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The Tom Hill Archives

The Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium presents the musings and reflections of Tom Hill. We think it's great that Tom, who has sampled so many wines, has shared his tasting notes with us. We do have, or have had for sale a few of the wines Tom writes about, and we include a link to our stock page whenever it is a producer we carry (but since the stock page is kept up-to-date and the wines are sold, don't expect any but the newest of wines to show up in our stock!). Mostly though, since we specialize in County of Santa Barbara Wine and Central Coast Wine, we don't carry a lot of the wines Tom writes about. But we think it is important that you be able to have an idea what they're like in case you are planning to buy some somewhere, or have them in your own collection. Enjoy.

Here are Tom's notes from July 11, 2001:

Dessert Wines

We tasted a few Dessert Wines last night in a BD celebration:
  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.
And a wee bit o' bloody pulpit:
  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.
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