Wine Reviews For The Average Wine lover: December 2017

Saturday, December 9, 2017

The Desert Wine Guy - 2016 Fuerza DeLa Tierra Tempranillo

Well guys, welcome back to The Desert Wine Guys wine blog. Today I am doing a wine review that is actually the second part of a review I recently did (https://desertwineguy.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-desert-wine-guy-wine-insiders-wine.html) with the first part being of an online wine club (?) called "Wine Insiders" (https://wineinsiders.com/). By the time you are reading this that previously mentioned first part will have already been posted with this second part to follow. I won't get into anymore about the club or it's specifics because this second part is strictly about the wine. For those of you who are interested and want to know more about "Wine Insiders" check the link above for the review on them. So, let's move along now and get into the wine itself and see what it is all about.
Today's review is on the 2016 Fuerza DeLa Tierra Tempranillo which for those who follow me know is my favorite varietal. Let's begin with the wines presentation of itself in my glass. Upon initial pouring of this wine into my glass I thought it looked really nice and presented itself as a serious dark, medium Garnet. As the wine sat in my glass while I could still see the bottom of my glass it was not as clearly seen as some of the other wines that I have tasted and enjoyed in the past. So far, so good here.

Tempranillo

Moving to the Bouquet of this Red now this is where I ran into the wines first problem although not something that there wasn't anything that it presented that impressed me. The Bouquet displayed perhaps a note of Vanilla and an ever so slight (and I do mean ever so slight) note of Caramel and slight Oak that was present on the back-end of the Bouquet otherwise as I said, the Bouquet was less than impressive and I was slightly disappointed. I have to say (as I have previously) before I go on here that this lack of Bouquet I am finding rather common in a lot of wines and I have come across it plenty of times before. in my opinion this issue with a lack of Bouquet,(although a negative thing) does not necessarily by itself ruin a wine for me although I will deduct a point from the overall score of a wine because of it.
Let's move to how the wine comes across on the Palette now and see what we have here in the way of a flavor profile. Before I start here I will give you a spoiler. There are some good aspects to this wine. Did you catch that? In my mouth the wine had a little candy Blackberry type note that I feel works out well here and ended up on the finish as well. The wine created a very smooth mouth

feel,coated my tongue and was not harsh. The coating I mentioned was actually pretty nice and I enjoyed the smoothness that it provided on my Palette. There was a usual Black Pepper note here as the (Spanish) varietal is known for. I've said it before and I feel forced to repeat it, to me that Black Peppery spice that the Tempranillo varietal exhibits is what the varietal is known for and is part of what sells me on the Spanish version of the Tempranillo varietal, the American version is sadly lacking it and I strongly avoid it. The wine happily continues on with it's good aspects as there is also that note of Clove that all Spanish Tempranillos seem to wonderfully present. This Clove note and the spice seem to mesh fairly well together and so far the wine is tasting good. A nice note of Tobacco definitely makes it's presence known and while it is not exactly what I would call "in your face", it is not exactly shy either. One more positive note that I wish to discuss is that of Leather. A typical Spanish Tempranillo and this one is no exception, always exhibits that note of Leather and it is in here however also at a level that while not jumping out of the wine, is not exactly shy either. Quickly reviewing all the notes listed for a second I want to say that while the notes were certainly not shy and they presented themselves pretty nicely and at a depth that you will indeed notice them, they also were not able to overcome the final note the wine presented to me and this is where the wine went off track in my humble opinion. So with that warning I will disclose the final note which is an over the top jamminess. The wine really looses me as well as points on The Desert Wine Guy rating scale for it's over the top level of sweetness which is definitely not an aspect of the Tempranillo varietal, especially not the Spanish version. If you are looking for some Tannings in your wine you will be disappointed here as well. While there are a very small amounts of Tannings that perhaps will be felt on the Palette it is, for the most part over run by the wines strong jamminess.

Okay, so lets wrap this up now. As I said in the opening of this review, this wine was gotten from what in reality is a wine marketing company. This is the first wine that they have sent me and that I am reviewing. Whatever the case, the question remains would I buy this wine if I wanted a Tempranillo? Here the answer is a definitive no. Now, having said that I know that there are a lot of red wine drinkers or lovers of the American version of the Tempranillo version who would love this wine. There are also a lot of lovers of jammy red wines with a bit of spice to it but the next big question still remains, does this wine hold strong enough to its varietal standards to please lovers of a Spanish Tempranillo? The answer in my book has to be, no. My overall opinion of the wine is there this must be a fairly high blend of Petit Verdot blended with this wine in order to bring about that jamminess that the wine presented. The wine was way too much on the sweet side for me and it was too medium bodied as well. I am not saying that this is a really bad wine, just one that could have been blended less and had a lot more time spent tweaking it.
On The Desert Wine Guy rating scale I give this wine 86 (Good Suitable for everyday consumption, often good value, Can be enjoyed for casual relaxing.) points.

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Monday, December 4, 2017

The Desert Wine Guy - Wine Insiders, A Wine Scam Or A Wine Blessing - An Early Review

Today I am (temporally) going to be taking a break from wine reviews to do a review on a wine related company named "Wine Insiders" (https://wineinsiders.com/) whose parent company is "Drinks" (http://drinks.com/). Wine Insiders for all intents and purposes appears to be a company that sells small boutique wines that otherwise might not ever have any exposure other then some very small business. They do this by initially giving amazing deals on wine to potential customers in hopes that these customers will join their wine club(s) or purchasing wines on an individual basis. Now having said that I will add that none of this means that there is anything wrong or underhanded with what they are doing, I actually admire the idea and I think the consumer benefits as well by enjoying wines that they never would have the opportunity to enjoy otherwise. They claim that "our expert tasting panel samples well-known and hard to find wines from virtually every wine producing region in the world" and that "only the best, with scores of 93 or above, are accepted". https://www.vivino.com/wineries/cala-de-poeti/wines/rosso-2014) as an awesome 5 star wine and the 2015 Cachil Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon which comes from the Colchagua Valley which by the way was named Wine region of the year by Wine Enthusiast Magazine. This wine itself was rated 3.9 by Vivino https://www.vivino.com/wineries/estampa/wines/cabernet-sauvignon-reserva-9999). I will update you as things progress. What I can also at this point tell you so far is that on November 19th at 12:13 PM I ordered the wine and was only charged $32.41 (with tax).

They also claim that they were supposedly founded over 35 years ago although there is nothing that I can find to verify that and I have strong doubts concerning that statement. Now, whether they have been around for 35 years or not is beyond my knowledge but they are here today. What made me look into this company in the first place is their offer of 6 bottles of wine for $4.99 each, A free wood handled Corkscrew, a $50 voucher (which can be used for future orders of $75 or more) and to top it off, free shipping as well. The company promises that there is supposedly no further commitment required and that by accepting their offer you are NOT signing up for any club. At this point I have no reason to doubt that the deal nor that anything they claim isn't legitimate and I think we are a little early into the evaluation process to determine if indeed the deal is on the up and up. What I can tell you is that two of the wines they claim that they will send in their offer is the 2014 Cala de Poeti Rosso which Vino rated

FIRST UPDATE - On the 20th at 8:07 PM I received a notification that my wine was shipped.
SECOND UPDATE - On the 22nd I had gone to work and Mrs. desert Wine Girl was busy with errands and when she returned home she had missed the delivery.
THIRD UPDATE - Today is the 23rd my luck was better as I am home and was able to receive the box with my wine in it I also struck up a small conversation with the driver who informed me that he was delivering tons of these boxes.
FOURTH UPDATE - Today is the 24th and it is 10:30 AM. I have not opened the box yet but have plans to do so later on in the day. I will also create a video out of this whole experience for my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgCUb3w1n2S_UGU2yYRkFYQ). So far so good folks and although it is early, I have no reason to complain about anything.....so far. One other item of note is that I so far have not received tons of E-mails from the company so they are are not hounding me, at least not as of yet. So that is about all I have for you right now, I will update you as I move along with the opening of the box.
FIFTH UPDATE - Well today is the 25th of November and I finally opened the box (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3mb5xL19Y4) and as promised I made of video of the entire process. I won't say anymore about this end as I want you to watch the video :)
SIXTH UPDATE - Today is the 29th of November and I received an E-Mail from Terry who is my "Wine Concierge" and he had an offer of a $50 gift voucher to use on my next order of $50 or more with free shipping. Well how could I turn that down so I took them up on their offer. I clicked on the link and went shopping. I ended up ordering three bottles of wine and all I paid was $5.52, that was all. The one item that I want to point out here is that the wines appear to be priced about the same as other websites prices for these particular wines. In other words on one hand they do not appear to be overpriced for their wines however on the other hand they also do not appear to be priced any better either. I will also tell you that the other day I tasted my first bottle from "Wine Insiders" which was the 2016 Fuerza DeLa Tierra Tempranillo. I won't comment here about the review as it will be a separate article onto itself. I will tell you however that it will immediately follow this one.
SEVENTH UPDATE - Today is the 1st of December and I received notification that my wine has been shipped.

EIGHTH UPDATE - Today is December 3rd and I have just tasted (and done a review on) the second bottle of wine from Wine Insiders which is the 2016 Princess Joyeuse. The review on this one is not written up just yet but I will give you a little insider info......this wine set a new standard. Now whether the new standard is for the good or for the bad is something you will have to find out when you read the article.That is all I will say, sorry.
FINAL UPDATE- Today is December 4th and the wine that I ordered on the 1st is out for delivery. While it is still early into the whole experience of Wine Insiders I can tell you that I am pleasantly surprised and happy. I have received no invoices for strange bills. There have been no notifications that I somehow signed up for any wine clubs that I don't know about nor have there been any unauthorized charges for wine nor anything else that I never ordered or agreed to. I have not even received any E-Mails from companies that I know I never subscribed to. As I have already said, I know that it is early in this whole process but so far I am happy.
Well, that is all for for this article folks. I promise that I will be following up however on Wine Insiders periodically and you will be seeing my reviews of their wines as they come up. I will leave you with an interesting little bit of information and you may take it as you wish.
Here is some other information that I discovered while researching Wine Insiders. Prior to acting on the initial offer from Wine Insiders I also received an offer from a company named Heartland & Oak Wine Merchants. The two identical offers struck me as weird and I decided to my some checking on the business. What I found from the Better Business Bureau https://www.bbb.org/losangelessiliconvalley/business-reviews/wines-retail/drinks-in-los-angeles-ca-359422/reviews-and-complaints) page was indeed eye opening. It turns out that Wine Insiders also goes by the name Heartland & Oak Wine Merchants as well as Barclays wine, Drink Holdings LLC as well as Drinks Licensing LLC, Clubhouse Wines, Maggiano's & the Martha Stewart Wine Co. In other words, they are all the same company. Now, this does not mean that there is anything wrong here as there are many company that just go by different names. There were 20 complaints listed in 3 years listed for Heartland & Oak Wine Merchants. I cannot find any complaints under the name of wine Insiders as they do not belong to the company. Here is something else that I found interesting about Wine Insiders (http://clearygull.com/download/pr/Press_Release-Wine_Insiders.pdf).

I hope you guys enjoyed this informational review of my experience with Wine Insiders as of December 4, 2017. I enjoyed writing it and found it very interesting as well. In my early opinion I believe that Wine Insiders is simply a wine marketing company for very small Wineries who otherwise would never be known and are probably selling their wines thru small boutiques. Be warned however that there are tons of complaints concerning Wine Insiders & Heartland & Oak HOWEVER I am doing my own research (on Wine Insiders) and so far so good.

The Desert Wine Guy