On the eye it’s definitely showing some age and sediment. The nose is dusty, leathery, and smokey with blueberry and plum. The pallet is earthy and well integrated upfront. No outliers just beautiful flow: mushroom, game, dark fruit, some vanilla, still bold, low alcohol, medium tannic and round finish.
This bottle and I have history; after ten years of carrying it, babying it, and nurturing it. I decided to pop it open for my forty second nameday. Could have gone several more years, easy, but it was perfect timing for me, and this is why I love wine. Cheers. — 3 years ago
2016 vintage. From Coravin. Medium body. Phenomenal smoky, mineral nose. Almost all traces of the baby fat gone. Transitioning from the teen years into young adulthood but still visiting the parents to do laundry on occasion. Tannins picking up and slowly becoming more pronounced. Need to taste this again in a year or two. Very promising. 5.9.24. — 7 months ago
2016 vintage. Last tasted in May 2022. At that time, the wine had shed much of the baby fat and gone leaner bodied. Ummm…this bottle added the weight/body back on along with the overt fruit missing for the last year back into the hopper. The most Jekyll/Hyde BDX I’ve ever had the pleasure to taste multiple x’s. Have zero idea what to expect on the next visit but thinking it won’t be boring. 2.20.23 — 2 years ago
Dali vintage. Still super alive and young, what fun wine to drink alongside Dali’s Wines of Gala book. Most of the fruit is gone, lots of terroir shining through — grape seeds and clay. Some sage / menthol. Literally no oxidative notes — 3 years ago
My choice for a Rhône style theme with my local group.
Definitely the oldest No Girls I’ve opened. As expected, these have a Burgundian flair to them in the way they are made when compared to Cayuse/HP/HC. Not as much depth/richness, but there is great acidity and the use of stems is clear. Faint ruby in the glass. Stemmy/green aromatics with herbs de Provence, black olive, Cayuse funk/iron on the nose. Saline, red and black berry driven on the palate with black pepper spice, truffle, beef jerky and big phenolics. Tart and acidic, I followed this over two days, and to my surprise, held up very well. Pop now. — 7 months ago
Open. Last one. Blackberry violets meats lead pencils some baking spices. Fruit is mostly gone on palate. Still good tannins structure Open an hour. Leather comes though more. Fruit flavors of light blackberry bramble. Turned excellent over 2 hrs. — 2 years ago
Sister in law opened this for me at her girls party. So good. — 3 years ago
2020/12/22 with pan-roasted venison loin and tenderloin with sauce poivrade (after Richard Olney). This is a tricky one. I love Clape, and this wine was quite nice, in a brambly blackberry and funk vein. It did not, however, have any of the notes you’d expect from a mature Clape. It certainly didn’t feel old or faded - quite the opposite, it was still fleshy and fresh, if not terribly deep. Sometimes this happens, but sometimes I feel it happens a bit frequently with wines from my cellar. Perhaps it’s just too cold - I have heard some views that in cool, stable “benchmark” cellar conditions, wine can age much more slowly than is generally expected. One thing I can say is that my 2004 Clape and Allemand, stored with no cooling with family in the Bay Area, has already started to shown those delicious, gamy aromas. Should I raise my cellar temp a few degrees? As is, who knows how much longer this one could or should have gone, but as it’s my last bottle I guess I’ll never know. — 4 years ago
jesus g
Hospitality Schramsberg Vineyards
60’s are alive and well boys and girls! — 5 months ago