Montague 2014 Columbia Valley WA Red Wine - Yuck!

I can't recall how I came by this bottle. My notes say it is about a $20 bottle. At four years old, it should have been pretty good tonight. But out of the bottle, it was instantly and irretrievably flawed! The most awful stink of (I'm guessing:) cork taint! It could have been some other volatile flaw. It really stank. I waited and waited, to see if it would blow off, and it finally did mitigate somewhat, but who wants to wait thirty minutes before they can drink a wine they just opened for dinner?

What a shame. This wine had some nice and fresh dark fruits. But every time I poured some more, it was full of that flaw again.

Maybe the winemaker didn't have a clue. Some problems develop in-bottle. But this is a horrible mark on that winery, whoever they are. You just can't sell wines like this. I hope I don't!

Cellar Tracker reviewers like this one, but the latest post was 1.5 years ago. Maybe it needed to be drunk in just 3 years, but that would be odd for this region and wine type.

 This winery doesn't have a website! This suggests the wine was made for a distributor, by a winemaker who usually works at a publicized winery. Maybe the distributor bought some bad wine cheap and hoped they could market it. Oh, well.

A fad long past its time: "Natural Wine":

Thanks to Nick for sending me this article about high-priced "natural wine:"

Ugh. I hate this fad. This is a peculiar form of insanity that needs to be stamped out yesterday. My thoughts:

1. Native yeasts? OK. But risky, as some produce off flavors. Why not use a cultured yeast you know will work? That said, some winemakers believe that all their past yeasts lurk on the winery walls, waiting to detach and waft into the juice when they sense sugar. Maybe so. But in that case, it's not necessarily wild yeast--it could be a blend of all past years' cultured yeasts used.

2. Not adding sulfite to protect the wine: Insanely stupid idea. Causes the wine to spoil, rot, fester, and ruin.

3. Biodynamic: Biggest hoax in the history of the world. The idiot who created the concept knew nothing of growing plants, and just invented stuff that was sort of like his philosophy re how to live, without having ANY underrstanding of what plants need to thrive. (Rudolph Steiner)

4. Cloudy, smelly, sour wine? WTF? Really? With an expensive dinner? Wow. 

5. Pesticides and fungicides and herbicides ruining vineyards and workers health, everywhere? You bet! But my modern varieties need no spray, and nobody gets sick.

6. Fads for the sake of fads, in the instance of something so serious as good wine, disgust me. 

Guess you can tell where I stand ;)

Just because it was done one way, a millenium ago, is NO REASON to keep doing it that way today. 2000 years ago, nobody understood the germ theory, or various forms of microbial spoilage or complex chemical interactions. Most of the wines of 2000 years ago were sick, spoiled, insipid, dangerous, sour, retching, and injurious. People drank them because (a) they knew drinking the local water (in most locations) could make them sick; (b) they liked the effect that alcohol had upon them; and (c) they didn't have any better choices.

If you want to pay for a glass of cloudy, spoiled wine, have at it! I'll be the one laughing at you.

This photo of Agia Galini Beach is courtesy of TripAdvisor

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 ;)