  Please don't waste your money on this. Parker and Suckling gave it 94 points, but at just six years it hasn't aged well. I suspect if those critics were on truth serum, they'd have trouble scoring it in the 80s now. It's actually difficult to drink. It is so stridently different from any well-made Bordeaux blend that it's almost painful. By straining a bit, I could give it a "C." Meaning, 75 points. Save your money! There are THOUSANDS of good wines costing much less. Why pay into the Emperor's Got No Clothes? 

In fairness, Christophe Baron makes some very good wines, but you have to hunt for them. It's a poor strategy to just buy everything he makes. I finally wised up to that wisdom, and backed off-I only buy the superb Bionic Frog now. That is the ONLY wine made by Mr. Baron that performs well on the resale market. 

I say this too often perhaps, but it's essential information: Anyone can overpay for wine. It takes no skill. Do you really want to play in a game where everyone pretends that a wine is good, when it sucks? I wish I could've sold this bottle in the auction market, but the buyers understand that this is not a very good wine, so I had to drink it. Shame on me.

Dissing on two Cayuse wines

There is a huge benefit in following the wines from a long-established great European wine house (like Eschezeaux in Burgundy or Pichon-Lalande in Bordeaux) --they (many of them) have been in business for decades, if not centuries, and each chateau (usually) has developed and zealously maintains its own typical favor profiles and high standard of quality.

But in this infant nation we call America, most wineries don't have that kind of history. We don't see generations from the same family taking up the family wine mantle. And, here, winery fortunes rise and fall faster than the success or failure of the Seattle Seahawks. My favorite wine distributor's owners think, for example, that K Vintners' Charles Smitth, having sold out for $120M or so, is no longer able to reliably make mind-blowing wines (and I agree, having left his wine club recently for that reason--I don't mind $80 wines if they are mind-blowing, or if they perform well on the resale market, but if they seem too ordinary, or (perversely) too innovative, they leave me feeling shortchanged).

Just so, with Cayuse. I've learned the hard way that too many of their spendy wines don't perform well on the resale market. I've learned that, five or six years on, they just don't perform well enough on the palate to merit their $80 or $90 price tag.

It hurts to say all that. For years I thought Washington's two best wineries--its "First Growths"--were those two. But stuff changes. This is not Old Europe. It is necessary to stay on top of "the good wineries of today."

Tonight, we dined at the The Hammond in Camas WA, and opened our 2014 God Only Knows Grenache. It's retailing for $150 now, and got 97 points from Robert Parker. It should've been mind-blowing, but it was undrinkable. Not flawed, but just a bad wine. Both of us thought there wasn't enough fruit evident, and the wine was thin, and the finish was bitter. That bitter finish was the death knell for me, so we defaulted to our backup bottle: 2013 Foundry Malbec, which was "very good-but-not-great."

Last night, we took a 2013 Cayuse Armada Syrah to Elements in downtown Vancouver, and we made ourselves drink it, but didn't enjoy it. It also was thin and had a bitter finish. Not a very good wine. Yes, there was some bull's blood in it, and if you strained really hard, you might imagine some blueberry, but it just wasn't good or interesting. And yet Robert Parker gave it 98 points (!) and it's retailing now for $150.

When I can get much more enjoyment from a $20 or $40 bottle made elsewhere, why wouldn't I? What a disappointment.

So, who will be the next fleeting "First Growth" from Washington? I say that Cayuse and K Vintners are no longer First Growths. Maybe Thirds, if they are lucky.

Cayuse Bombshell!

Lest you think that Epona Wines are the only ones that have to deal with quality problems from time to time, check out this bombshell from Cayuse, my favorite winery in the entire state of WA: They are pouring out most of their 2015 wines, including the flagship Bionic Frog, the Widowmaker, the Camaspelo and Impulsivo, and many others, due to bad corks. Customers will receive refunds, and Cayuse will make a claim against the cork company. 

This is awful news, a major hit to an industry--those wines have already scored in the high 90s, before bottling. Some cork manufacturer's reputation will take a major (perhaps fatal) hit from this. And Cayuse's reputation will also take a major hit, so I expect them to make a huge claim against the cork company, which could result in litigation.

Awful news. Over the years I've built up a position as a fairly large Cayuse buyer (in the scheme of things--Cayuse starts you out at only one three-pack of wines, and that can grow slowly over time if you stay in the club). 

​We winemakers do our best to maintain quality at every step. The list of times/places where a wine flaw can appear is very long--liiterally thousands of opportunities for a wine to "go wrong," between harvest and the time you pull the cork out. I feel for Christophe Baron and all winemakers today.

FWIW, I use Diem corks, which are processed with superheated steam to drive out the chemical precursors that can cause TCA, or cork taint. They are more expensive, but worth it. I believe in them. So far ;)

2007 Cayuse En Chamberlin Syrah: tasting notes

We had this wine for my birthday yesterday. First, let me show you a rating and review, from 2011:

100 points Wine Enthusiast

 In a stunning lineup of Cayuse Syrahs, the En Chamberlin wins by a nose. It’s smooth and silky, with a tongue-bending blend of flavors that include blood and iron, umami and salt, at first overtaking the pure fruit, but adding tremendous depth and power. The endless finish unfolds into a wine with exotic spices and complex layering.  (2/2011)

Parker gave it 98 and Spectator gave it 94, saying it would peak through 2020.

When our bottle was opened and poured, there was a brief bouquet of nice fruits, and then a smell of some kind of chemical showed through; it was a wine flaw and mildly negative. On the palate the wine was OK but very plain, not showing much of anything. There was a long finish but it was of alcohol only. Both of us agreed this was not a 100 point wine. We swirled it in our glasses a lot, hoping to wake it up, but it didn't change, all through the dinner. This bottle was a poor pairing for a great dinner; it fell very far short of expectations. Later on, the wine was throwing out the smell of celery, which was an improvement. And at the very end--the last couple of milliliters of wine in my glass, after an hour and a half and the dinner long over and when we were getting ready to leave--the wine had finally blown off the chemical smell and I smelled and tasted cherries. Who knows whether this experience would be repeated in another bottle, and it is dangerous to overdraw conclusions from just one bottle, but I am leaning towards drinking my Cayuse within five years, and not letting it get nine years old, no matter what the reviews say. I know that Cayuse wines have characteristically very high pH, and protective sulfites in a wine don't work as well when pH is high, which suggests perhaps the wines will be better when relatively younger and worse when older.

FYI: I paid about $85 for this bottle, from the winery.