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What is the WORST wine you've ever tasted?


Rebel Rose

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The 2005 Canyon Country Concord from Oregon Hill Winery coalesces cruel vinyl essences and a titillating acetone bouquet with a cantankerous kerosene finish.

Edited by DiggingDogFarm (log)
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~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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'73 Zin Trentadue ... I had 3 - 4 bottles of this, around '75. had one bottle / year then gave up. Awful

remembered i had one left in the area formerly known as The Cellar. Might be lethal now.

Rotuts, what didn't you like about the wine?

Was it very tannic?

Also, when did you drink it?

I'm curious because I've had a little experience with these old Sonoma/Napa wines (the bad ones), though it's been some years since I tasted them.

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I first had this in about '75. it was "benzeene" like it was 3.50 on sale then. ............

over the years Ive collected Zins, which are my favorite, from Ridge, and RavensWood. My price point was less than 10 bucks. Ive had a lot of these.

the last few were 25 + years old from Ridge. that was in in about 2000. since then the 10's i used to collect moved up to 25 - 40 $$

that seemed a lot for something 25 years from now.

but you are correct; a carefully chosen Zin that you might keep is a spectacular item for the future. bases on ones age and economic circumstances, get some and keep them for as long as you might be able to keep them!

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I first had this in about '75. it was "benzeene" like it was 3.50 on sale then. ............

It sounds like your wine was poor quality from the get-go, maybe from young vines, not to mention less than stellar winemaking skill. I was wondering if you had one of the early Sonoma wines, those early efforts that showed hints of greatness but needed lots of aging...and forbearance. Those are the kinds of wines I've tried on occasion.

Many years ago I was at a gathering, and one of the people present was a wine collector. He opened a bottle from Napa Valley's early days (late 60s or early 70s). The wine collector mentioned that this particular winemaker wanted to make BIG wines, did a super-high extraction of fruit, and aged his wines in redwood casks. Yes, redwood. They did that back in the day.

The wine was a cabernet sauvignon. Wow. Awful. The wine was still too tannic, after more than 20 years in the cellar, and the flavors were still unbalanced. But that's how great wine gets started, you know? That early Napa Valley wine had the big, forward, rich fruit that California would later be known for, and a great finish too (if you ignored the scummy redwood flavors). People learn.

Your Trentadue Winery zinfandel seems to have improved over the years. Here:

https://www.trentadue.com/xe/xe.asp?page=viewitem&p=10LSZNAV750&cat=la-storia

(I'm not an apologist for this winery, BTW. Don't know a thing about them, and I've never visited the winery. Though, after reading Rotuts' post, I'm curious and I may drop in to their tasting room the next time I'm in Sonoma.)

Rotuts, you could ask the winery if they would like that old bottle back for their library collection, and ask them to send you some of their present-day good stuff in its place. Seriously. Don't you deserve it after suffering through their early efforts? :biggrin:

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interesting idea. but i do have to tell you, ive done very well with my collections over 30 years.

Ridge top stuff 20 - 25 years old was a taste of heaven.

if you can get them to take it back, let them send you something for the "spot"

really.

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