Originally Posted by
lhgreengrd1
I've actually heard of ALL of those wines, and tasted most of them. You should probably put a bit more care into shopping. The Achaval Ferrer single vineyard Malbecs are easily found for $85-90. You might also try their Quimera, which is a blend that costs under $50, and IMHO, is at least as interesting as the single Fincas. The top Cobos wines can also be found for $60-80 a bottle. I could also name about 20 other Malbecs that you can get for $30-50 that I think are every bit as distinguished as the Achaval Ferrer and Cobos wines - and BTW, Achaval Ferrer is my favorite winery in Argentina, but I've never paid more than $90 a bottle for any of their single vineyard wines. - and I invariably prefer their Quimera for $40-50 a bottle. I also would recommend some other top Argentina domaines: Diamandes Winery, Bodegas Giminez Riili, Mendel, Colome, Bressia, and Altocedro. All of these are making wines at the level of Achaval Ferrer and Vina Cobos, and most of their top wines are selling for $30-60 a bottle.
As far as Syrahs go, I'd stack the Foxen or Andrew Murray single vineyard wines, which cost about $50 a bottle, against any of those you listed, for complexity, character, and ageworthiness. I might also suggest that you try a winery called The Farm Winery - which is a boutique winery in the Paso Robles area that's the pet project of Santiago Achaval, from Achaval Ferrer.
The Sine Qua Non wines, along with Colgin and Bryant Cabs, are textbook examples of wine that taste more like the barrels they are made with than the grapes. Those are three of the wineries I had in mind when I referred to labels rather than wines (I do like Harlan, though, but it's simply not worth the money they charge). I'm surprised to not see Screaming Eagle in your list as well. Give me a Chateau Montelena Estate Cab over any of those - as well as Pahlmeyer, which is another wine you're paying too much for - it can easily be found for $80 or so. I'd also prefer Dominus to any of those on your list.
I'll cut you some slack on the Pinot Noirs, because they are small-lot artisnal wines - and I do like Sea Smoke - but I'd suggest that you explore Oregon for some really fine choices that can easily be found for $60-80 a bottle. I'd start with Christom. I am also a big fan of Foxen and Dierberg in the Santa Rita Hills area, if you're a fan of Sea Smoke. Again, you can generally get some really GREAT pinots for $50-60 a bottle.
It seems that because you think certain wines are better (and often less expensive) than others that you believe that everyone must agree with your assessment, and that is a preposterous idea. Just because you don't like a wine or think another is better doesn't mean that's true for everyone else.
I listed rough values/prices off the top of my head, so the exact prices I won't bother to evaluate. If certain examples of the wines mentioned can be found for a bit less money, then so be it--but that doesn't preclude that the wines we like are worth the money for us that we pay for them. While Achaval and Cobos are expensive, we also can get them through an import company that makes it very easy to purchase, so we stick with those...and we've been very happy with them.
I know all of the other wines you've also mentioned, too, and while they are, indeed, wonderful wines, we find that they often are not as consistently good or don't age as consistently as those that we have. In our judgment, we prefer the wines we get. It's just that simple. If you prefer the others more, then we think that's great. We'd never tell anyone that one wine or another is better for them; we can only evaluate the wines for ourselves and buy what we prefer to drink.
As an example, we used to get Kistler Chards and Pinots, and I actually used to more highly prefer the Pinots despite the fact that the Chards were the reason for the Kistler "fame". Over the years, as we tried others, we decided we preferred other Chards and Pinots, and so we gave up on Kistler in lieu of the other mentioned. We now get no Kistler. We used to order Araujo, too, but quickly determined that we weren't fans of those as much as others. We don't buy into name so much as whether or not we like a wine relative to another, with price being a factor if there are others that we prefer for less on a consistent basis of taste and age ability from our perspective and no one else's.
Screaming Eagle has never been one of my favorites...and for the money, we like the 100% Cabernet options from Hundred Acre, Bryant, and Colgin much better, and those are also cheaper (but still very expensive).
We don't get our wine to impress you or anyone else. We get our wines because we enjoy drinking them. We find our examples to be the best for us, though that can and will change over time, I'm sure, as it has up to this point.