Kent Rasmussen Esoterica 2010 Sauvignon Blanc - 3 Pack
$39.99 + $5 shipping
CONDITION: White
PRODUCT: 3 Kent Rasmussen Esoterica 2010 Sauvignon Blanc
CT link above
Previous offer:
8/2/11
First sucker: MarkDaSpark
Speed to first woot: 1m 0.617s
Last wooter to woot: North316
Thought for sure I was first sucker. KR is still an autobuy for me. Plus we need some whites.
“Fellas, fellas… Esoteric means delicious.”
Kent, off topic, but I noticed in the previous offering you were talking about heading to the Rust Belt for a learning lesson. How did my hometown (and current residence) of Toledo treat you?
I bought this on your name alone. The wife and I are and will be enjoying the 2006 Late Harvest and 2008 Forte for years to come!
If you ever come back to the Rust Belt let us wooters know. Would love to get a tasting set up or something!
Damn this really was the best SB I have had in a long time!
Don’t need more wine but have to buy…
But its Tuesday…
Muwahahahahahahaha!
http://bestsmileys.com/evil/8.gif
I be fast, and you be slow!
KR is always an autobuy for me … even if I already bought some in August.
Hi there
Toledo was a bit spooky to tell the honest truth. We got there on a weekday at about 1030 am and went downtown. There were no businesses and no people! We could see that there were a couple of big business campuses on the fringe…but downtown was sort of post-apocalyptic. It was a day of a big festival on the green…and by noon there were a few people there serving BBQ and it picked up a lot in the evening…the morning sort of spooked me. Still, that is why we were there…to see what is happening to those many cities. The trip was an eye opener…most everyone is trying to redevelop and remake themselves…with more or less success. A fascinating part of the country!
Thanks for buying the wine too!
All the best, Kent
You should have been downtown 3-5 years ago! You wouldn’t have gotten out of your car. Check back in a few years and it will be different. There has been an interesting redevelopment and reinvestment in the area which will hopefully continue. Though I can imagine it is quite the culture shock for someone not used to that sort of thing.
Really really good fresh, crisp New Zealand style Sauv Blanc from the musque clone, says Kent. Not a grapefruit bomb, not just gooseberry either, and not “green” sour tasting! It really does taste as good as he claims.
Okay, last post I promise. For anyone on the edge, the quick math tells me you need to buy FAST.
With 108 cases bottled (1296 bottles) and 305 woots on the initial offering (915 bottles), that leaves only 381 bottles left, and that’s if Kent sold it all to WD. That’s less than 130 woots for you all to enjoy. So buy up!
Kent, are these at all cellar worthy are should we gladly drink them during the summer?
… unless he bottled some more 
I bet Kent will answer himself, but almost all SB is for drinking now and young, especially NZ-style, though I’m sure this will be fine for a couple of years!
Well i am not a huge fan of Sauvignon Blanc, also not familiar with the Kent Rasmussen Esoterica 2010 Sauvignon Blanc, but i will trust you guys… in for one…
Welcome Kent! Just relogged into this week’s cyberPub where there’s a discussion raging on biodynamics. Some people here really think it’s a load of old tosh, whereas I’m of a more open mind to the esoteric that we still don’t quite understand, in that even if some of it you can ignore as superstition there can be some sense underlying it, accidentally or not.
Do you think there’s anything in it, even if by accident? I know you told us on rpm’s tour last year that your philosophy is moving away from largescale industrial machinery in the winery back to traditional methods. I’d love to hear some more about what you’re doing and how you think it’ll help your wines further.
I am looking forward to these! 3x. Another autobuy!
This is interesting because it’s from a relatively less well-known AVA, the Suisun Valley in Solano County. It’s East of Napa, and the climate tends to be warmer than the heart of the Napa Valley (it’s Region III, like the upper reaches of the Napa Valley, which ranges from Region I in Carneros up through Region II in the mid-valley and thence to Region III in the North end).
However, Region III is great for Sauvignon Blanc and Kent does an excellent job with the varietal!
The port was fantastic. I’m in on this.
This SB is done in the style of New Zealand SBs. I got it last time and didn’t dislike it but still have a couple bottles left and prefer whites that are a little more fruit forward so I’m going to pass this time.
That said, Kent posted what was quite possibly my all-time favorite winemaker’s description of a wine.woot deal and although you can find it by clicking on Cesare’s link for the previous offer, I think it deserves a repost in today’s thread.
So without further ado;
This SB was an experiment for me. Celia and I spent three weeks in New Zealand last year and did a lot of wine tasting. I loved the Pinots on the South Island, but even more, I thought that what they were doing with Sauvignon Blanc in the North was fabulous. Some of you may remember, back in the late 80’s and early 90s I made a huge name for myself with Sauvignon Blanc……a rich barrel fermented full-of-cat-pea SB that was completely over the top. Huge ratings, lots of puffs, and so on. By the mid-90s we were still getting the scores, but nobody was buying the wine……and, with some sadness, I quit making it. That said, my tastes changed too and while that style still held a tiny bit of water for me with Chardonnay, I found that the SBs I really enjoyed were far more austere, flinty and mineraly….not butterbombs. In New Zealand last year I thought…." I wonder if I could make this kind of wine with California SB?" With this wine, I gave it a try.
So, what I did….I approached a SB grower that I know and asked him if I could differentially pick his vineyard for the LEAST RIPE grapes……he thought I was crazy, but was more than happy to comply. The clone that he grows is the Sauvignon Musque clone that has the tiniest bit of Muscat character (a compound called Linolool (great Scrabble word by the by). We night harvest these grapes and brought them into the winery absolute ice cold. Immediately we whole-cluster pressed them and the juice went to tank very cold. Fermentation was at 51 degrees (just high enough to keep the yeast alive). The fermentation took about 6 weeks. As soon as fermentation was over I racked the wine and a few weeks later bottled it. The result was fantastic….it was exactly what I had wanted……huge bright fruit, tight clean acidity, wonderful clarity of SB character……a total success.
All the above said……if you want the perfect clean, crisp, refreshing, fruity, steely and absolutely beautiful SB….buy this wine. If you want Chardonnay……don’t buy this wine.
After re-reading Kent’s previous description, it sounds like there should have been more noticeable fruit than I remember with this wine. We popped and poured right out of the refrigerator so I’m wondering if we should have let it warm up some and/or given it some air time or even a run through the aerator to open it up a bit.
I’ve never aerated or decanted whites. Does anybody here do that?
I’m not in a position to be able to try this again today but now I am curious as to whether I would have enjoyed this more with a little different treatment.
We aerate both whites and reds. The difference on the whites is not nearly as much as the reds (as expected by less air being put into the whites), but it definitely opens the wine up a bit. I don’t notice as much of a change in the taste of the wine as I do a more open nose and more of a mouthfeel (generally adds almost an effervescence to the wine. I think the biggest difference is that with aeration of the whites I feel like I get the openness (flavor and profile wise) of a room-temp white and can still enjoy it wonderfully chilled.