Not in the least.
Did anyone else notice Trump catching himself about to say "It's gonna be..." right after he was asked where is his house in Charlottesville. Then he stuttered for half-a beat and the winery became the house, or maybe the house became the winery....
And you know Donald and Eric will swear Trump (Eric's) wines are "all that and a bag of chips." Well, they're definitely not bad... but while the "regular guy on the street" won't notice much difference between a 90-rated wine and a 95-rated wine, he'll notice a difference between a 90 and an 80 to 87, enough that he'd be okay with it for $10, especially after the third glass (lol), but not so much for $25+.
So, if you don't mind paying twice what you need to get a better wine,Eric's wines are okay as "
vin de table."
Why did bother sharing the above? A couple friends dropped by with some Trump wine and bubbly, so I drank it. I'm not a "sophisticated" wine drinker. You're not going to hear me talking about wine having
"a black currant nose that on the palate blossoms delightfully into notes of of elderberry, jasmine and nutmeg, resolving finally in lingering notes of apricot, verbena, eucalyptus and sh*t on a stick."
I drink wine from time to time. I can tell really good wine; it doesn't have that mordant quality my adolescent tastebuds didn't like but that I now will tolerate. I can tell bad wine. My ratings on wine are:
- Oh, wow, this is really good.
- It's good. I like it.
- I'm drinking it....It's okay.
- Do you have ginger ale or 7-Up? Perrier and 2 tbls of sugar is fine too.
- Are you sure this isn't corked?
I'd put the Trump wines squarely in the upper 2-range for the bubbly and the 2-to-3-range for the cab and low-3 for the chardonnay. The cab is a wine I wouldn't choose to buy, yet I'd be fine with drinking it if I received it as a party gift or someone offered me a glass. I'd put it in the upper end of "3." The chardonnay -- fair warning: I'm not that keen on chardonnay in the first place, so I only
want to drink really, really good ones -- if I had it again, I'd consider turning it into a spritzer.
FWIW, Eric's wines are about what one'd expect from VA wines, so it's not as though his products are out of line for what they are. They just are priced too high. And they're certainly not the greatest wines.
His winery is the largest one in VA.
Lastly, I wouldn't believe a damn thing Donald Trump says about wine. For however unsophisticated be my palate, I do at least drink. Donald does not. I know, one can taste and spit, but doing that one misses the back of the throat part of the taste that only happens after swallowing.
