Friday, December 11, 2009

WTF is Orin Swift?

My friends Matt and Michael had a rare evening off a few weeks ago and we got together at my place to hang out, have some roast chickens and drink some wine.

2006 Fourrier Gevrey VV
I decanted this for about an hour and a half. I liked it more than my buddies who were at dinner. I think this was a classic example of where Fourrier is right now. You camn see the kinship between these and Pacalet, but where Pacalet’s wines are strident in their definition of what they are trying to be, Fourrier’s wines seem to acknowledge that there are other ways of thinking about wine, while subtly making the case for this way of thinking. Aromatically pure, yet completely impossible to pin down. A moving target that when you try to grab it, it flows between your fingers. Ready to go now and may develop more with age, but I don’t think anyone has quite figured out yet what the aging curve is going to be for Fourrier’s wines.

2000 Château Haut-Bages Libéral Pauillac
This was a big surprise. I have sort of laid off of Bordeaux over the last decade, but this wine was very good. It still had some nice primary fruit of the blue and black sort, but there was also a nascent trickle of woodsmoke, tobacco, and herbs framed by really fine grained tannin. At the right price, I’m a definite buyer of this.

2007 Billard Saint Aubin 1er Cru Les Castets
This was definitely young, but snappy and full of verve. It was slightly better a few days later from the re-corked bottle. Well balanced with the sort of snappy, crunchy fruit that has a sort of cloud of herbs and flowers around it. A promising wine from a producer that I don’t know much about but I will try more wines from in future.

2005 Orin Swift The Prisoner
This was terrible and truly undrinkable. I really don’t know how folks can put up with such a pruney, soupy mess. Really bloody awful, someone should be ashamed.

4 comments:

TWG said...

Hey The Prisoner was #17 in the 2007 WS top 100 list. I presume you didn't buy it.

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The Wine Mule said...

You must lead a very sheltered life. "The Prisoner" is one of the most frequently requested wines at our store. We don't stock it (We mostly like to stock wines for people who actually like wine), but we'll special order it for anybody, regardless of race, creed, sexual preference, or place of national origin.

Florida Jim said...

Nathan,
The Prisoner is done with bought grapes from lots of different places and, IIRC, not the same vintage to vintage. Its a marketing thing (I presume you saw the label?) and I agree with your assessment - garbage.
Best, Jim