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cwdjrxyz cwdjrxyz is offline
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Default TN Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio 1992, Mastroberardino

I bought a single bottle of Lacryma(sometimes spelled Lacrima) Christi
del Vesuvio 1992, Mastroberardino, in the mid 90s in a batch of wines
from Mastroberardino including Fiano, Greco, and Taurasi. I kept
delaying to open it, since most Lacryma that I have tasted in the past
is in about the same class as most Liebfraumilch, Est!Est!Est, or
Angelica. There have been bad jokes that claim the wine is called
Lacryma Christi because it was so bad that it made Christ weep when he
tasted it.

Much to my surprise, the wine was still quite decent. It was light
yellow, dry, and had plenty of acid, It now has a slightly rounded
body, somewhat in the style of a decent white Bordeaux. It had some
flinty mineral character. This was a quite decent everyday wine.
Although not a fine wine, it was far superior to anything else I have
tasted with this name in the past.

Now and then you find a wine such as this that is decent, although the
name has a very bad reputation. Joseph Heitz once made some rather
decent "Cellar Treasure" Angelica. However, several decades back, most
Angelica was about as low as you could go. It had high alcohol, was
very sweet, was fortified, and had little acid. It provided about the
cheapest drunk available, along with considerable food content from
all of the sugar in it. Heitz, who had a very high reputation for
wine, must have named his dessert wine Angelica as some sort of joke.
The appearance of Thunderbird and such seemed to have largely replaced
Angelica and cheap sweet "Port", "Sherry", and "Tokay", once very
popular in the very low end wine market in the US.