#qupe

2012 Qupé Marsanne

Hehehe - I dig what they do at Qupé - they’ve got it going on. Honeysuckle, honeycomb, preserved lemon rind, and honeyed apples on the nose. Ripe pears, peaches, and apples, honey, and a whiff of raw nuts on the palate. Lovely.

4/5 bones

$$

Marsanne

12% abv

What do you say about this wine? I am literally verklempt about this wine. The usual pleonastic uphoria I tend to gravitate to is left speechless with this in the glass. This is the finest wine I had possibly had THIS YEAR. No words can describe it. Perfect in all regards, just stunning on levels I am incapable of transferring into bits and pieces of a cognitive sentence. Stupidly beyond belief…

There’s hardly any way to explain a wine like this. I’ve only had it 2 other times in my life, and I’ve had a half-dozen other Bien Nacido X-Blocks from other producers. Time 1 and 2 were both early-2000 vintages–one a 2005 I drank last year. It was phenomenal. So I was justifiably curious how–or if–the wine had changed in the 10-year gap between those and this bottling. One sniff, one taste and…

You know, it’s funny how we can *forget* about a wine. A brand. We get all wrapped up in the hot new kids, their methods and showcase vineyards, possibly flashy labels and glowing social media content–and I’m not taking anything away from them, I’m guilty of this myself, in fact: I’m TALKING about myself. And especially with Syrah. All the North Coast and Santa Barbara darlings with their high…

Doing my taxes with one of the *little* Qupés… but a single-vineyard… THIS ONE one of my favorite vineyards in SBC: Alisos. Really surprised at the amount of vegetal, bell pepper, and barnyard verve and funk there is in this wine. A straight up drrrrty lil bish like someone spat in your coffee but then you taste it and it’s all sweet beautiful warm fruit, spicy and zesty, nutty and gummy, a PB&J…

Dark ruby, no brick. Green-brair in the nose. That’s just about it. A little murky fruit, dark cherry and some other forgettable stuff kinda peeking around timidly on the wings. Christmas-tree barnyard introduces a sorta carnival Midway gutter candy melted in warm Pepsi and Skoal spit.

I don’t have to tell you about this brand, and Hillside is literally one of my top one-or-two bottlings from…