by Tom Hill

A self-admitted wine geek, Tom lives in Northern New Mexico and works as a computational physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory doing numerical neutron transport & large scale code development. He has been tasting wines since 1971, participates locally with a couple of large tasting groups in his area, and is practically a fixture at most California wine festivals, such as the Hospice du Rhône, Rhône Rangers, and ZAP. Other interests: Tom is heavily into competitive sport fencing (foil & epee), biking, cooking, basketball, skiing, backpacking, mountain climbing.

1. LeSophiste: I've followed this wine from the very start. Since Randall had the first commercial plantings of "Roussanne" and this was the first comercially-available wine containing "Roussanne", I was pretty excited about them. In their youth, they were never anything to get excited about, but, since I knew that Roussanne was a good ager, I was diligent in collecting them. The grapes were grown in Randall's vnyd up in Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz Mountains. These were those tall/heavy btls w/ the black plastic top hat in loo of a capsule. Those suckers were boogers to get off the btl, but nothing an epee guy couldn't handle. I've got probably nearly a dozen of those top hats lying around...wonder if there's a market for them?? It, of course, turned out that Randall's "Roussanne" was not true Roussanne after all but, in fact, Viognier. In their youth, I never got much of the Viognier fragrance from these wines, even at the small component level these were, but that's not too surprising. I wouldn't expect SCM Viognier to smell like ordinary Viognier anyway. I was quite amazed as to how well this tableau had aged. Except for the oxidized '90; they were all lovely fully-developed wines. I've found that SCM white wines, as a rule, age remarkably well; at least the old Ridges and Mt.Eden ones have. I can only attribute the aging of these LeSophistes to the Marsanne component.
2. EdStJohn Pinot Grigio: Now here (like Gamay) is one grape that gets no respect. Leave it to SteveEdmunds to champion these Gawd-forsaken varieties....marketplace be damned!! I had already tried the '02 version and liked it a lot; maybe the best Calif PG I've had to date. I was not expecting a whole lot from the '98 version (presumably also from the WittersVnyd); in fact expected it to be shakey or gone. Surprise.... it was in wonderful condition. Maybe the best (non-Alsatian) PG I've ever had. Steve's interest in PG stems from some excellent ones from Friuli that he's had. If he can do this good with such a no-account grape; wonder what he could do with Burger or UgniBlanc or French Colombard?? Marketplace be damned, of course.
3. Prices on the EdStJ wines include shipping. A bit cheaper in local markets.
4. SteveEdmunds doesn't get the recognition he deserves for his white wines. Some of his older Viogniers, with some age on them, have been some of the most spectacular Calif Viogniers I've ever had.

   TomHill