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Robert Cripps's avatar

I have an advantage in that where I live, the local plonk is Albariño. You'd be amazed (or perhaps the authors won't) at how many times we've enlivened dull wines from elsewhere with a dash of Albariño.

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Zach O'Brown's avatar

Our "local plonk" is jug wine made from Central Valley's undisclosed "heat resistant grapes," sometimes with a touch of "mega purple." Unfortunately, we can't enliven dull wines with that 😂

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Robert Cripps's avatar

😂😂😂😂

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David Mastro Scheidt's avatar

Well, we don't call Petite Sirah "the Doctor" for nothing, it's there for fixing things.

Honestly, there are plenty of wines blended just before bottling. I've added white wines and Rose to a base red on several occasions to "freshen up" or "lighten up" a wine that just has too much tannin or alcohol smell.

Your post is one of those I classify under Sausage Making; most people don't want to really know how their wine is made, even if it makes the wine better.

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Zach O'Brown's avatar

We must not fear "the Doctor" 😂

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Popsh's avatar

Wizardry!! One of the all-time best. Please never stop breaking "the rules".

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Tannic Panic!'s avatar

"The rules" can eat our jorts

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Dave Baxter's avatar

You bastards, those are perfect breakdowns and images for this ongoing feature! God dammit, instant envy. The moment I saw Barolo + Petite Sirah I thought "Oh yeah, that is PERFECT. Keep this shit up.

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Isaac K-Brown's avatar

Hell yeah, Zach has been rambling on about the ole Barolo/Petite Sirah premise for a while, it was cool to see it pan out! 😂 If you have a chance to try an iteration of that, let us know – not sure how readily available Zach's particular Barolo pick is because for some reason it seems like there's a vast selection of bottles in his local stores that are exclusively available in NJ and NY, but Stag's Leap is everywhere. And if you do any shopping at TJs, along with the two I slapped together, there's also their pseudo in-house brand of Barolo "Rosa Dell'Olmo" which was only like $15 last we checked. It's definitely not as classic in style, but it's insane that a serviceable Barolo even exists at that price point. Cheers!

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Dave Baxter's avatar

Ugh, that Rosa Dell'Olma is swamp water - we tried! TJ's used to have another Barolo for only $12.99 - Corte Rossa Barolo that was REALLY GOOD. It beat out an expensive and mid-priced barolo in a blind tasting we did many years back. And then it was of course discontinued almost immeidately. Plainly they had that one batch that one time, never to be sold to TJ's again. But I'm sitting on a few bottles of solid Barolo and Petite, so this will definitely be an experiment soon!

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Thomas Horgan's avatar

2021 Mildara Barossa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz (73% Cabernet Sauvignon/27% Shiraz) / $8 sounds a winner

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