TN: Listen to the Sommelier (Alto Adige, Loire, Rhone)

Ouch!! That really does suck, Dale. I'm so sorry to read of your troubles and I'm glad that you got a little bit of pleasure out of the day.

Bravo to Levi for treating you so well! He can be a bit prickly when posting to the Internet, but he sounds like a very generous and professional sommelier. Some day maybe I'll get a chance to visit Alto and see for myself. Interesting sounding group of wines, Dale. In the past, I've really liked Vernay's Condrieu (this was Georges, right? There's another, less excellent Vernay IIRC) and I thought that '06 wasn't too hot in the N Rhone, so it's odd that your wine was so low in acid. Is it possible that the Silvaner and Cotat had altered your palate?

Mark Lipton

Yes, Georges. I think he may have more than one bottling, I didn't note. I thought this was pretty typical acidity for Condrieu, which I typically find a little fat.

So about 30 minutes ago police called. Someone found my wallet while shoveling snow. No cash, but everything else is there.The cards are already cancelled, but less worries about ID theft. And I don't need to replace drivers license (or little things like memberships cards, library cards, insurance, etc). I'm still out the price of a case of pretty good Burgundy, and have to deal with changing cards for recurring charges, but better than nothing.

Yeah, I know what you mean about the fatness, a feature of all Viognier-based wines I've tried. Vernay's Condrieus in the past have had enough zippy acidity keep it fresh on the palate, an amazing balancing act. Perhaps I was just reading too much into your note.

Well, that's a bit of good news, though it's still a pretty sucky experience. On a separate note, Google Groups now is completely borked for posting to Usenet: your response to mine isn't properly threaded in my newsreader because it lacks the required References header and instead uses an In-Reply-To header that is completely non-standard and ignored. *sigh* And "Patok": enabling format-flowed didn't fix the line break problem. Back to the drawing board...

Mark Lipton

No, they're not, Bill. Thanks for pointing that out. Lemme see what I can find that's different...

Mark Lipton

Hope she made it out ok. Should have been lots of empty space on flights out of Dallas! Let us know what you think of the Vernay.

sorry, Patok is correct I'm using the new GG. And I like it a lot (better spam controls, great search), and have to consider whether I like Mark L enough to switch back. :) I will in any case make a report, they have a feedback section. I'm afraid while I understand classicists think that traditional newsreaders are the only way to go, but after getting tired of dealing with servers shutting down I'm actually pretty happy with GG (and its long retention and easy search).

Don't sweat it, Dale. Patok's palliative workaround of Edit/Rewrap works quite fine, and I like you well enough to use it when replying to you (nyah nyah) ;-)

Mark Lipton