Monk's Cafe Sour Flemish Ale.

I have been wanting to try this one for awhile, and when I saw it at the liquor store the other day, the time was finally right. This beer is brewed in Belgium and labeled as Monk's Cafe, one of my favorite beer places in Philly.
Pours a nice clear deep red with ample streaming carbonation and a thin lightly colored head. Aromas of plums, balsamic vinegar. Hits the mouth with a burst of carbonation and a nice sweet and sour taste. The aromas carry into the beer with the addition of some light oaky vanilla and caramel flavors. Medium finish. Light mouth feel. A little weak. Tastes watered down.
My rating: Maybe worth a try, but there are much better ones out there..
Abv: 5.5%.
Website: Monk's Cafe.
Price paid: 3-4 dollars.

Josef Drathen 2008 Bereich Nierstein Auslese.

One thing that puzzled me about this wine is the price. How could someone make a Auslese (select harvest) Prädikatswein (a higher designation than QbA or Qualitätswein) for under ten dollars?
I have just come to an answer. This wine is not a Riesling. By German law, a wine must be made of at least 85% of a varietal to be labeled with that information. This one is not labeled with any varietal, so it is not a Riesling, though it may contain some.
I can't find any info on the producer or what might actually be in the bottle online, so I'll dive right into it.
Pours light gold. Aromas of honey, maybe some light stone fruit. Very thick and almost syrupy in the mouth. Sweet with flavors of honey, lime, light acidity, minerality, maybe a little funk (noble rot???). Not very complex.
A little bit of lingering flavor, but not much really.
It's not bad for the price, though it does not have the great racing acidity/residual sugars you will find in a Riesling. Could be a good dessert wine. I'll say 83 points.

St. Urbans-Hof 2008 QbA Riesling.

I paid all of 13 dollars for this bottle, but I would have paid more!
This is a great value German Riesling. Pours a green gold, with a very fruity and acidic aroma.
Great racing acidity in the mouth, balanced by a residual sweetness. Flavors of stone fruit, citrus, minerals. Not much aftertaste. This bottle is what Riesling is all about.
I'll give this one a 90. You'll find better Rieslings out there, but not for this price!

Que ce qu'elle a dit.

This will be a fun one. Another 'clone' of sorts, as well as being the first beer that I have made from bottle cloned yeast. Meaning I bought a bottle of the beer in question, drank the beer, and dumped the remaining yeast into some prepared wort for it to propagate.
It took some time- probably four days- before I really saw fermentation activity, and another two before it seemed to really get going. But it did, and it worked. The yeast had a great Belgian beer aroma when I added it to the fermentor.
This is my version of Saxo by Brasserie Caracole. I have long said this is one of my favorites. A nice mellow Belgian Strong ale. I was able to gain some information about what was in this beer both from the book Brew like a Monk and the website of the importer. Pilsner malt, munich malt, raw wheat, coriander, saaz hops, the starting gravity of 1.065. Lots of information to make an informed guess.
Thus, I present to you Que ce qu'elle a dit - That's what she said.
7 lb 7 oz Pilsner
1 lb 9 oz sugar
1 lb Munich malt
1 lb Flaked wheat
.5 oz Czech Saaz pellet @90 min
.5 oz Czech Saaz pellet @15 min
.5 oz Czech Saaz pellet @10 min
.5 oz toasted and crushed coriander seed @10 min
.5 oz Czech Saaz pellet @5 min
1 oz Czech Saaz pellet @0 min
Ferment with Caracole yeast cultured from the bottle
11/30/10- Mash for 90 min @ 148 with 3.75 gal water. Sparged with -8 gal water. Collected 8 gal or so, didn't boil enough off and ended up over volume and slightly under gravity. But that's ok. Tastes good, yeast smells good.
12/1/10- Active fermentation by this morning.

2008 Louis Latour Pouilly-Fuisse.

I got this bottle on sale at my local wine shop. I believe it was 22 on sale. Not too bad. I have kept it for a little bit and occasionally see their dwindling stocks and wonder if I should buy a few more. So I had to come to an answer.
This wine pours a great golden/green color. I get honey, citrus, some pineapple, butteryness, minerality in the nose. Honey definitely lingers on in the mouth, with citrus more predominate. Once swallowed, tastes like buttered popcorn. There is no oak.
Again, value comes into play here. This is not the best Pouilly-Fuisse I have had, and the best I have had was in the same price range as this was on sale. Last night I tasted this wine and found it pretty bland, today seems to be a little bit of a different story. Last night my rating was 81, today I'll bump that to 83. Why?
The bourgogne chardonnay I reviewed two posts down was about half the price and as enjoyable and about the same quality level. Why spend more for something that is the same in those respects?

2009 Castle Rock California Cuvee Pinot Noir.

Nice light magenta in the glass. Very aromatic.
Taste of strawberries, dark cherries. Maybe some oaky flavors in there as well. Easy drinking, though not extremely complex by any means. A little bit of a lingering finish. Good acidity. Not much earthiness.
Though this wine is not very complex, I feel it represents a good value. I paid 9 and change for the bottle. With that price in mind, I could give this a 88 rating. I think it represents a good wine at that price point.

Michel Picard 2007 Bourgogne Chardonnay Recolte..

This is a fairly nice and straightforward white Burgundy. Aromas of white flowers, freshly rained on river stone, stone fruit. A tad of oak aromas - vanilla, light toastyness. Medium bodied with a crisp but balanced acidity. Lightly honeyed yellow peaches, citrus, the oak comes through a bit more, but it is by no means similar to the heavily oaked Chardonnays you will often find from California. Nice finish and the flavor sticks around for awhile.
I think this would give you a good idea of what cote d'or chardonnay is like. From what I remember, I paid something in the teens for this. For that price, I would rate it a 86.