Dinner at the home of a generous host and major burgundy collector:
1997 Joseph Drouhin Marquis Laguiche
Oh wow. Elegantly polite about getting your attention, but when it does, you can't take your eyes off of it. Dainty and intense by turns, it's rich, creamy and nicely endowed with the minerals and butter toffee characteristics that has set every Laguiche I've ever had apart from all other white burgundies.
Forget what you think you know about the vintage, this is superb white burgundy.
2004 Domaine des Chezeaux Clos St. Denis Vieilles Vignes
My first 2004 red burg, a beautiful wine. A true Burgundy-lover's burgundy: not big, not forceful and clearly from a cooler vintage, it combine both fruit and herbs in a very pure package. Our host says this is perhaps his favorite wine from the 04 vintage.
2004 Domaine Romanee Conti Grands Echezaux
Then to turn the tables on us he opens the following but pours it blind. We are to guess. I accurately guess that it's a DRC (these wines have a hypnotic perfume unlike any other, and even as few as I've had I recognize it) but I was laughably so far off on the vintage: I guessed '93-94. It did not smell or taste young, and the color (in the dim light) had a tawny hue pushing what otherwise might have been a light violet into the mauve range. Plus, and perhaps especially after the Chezeaux, it was on the delicate side and tasted resolved and possessing of that secret knowledge that old wines acting young can have but not, typically, a young wine acting so very grown-up. Excellent.
1995 Huet Chenin Blanc, Cuvee Constance
My contribution to the dinner and perhaps the most flawless wine I've ever tasted--and that applies to every single bottle I've had, too, since about 1999--it hardly changes from one bottle to another. Indeed, it seems to be immortal. It's so complex it's hard to describe everything in it, but there is honey and orange blossoms, lime leaves and loquats, tangerines and cardamom, magnolias and cassia bark--and it's all so bright, concentrated and intense.