97 Coturri Chauvet Vineyard

[Thomas]

Boy do I second winoweenie on that one. Not only do the wines vary, but they are sometimes so volatile you could lose the hair on your nose at forty-five feet away.

The reason the wines are spotty and often volatile is because they are normally produced in small lots. Handled frequently, small lots of wine can go faster as less volume comes into contact with lots of oxygen. Also, the vintage is often bottled from separate small lots without a comprehensive blending, which invariably gives you bottle variations.

As for the sweetness, they are often sweet, and with high alcohol they taste even sweeter.

When I was a salesmen for a distributor that handled these wines, I used to scream aloud whenever we were forced to taste and evaluate them before being asked to sell them to retailers. But the wines have a cult following and they manage to sell out.