Honest casemates Wine Reviews
14As we know, the chosen “lab rats” you see featured in the casemates forums will say just about anything to keep getting free booze. What with their flowery descriptions and “insightful” reviews. Oh, does it pair well with smoked, lemon-zested rock bass? I’m sure it does, chumbo. I’m sure it does…
This thread is for mehricans to review and and discuss casemates.com offerings in an honest fashion without all the frills and pretentiousness one can expect over on casemates.com.
- 11 comments, 33 replies
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Bought this with a coupon, but now I have 5 more bottles to drink… The bottle got me sufficiently tipsy, though.
I bought another that was really good and actually different from anything I’ve had before. I’ll video review that at a later date.
@medz enjoyed the review. Had a hard time hearing because of the music.
@RiotDemon sorry, I did move the slider most of the way towards original audio.
@medz no need for an apology. Just thought I could give some helpful feedback.
@RiotDemon you’ll have to start your own honest reviews of honest wine reviews thread.
@medz very meta.
Thank you for this. Looking forward to reading less flowery reviews.
@heartny I am going to post so many rhododendrons in here.
@heartny @ThomasF
That makes me gladiolas.
@heartny @mike808 @ThomasF From bottle to Tulips?
After getting my VMP via the casemates Kickstarter about a year ago, I finally bought some wine.
It isn’t here yet.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
I wish my coupons were transferrable.
I make my own wine in my toilet. Don’t tell the guards please.
@jmoor783 where do you shit while you are brewing toilet wine?
@jmoor783 @RiotDemon this is a fascinating part of prison logistics that I, like many, are too afraid to ask!
@RiotDemon You brew it in the tank where the clean water is
@jmoor783 now I have more questions. Do you have a separate container or bag inside the tank so you can still flush the toilet normally? Or do you fill water somewhere to dump into the bowl to force it to flush?
i will say i bought the king estate north by northwest dry riesling based on the reviews (no lab rats on this one) in the thread. i’ve always thought of rieslings as ungodly sweet dessert wines. but, all the reviews said this one was very dry, and at $7.50 a bottle, i took a shot. it was really good. like… omfg i had no idea rieslings could be dry and tasty good.
@carl669 The King’s Estate folks make some good white wines. Dollar for dollar, you will get a better wine for your money at Casemates than just about any place else.
My cellar is full, and I don’t drink as much, so while I recognize the winemakers and how good their wines are, I’m still drinking my way through the last months of wine.woot’s blowout goodbye sales.
More Ty Caton, please. Just regular Ty’s Red blend, no fancy-pants Tytanium and such.
@mike808 the KE chardonnay just got delivered last week but I haven’t had a chance to get into it yet. hoping i’ll like it just as much as the riesling.
ohhh… i wish i had a cellar. i’d love to try different wines, but just don’t have the room to store them all.
@carl669 Pssst. A corner of the basement is “the cellar”. Nothing fancy.
@mike808 no basement here either. currently all the wines are stored in a kitchen cabinet away from the oven. best i can do at the moment.
@carl669 Good review…but I ended up not liking it because it was too dry. To each their own. I trusted a lab rat and now I am trying to pawn off dry white wine I won’t drink…or make sangria with it…just keep dumping sugar into sangria until you float!
@bramby2 if you’re anywhere near Chicago, I’d be glad to buy it off you. I just drank my last bottle this past weekend.
@carl669 Well, that’s a bummer… I live on the east coast. I would happily give them to you if you were a few hundred miles closer!
Dumb mistake:
@bramby2 here’s the first mistake… Trusting anything with horns on a viking helmet.
@bramby2
curious, why didn’t you like it?
I’ll be honest, I’ve had better mead, but I’ve had worse too
@Cerridwyn hmmm…I guess I had an expectation of a more “honey wine” taste than the flat beer taste I often associate with mead…this was like a flat beer that I would need to cut with my favorite beer to make it drinkable.
Maybe I was expecting something different or thought This whole time I’ve been drinking mead at renaissance festivals and it turned out to be just beer…either way, my lab rat reviews usually go like this: “yup, that’s good!” or “Nope, that tastes like it could strip paint.”
@bramby2
okay, and is why that is not my favorite.
that particular mead is dry compared to most I have had. I mulled it and served it hot and spiced which I do much of them time.
Often Ren Faire mead is what we used to call soda pop mead, more fuzzy and sweet and made for you to drink gobs of it before you get more than slight buzz.
@bramby2
@Cerridwyn Thanks for the info! Needless to say, I don’t think I will be buying another offering of mead on Casemates! I will wait until my annual people watching event and down some of the stuff at the local renaissance festival where people watching and alcohol are best served together!
@bramby2 @duodec very underrated movie
@bramby2 @medz It was an amazing movie. The book was excellent also.
Worth every Kickstarter penny!
(some of my other favorites so far on Casemates are not pictured because I drank them all)
@bramby2 That one in the middle was the other one I got and liked.
Said I would video review this, but since it mostly happened in the past, that wouldn’t work so well…don’t remember if I drank the 2003 or 2004 bottle, but I doubt I could really tell the difference.
The other one I got with the coupon was this one:
Pretty cheap, but that’s because it was only a 2-pack and the bottles themselves were pretty small.
My initial reaction was “Damn…this cork is really in there.” I tried to use my go-to cork remover which is basically like this:
That just managed to strip out the middle of the cork…
So, I tried a more traditional one with a larger screw…something like this:
But, again, it was just destructive to the cork. After the initial attempt, I tried working it in at an angle, but nothing worked. Got bits of cork in the wine. There didn’t seem to be much glass lip on the button for this style of opener to work.
Finally, I got a hold of one of these:
Which worked great and was super easy. I think this will be my new go-to. (further testing required)
I poured a glass and removed some cork that was floating on the top. Seemed like the first glass equated to half the bottle. No wonder so cheap, I thought. Better check the bottle size next time. I never understood why people make a big deal out of drinking a “whole bottle of wine”. I guess that sounds more impressive than drinking “3-4 glasses”.
Smelled sweet and good. More like a liquor than a wine. I suppose it wasn’t “dry” (as they say) because it was very smooth and syrupy. That viscosity characteristics reminded me of Disaronno. I definitely got the apricot flavors the write-up mentioned. It didn’t raise the hair on my neck nor make me smack my lips like most wines do. Easy to drink. I’m looking forward to opening the next bottle both so I can try that opener again and because I didn’t mind the taste at all.
@medz $20 at Bed Bath & Beyond…
@bramby2 I have heard of these before. Seems like they were popular brand among wooters… What about this device helps prevent the cork from being stripped out by the cork screw?
@medz I don’t know exactly…physics, magic…I just know how super duper easy it is to get to the sweet, sweet goodness inside the bottle without needing Popeye strength or breaking off the cork halfway down!
Casemates thread posters get free wine to post their pretentious reviews? Huh.
@bdp only the most loquacious ones with friends in high places. I think your pinkie has to extend higher than most when sipping wine to qualify.
Just to point out, in defense of the lab rats, that ANYONE can volunteer to be one, and anyone above a certain level on the Kickstarter effort was tagged for lab ratting, including me. I might add that I’d requested NOT to be placed on the list, and made the comment that I hadn’t wanted to be one somewhere towards the end of my review. I haven’t been asked again (thank goodness).
I like having lab rats. Some wines are obvious, and I buy them instantly, but most are ones I wait on, until other commentary, and preferably lab rat comments. I also depend on Cellar Tracker, and some other wine reviewers.
On the other hand, certain wines make perfect gifts. This sold far over value at a charity auction last year. Pity there’s no more Wellington, you know?
Please note that ONLY the wine was sold. The other items were window dressing.