Love the phrase “p*ssing on anyone’s chips”
Indeed! I would say that recent changes have been towards more consistency and less “excitement”. That probably makes the wine more marketable.
One needs to look for a “basket of wines” at a comparable quality level to use as a metric of inflation over the last 40 years or so and then compare. Has anyone done this?
I’d agree - this may be one of those wines were its fans categorically do not wish it to ‘move on’ - ie deviate from what has made us fall for it in the first place, with all its idiosyncrasies and the lengthy debate about what degree of VA constitutes a fault for one and an enhancement for another - how many other wines have a thread devoted to just them with 1000 posts?! - if ‘moving on’ means becoming more ‘modern’ - polished, anodyne, flawless but concomitantly bereft of character and its sense of place, story and uniqueness. There are literally 10000 other wines one can buy instead - why force this one into this fold too?
This is regardless of price - though I don’t want to see it rise further! - but one would need to pose the question why this wine that can age positively for 20-40 years and is expressive of vintage and place would retail for GBP30 when an ‘equivalent’ Bordeaux would retail for GBP100 and a Burgundy for GBP300+++. Horses for courses. If that’s the world we’re looking at, Musar will continue to have my loyalty.
And the Rose and the White are just as interesting - arguably more so ! - and cost less - so maybe I’ll switch my buying - currently 75% Musar red, the rest its White and Rose every year (well, every year the Rose is made) - to be the other way round.
But I am rambling … sorry. Musar does trigger this in me!
I can’t agree with this comment enough. Thank you, @AnaGramWords, this phrase will take a revered place in my office lexicon.