My short answer, Tom, is that I haven't tried this sparkler recently and I don't know who the current winemaker is.

My long answer is that, as you know, Trump Winery is a successor to the Kluge Winery debacle and already had a host of issues against it prior to its re-branding under a better business plan. As much bile as I've spilt about the Kluge debacle, including its sparkling wine program, the product by itself (removed from bogus and overblown and over hyped claims such as, "This was selected as one of the best sparkling wines in the world - better than Champagne!" as was told to me years ago in the tasting room) actually is more than passable and rather good. For comparison, I'd probably choose it over Gruet if given a choice. Richard Juhlin gave it high marks in one of his books (3,000 Champagnes, maybe?). If the Trump machine hasn't tinkered with the sparkling program (it was one of the few things that wasn't broke), then it probably is rocking along just fine and making passable sparkling wine.

Anecdotal response: The Spousal Unit attended a "girls night" with some friends some time back. They prearranged a sparkling wine taste off. No one in the group was a wine geek, much less "expert" and I suspect the tasting conditions were a bit unorthodox. The wines were tasted blind and eliminated by vote of the women until there were two bottles left: the bottle Spousal Unit took and a Trump BdB. The Spousal Unit's wine (selected by moi for her to take that evening) won, but the Trump wine was a crowd pleaser for certain.



Edited by BEB (01-16-2019 13:57:32)
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BEB

"I've wrestled with reality for 35 years and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it." Elwood P. Dowd