Urgent question!

Hello, this is my first post here and I am most certainly a complete novice when it comes to wine. For Christmas I purchased what I believe/hope to be a very nice bottle of wine for a friend. It is a 1999 Guigal La Mouline. My friend lives out of state and I am getting ready to ship the bottle to him with overnight shipping (and lots of special padding/packing). Before putting the bottle in its packaging I held it up to a light hoping to catch some kind of glimpse of the color (the bottle itself is very dark). I was very surprised to see many large particles floating around in the wine. Some of them were literally an inch long. Is this normal?? I have never noticed this in the $10-30 per bottle "cheap" wines that I normally drink, but admittedly this is the first bottle I have ever purchased of this caliber. I just don't want to risk sending it off to him today if this particular bottle is bad.

Please help!
Thanks,
Jeff

Welcome Jeff!
First of all, I must say that I am not familiar with Guigal La Mouline. First of all, you should try to determine the nature of the particles. If you stand the bottle upright and leave it alone for a half hour or so, do they all settle to the bottom of the bottle? If so, then this is probably normal sediment, which may include tartrate crystals and the wine is fine. If they remain suspended in the wine, and are large particles, it could be an indication of some type of bacterial spoilage and/or oxidation and you may wish to return it. Fine particles will remain suspended for much longer and may make the wine cloudy when disturbed. If the wine is OK, tell the recipient to stand the wine upright for a day or so and decant it. Good luck.

Jeff, Guigals La Mouline throws quite a bit of sediment normally. At $500 to $700 retail, though, I would check with your source to see what they think about what you are observing. Better to do so before shipping it on. Regards, Bob

PS: It's a lovely wine drinking quite well just now based on a recent tasting. You are a generous person.

Thanks Bob. I spoke with the owner of the wine store this afternoon and he educated me about filtered/unfiltered wines. My inexperience shows obviously!

You made me feel good about the selection, so thanks for that. Being a novice myself I have no "feel" for what would trigger the wow factor and what wouldn't. I figured this particular selection would have more curb appeal than a box of Franzia but I wasn't sure if it would be noteworthy to a true afficianado or not.

Happy Holidays to all!

Jeff, here are a couple of notes -- this is one of the great Syrah wines from the Northern Rhone:

Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, Jan/Feb 03
($250) Bright deep ruby. Cassis, roasted herbs, licorice and cooked tomato on the nose. Lush and thick, but with strong minerality contributing to the impression of grip. Superconcentrated fruit here. Suave, expanding finish goes on and on. Offers great long-term aging potential. 96-99 points

And this note from a February 2005 tasting in LA from Cellar Tracker:

The eighth course was a delicious and tender piece of grilled prime fillet with baby spinach spaetzle and awesome Maui onion rings. And OK, now we are back on track in a big way, as this flight was utter perfection in the glass. As much as some of the other young wines has trouble holding their oak, that was never the case with these gorgeous monsters. I just checked, and in fact apart from the 1998 Pégaü Cuvée da Capo and the 1994 Harlan, I have never given a perfect score to anything younger than 1990. These three wines were just off the charts, and for me, unlike anything else in the 1990's, these are actually enjoyable now. That said, I can't even begin to think what these will taste like in 15 years.

1999 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie La Turque - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie
Utter perfection, one of the most compelling young wines I have ever tasted. (100 pts.)

1999 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie La Mouline - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie
Again, perfection in the glass. (100 pts.)

1999 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie La Landonne - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie
One more perfect wine. Astounding. (100 pts.)

These are the three single vineyard wines from Guigal -- every wine lover deserves to taste each at least once.

My own notes are still in draft form, but I remember my taste as absolutely lovely -- still young, but delicious nonetheless.

Regards, Bob

Thanks for all the details Bob. They are nice to have since I likely won't get to taste this bottle myself, so this helps me imagine it

A novice, huh?

Here is how the system works... You ship the wine to me, I open the bottle and carefully remove the suspect buggers, or whatever those odd things are. I then make sure to refill the bottle with similarly colored wine, put a new cork in with a new wax seal where the capsule had been and ship it to you at my expense.

Welcome aboard... We hope to see you back to discuss wines you like to drink.

[Jenise]

Bernie, and if by any chance FedEx can't deliver the wine to your address, they're to forward it to me, where I'll perform the same selfless service. Got strainer in hand--I'm on this one.

Jeff, what Bob says. Your friend's eyes will pop right out of his head.

How about from now on I just buy 3 bottles of every wine, then I ship two of them to you guys, wait for your approval, and once ok'd I will use the third bottle? That way we don't have to deal with all the return shipping, bottle refilling, etc.


So, if you guys will forgive me for moving on to another topic, I did have another question that I'd like to pose to this "extra helpful" bunch

Here are a few wines that I have had in the past few months that I enjoyed. None of them are expensive, they all just impressed me purely in terms of taste. Based on these selections I was hoping the group might be able to throw out a few other wines that I should try.

Feudi di San Gregorio Rubrato Aglianico 2003
Ben Marco Malbec 2003
Witness Tree Pinot Noir 2003

Thanks!
Jeff

Jeff, you've got quite a sophisticated taste -- not many beginners have discovered Anglianico, a wine I can't resist in cold weather. Here a note about my favorite producer of Aglianico, written about two years ago:

1993 Donato d’Angelo Aglianico Del Vulture Basilicata Italy. 13% alcohol. Selected and shipped by Leonardo Locascio, Rome, Italy; imported by Winebow Inc., New York, NY.

Donato d’Angelo is widely considered to be the best producer in Basilicata, and the regular and Riserva versions of his Aglianico del Vulture are generally excellent wines at a great price point. A pasta and Aglianico dinner gave me an opportunity to compare my current reaction with my initial reactions three years ago.

TN: Deep red color, darker than garnet according to Janet; pleasant fruit aroma; unusual taste of cherries and other fruit, light tannin and acid; ten second finish. Pleasant. Three stars.

TN: Easy sipping wine, a little harsh and herbal. Janet and Kathrine agree. Two stars.

TN: Deep garnet color; deep hue; excellent aroma of red fruits, especially cherries and (perhaps) strawberries, with overtones of earth and tobacco; intense tastes of red fruit, extremely acidic at the very beginning, but soon softening and melding beautifully with the red fruit and light black spice tastes; very slight and mellow tannins; medium mouth feel; long, lingering finish with red fruit, black spice, leather and tobacco. Great for drinking with food and for sipping and reading later; a lovely wine. (I was surprised how much more I liked this wine after it aged for several years in a very cold cellar; it doesn’t need decanting, but the acidity becomes much more mellow after ten minutes in the glass.) 4*.

Regards, Bob

[Jenise]

None of them are expensive, they all just impressed me purely in terms of taste.

Expensive is not a prerequisite for anything. Indeed, if all wines cost equally, there are many sought after wines that far fewer would pay attention to and many other overlooked wines that would find the popularity they deserve.

Several suggestions for you: Ben Marco's winemaker is Susanna Balbo, and I would recommend to you her eponymously named premium line of wines. Her 2000 Balbo Malbec was an epiphany of sorts to me a few years ago--I had not thought the grape worthy of single varietal status, but hers changed my mind.

Re the pinot, Witness Tree is indeed a good maker of Oregon pinots. While I've not had their 2003, I can offer that 2003 was something of an anomaly among vintages, hotter and therefore producing riper, more forward wines, and perhaps this is what you especially liked about the Witness Tree. Not sure, but in most ways 2004 is a better vintage offering more precise expressions of the lovely pinot fruit. I would encourage you to explore that vintage in the similar price range you paid for the Witness Tree. I'm suddenly drawing a blank for most names, but some I might encourage you to look for would be Van Duzer's estate bottling, Benson Lane and Evesham Wood.

Jeff, those are all good producers and good choices.
There is such a large universe of wines, it is darn near impossible for me to narrow it down to a fw bottles.
But tell you what we can do... I go to Omaha a few times a year - I even have a couple of wine geek buddies. We could meet somewhere and buy a couple bottles off a restaurant wine list of my choosing. This will help educate you based upon my reasons for order those wines in the context of both the meal and my experience. Just send me an email or PM so I remember this conversation next trip to Omaha.
Bernie