by Tom Hill

A self-admitted wine geek, Tom lives in Northern New Mexico and works as a computational physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory doing numerical neutron transport & large scale code development. He has been tasting wines since 1971, participates locally with a couple of large tasting groups in his area, and is practically a fixture at most California wine festivals, such as the Hospice du Rhône, Rhône Rangers, and ZAP. Other interests: Tom is heavily into competitive sport fencing (foil & epee), biking, cooking, basketball, skiing, backpacking, mountain climbing.

 
1. Chateau la Variere Bonnezeaux "Les Melleresses" (13%) 1997: Dark gold color; intense perfumed talc/peachy/botrytis beautiful/lush complex nose; very sweet very intense peachy/botrytis/apricotty lush loads of CB fruit flavor; very long/lingering intense botrytis/peachy spicy complex finish; a great Loire CB loaded w/ botrytis character; good value at $24.99/hlf.
2. Domaine des Baumard Coteaux du Layon (Peacock label) 1989: Med.gold color; rather yeasty/fresh bread/earthy/dusty/perfumed talc little fruit or botrytis nose; slightly sweet earthy/dusty bit herbal/perfumed talc weak botrytis/grapey flavor; med.long quite earthy/dusty finish; lacking much in botrytis or fruit, disappointing. $19.49 
3. Mount Pleasant Ice Wine Augusta Missouri Vidal Blanc Late Harvest (12.8%; SaH: 31 Brix;  RS: 8 Brix) 1991: Dark gold/brown color; rather volatile intense grapey rather peachy/ rotted apricots slight oxidized/caramel some plastic/hybridy complex nose; very sweet complex rotted apricots/peachy/very grapey slight metallic rather plastic/hybridy flavor; very long very sweet rotted apricots/peaches very grapey somewhat plastic/ hybridy finish; a very interesting dessert wine.

1. Mt.Pleasant: This comes from the country's first designated viticultural area in Missouri. I've had a few Ontario Eisweins and I would rank this right up there with some of those in quality. In a lot of wines from French hybrid grapes, I get a sort of plastic-like character, like new vinyl & the smell of its plasticizer, that was quite obvious in this wine. Nonetheless, I liked this wine quite a bit and was  surprised at how well it had aged.

TomHill