1995 Guenoc Reserve Beckstoffer IV Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

At age 13, you could smell and taste the loamy currant, well-integrated tannins coat the mouth, all of this leaves me wanting more. This pales in comparison to the other wine of the night (see below).

2002 Joseph Phelps Insignia

Wine Spectator named this Wine of The Year in 2005 and gives it 96 points and predicts it to be best starting in 2008. Upon opening, aromas of black currant and other black fruit were quite apparent. Tasting the wine revealed a symphony of flavors that were strikingly balanced and followed by an extremely long finish that made me blush. It's been nearly 4 minutes since my last sip and I can still feel the softness of the tannins on the inside of my cheeks. How well this pairs with the porterhouses that have been marinating remains to be seen. This one is for you P.

2004 Marquès de Càceres

Two days old, but still a nice tempranillo showing aromas of wet earth and spicy red fruit. The aromas remind me of this wine in particular.

2006 Justin Cabernet Sauvignon

A Paso Robles Cabernet with little, if any, aging potential--two day test yielded mostly oxidation as opposed to fruit and secondary flavors, three day test revealed what little fruit was remaining.

2005 D'Arenberg The Stump Jump

I think the wine glass had soap residue leading to the initial tingly taste in the mouth. I thought the wine was one of Wine Spectator's Best Values, but it turns out the white was the Best Value. That being said, I still found the wine to pair nicely with Pizzeria Regina Margherita pizza (medium basil, no parmesan, well-done) because it cut through the cheese enough to go with the tomato sauce.

2007 Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc Viognier

Aromatic, with melon and many other aromas that are difficult to distinguish which proceed its lusciously sweet, yet crisp flavors of Chinese pear. Surprising, a nice choice for my first voyage with Pine Ridge's Chenin Blanc-Viognier. The beauty of chenin blanc is that the winemaker's touch can have such a dramatic effect on what it turns into. In this case the viognier adds

2007 Woop Woop Shiraz and an outdated French system

The first time I heard of Woop Woop was when I saw a bottle of it in my brother's apartment some time in the spring/summer of 2003, mind you, this was also before I had a great interest in wine. I didn't really ask him about it other than why he had saved the bottle. I want to say that his bottle is from the 2003 vintage, but I'm not exactly sure. Even when he moved into his first home, he took the bottle with him, probably due to the immense sentimental value he attributes to the bottle (not that there's anything wrong with sentimental value, after all, one man's trash is another man's gold). Anyway, the other day I picked up a bottle of this Southeastern Australia--more specifically, McLaren Vale--Shiraz. Tonight I drank it with leftovers (ribs, stuffed chicken, and brown rice with craisins and mango) and I'm currently drinking it as I sneak bites of fudge from a recent trip to Rockport, MA. It's not bad, nice legs, decent fruit, and the fudge brings out some interesting flavors I can't quite put a name on right now. However, when I compare it to the similarly priced, similarly rated Barossa Valley Estates E Minor, E Minor wins, hands down (even without considering the sealing method of each bottle). Now if you're looking for a nice McLaren Vale Shiraz that won't break the bank, try Two Hands Angel's Share ($30). If you want to go for gold, try Two Hands Ares ($160) which features fruit from both the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale.

On another note, there's a nice article at Slate examining why French bureaucrats and AOC standards are shooting its own wine industry in the foot.

It is often assumed that the wine industry, like other sectors of the French economy, is micromanaged by bureaucrats in Paris. The INAO does oversee the appellation system, but as wine writer Tyler Colman (a friend of mine) notes in his informative new book, Wine Politics, viticulture is an exception to the norm in France, in that it is mostly administered locally by the winemakers themselves. This arrangement, plainly fraught with conflicts of interest, has had onerous consequences.

In some appellations, the boundaries have been extended to include land not fit for making decent wine. Yield limits are now routinely flouted in many appellations, and a number of them also permit mechanized harvesting, which is a surefire way to produce rotgut. Then there are the taste tests, whose results are about as trustworthy as Zimbabwean presidential elections. In a survey released last year by the French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir, wine industry insiders acknowledged that as many as one-third of all AOC wines were undeserving of the distinction. Local control, combined with reckless growth, has been a disaster, and the wine-buying public has taken note. In the past decade or so, the French share of the global wine market has declined sharply. Fine cabernets and chardonnays are being produced around the world nowadays, and while the most celebrated French wines—the Romanée-Contis and the Latours and Lafites—are more popular and expensive than ever, the market for many lesser ones has all but dried up. Alain Bazot, UFC-Que Choisir's president, summed it up well: "For years, there has been a steady fall in the quality of many AOC wines which has completely undermined the confidence of consumers in the system." This, combined with the continued decline of domestic consumption in France (it has plunged 50 percent over the last four decades), has left thousands of winemakers in danger of losing their livelihoods.