A while back, it was my turn to host our local wine and poker gang and I tried to put together an interesting set of wines for everybody to enjoy. I finally got around to typing up the tasting notes.
We started with 2 blind whites.
2007 Abbazia di Novacella (Stiftskellerei Neustift) Kerner Alto Adige. Pretty aromas of honeysuckle, orange blossom and peach fuzz greet the nose on this wine. It is mouthwatering and nicely tangy in the mouth—showing solid verve to its acid structure. It is surprisingly a bit oily-textured on the palate, showing a bit of a minerally edge and a big squirt of lemon-lime juice to go with fleshy pear flavors. It has a good, long, refreshing finish—a very nice wine with many facets to its personality, yet one you can drink out on the porch without over-thinking it.
1996 Kalin Cellars Semillon Livermore Valley. I would say this was a very divisive wine and was not without some controversy. Speaking just for myself, I loved it, but I may have stood alone (or at least in the decided minority) and I am making no apologies for it! To begin, the wine shows a dark golden color. One encounters all kinds of crazy stuff on the nose, led by brown sugar, toasted caramel, just-ground dark-roasted coffee beans and darkly toasted wood, along with some perhaps oxidative notes of old veggies and faint copper. In the mouth, there is a faintly metallic note on the entry but the wine quickly expands to pull in flavors of pear, tangerine, lemon and minerals, all supported by zingy spices and acids. It is pretty viscously-textured, with moderately full body and a fine drive through to the long, waxy-fruited finish. Sure, it is not the usual, but it’s all the better for it. Two nights later, I came back to the leftovers (a lot, thankfully!) and found again all kinds of crazy aromatic complexity, this time led by marshmallows, honey and tropical fruits. The palate was a lot less funky, but did manage to surprise with new flavor sensations of white chocolate and vanilla bean. Wild stuff.
All the reds were also served blind, with me being the only one to know all the wines and the order.
2002 Le Cadeau Pinot Noir Willamette Valley. This wine sports an earthy nose, with lots of dark spices and rich cola notes coming to the fore at first. With some air, a green herb streak appears, along with some aromas of bark, clay and a sort of ballpark peanut sensibility. It has nice medium weight and a pliant texture in the mouth. The fruit is moderately dense, with sour dark cherry and earthy flavors dominant. The wine comes across as quite dry, but there are really no tannins to contend with, so I would say this is ready to drink right now for those who like an earthier style of Pinot Noir.
2005 MacPhail Pinot Noir Sangiacomo Vineyard Sonoma Coast. In comparison, this Pinot offers up extremely bright and uplifting red cherry aromas on the nose, followed by intense brown spices and just a bit of forest fern. It just smells fresh and zingy and bright and makes one want to dive right into drinking it. Thankfully, the palate does not disappoint after that build-up. It has a gorgeous silky feel to it, yet manages to not seem flimsy or light. Yes, it mirrors the nose with a lot of bright and juicy red cherry and strawberry fruit, but it also has a darker side with lots of toasty spices and darker fruits. There is a definite sweetness to it, maybe even a confectionary note at times, but it is just so well put-together and seemingly true to itself that it just drinks with a wonderful sense of balance, lift and energy. I loved this.
2001 Joseph Roty Gevrey-Chambertin La Brunelle. The aromatic profile here is one of dark cranberries, sour cherries and deep dark forest notes of mushrooms and bark and leafy greens. It expands and deepens with time and aggressive swirling, but otherwise sticks to its core personality. It is light to medium-bodied on the palate, but can’t seem to avoid a sense of being on the thin side and maybe even a bit dilute. It has very nice flavors, though, with all kinds of red berry fruits and spicy earthy notes in abundance. It just doesn’t have a lot of depth or density and gives a sense of sort of falling apart a bit on the finish. I think others had more positive impressions than me, but I just couldn’t coax much enthusiasm out of myself for it.
2001 Domaine St. Martin Bonnes Mares. The bouquet here is rather lovely, with velvety-rich and sweet dark berry fruit and sarsaparilla, with both savory and sweet earth tones mixed in. In the mouth, there is solid intensity of fruit, but there is not a lot of body to the wine. Indeed, it is more on the gentle, pretty side and seems far from profound at this young age. The strawberry and raspberry fruits are quite nice, as are the earth tones that accompany them, but the whole package feels like it needs more beef, a bigger bottom note or just more all-around presence for a Grand Cru. I am willing to say this was drunk too young, but I am not entirely confident this will turn into the great wine predicted by the Spectator when they rated it 93.
2001 Domaine St. Martin Chambertin Clos de Beze. The Clos de Beze from the same producer and vintage sports a similar nose to the Bonnes Mares above, with perhaps a bit more menthol and green pepper notes and a generally darker-tinged profile. There are also some ashy notes and perhaps some caramel apple notes that come in as it takes on more air in the glass. It is fuller and richer all around in the mouth than the Bonnes Mares and shows greater length by a decent margin. It features warm red fruits (cherry and sour-tinged cranberry) and pleasant earthy notes. It hangs together really well and gives off an air of a wine with a lot of class and distinction. It all leads to an elegant finish that brings in a nice spicy note to accent the whole thing. Again, it is young and probably only showing the tip of the eventual iceberg, but I have much more faith in this wine than its sibling.
2003 Clos Rougeard Saumur-Champigny Les Poyeaux. This was the epiphany of the tasting for a few folks, I would say. What a wine! It features a gorgeous, richly-textured and delightfully complex nose of tobacco leaf, bridle leather, dried blood, forest ferns, black and red currant fruit, iron filings, tomato leaf and a whisper of fresh bell pepper. It is wonderfully smooth on the palate, with a sort of silky texture. It is rather savory and dark-fruited in its flavor profile, with some salty and iron-tinged notes that are very intriguing. It is just really well-constructed with seamless texture, body and weight. The dry, chalky finish that allows in some sneaky tannins reminds the drinker of the wine’s youth—serving as a warning to let the rest of these sleep a while before diving back in. Still, it’s very much worth a peek into its evolution now for those who are curious.
1997 L'Ecosse Cabernet Franc Cuvee Hommage de Jeanne d'Arc Napa Valley. I must say that this California Cab Franc somehow managed to generally hold its own in this flight against the Clos Rougeard—impressive! This is much darker-colored in the glass and offers up a nose that is generally a bit more dark and less elegant than the Clos Rougeard. Otherwise, though, it is not terribly dissimilar aromatically, showing some green tobacco leaf, green pepper, red currant and perhaps some crème de cassis notes. It is clearly a bigger style, but not without an edge of charm. In the mouth, it is full-bodied and rather rich, with a sweet blueberry and black currant fruit profile. It is clean and balanced, with rounded tannins that allow for good drinking right now. There is a bit of a fudgy note on the otherwise tangy, juicy finish.
1992 Heitz Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Martha's Vineyard Napa Valley. This is an opaque, deep crimson color in the glass. Its bouquet shows a lot of crème de cassis notes at first, along with what Jud quite aptly described as reminiscent of Rutherford dust. There are also faint underneath notes of fresh-crushed mint leaf, green pepper and eucalyptus that grow and grow with swirling, but you sort of have to almost be looking for them. The wine is rich and rather fully-fruited in the mouth, with a big dose of savory-tinged red fruits supported by fine but abundant tannins. It demonstrates very good drive through to the juicy, lasting finish that sports classy red fruits, menthol and a savory edge that is quite interesting. This is a classy California Cabernet drinking well, but with stuffing to keep going for a while—indeed I think people were surprised to find that this wine was as old as it was.
1995 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Reserve. The nose here is dark and savory with hints of bark, black cherry and dark currant aromas that are both a bit murky and a bit mysterious. It is densely-structured and full-bodied in the mouth, with some viscosity to the texture and big tannins that are chewy and a bit fudgy. It is a wine that seems rather youthful and even a bit primary at times. There are some notably appealing flavors of dark red fruits, but the general sensation is of a wine needing a good bit more time to resolve its plush tannins and find its more elegant side.
1994 Chateau Leoville Las Cases St. Julien. I definitely enjoy the nose of this St. Julien, which sports pretty aromas of black cherry, camphor, cloves, campfire embers, iodine and peat moss. However, it is rather dry on the palate right now, with fairly burly tannins in abundance. There are some fine dark cherry and rich cranberry fruit flavors in a chalky-textured package that shows more austerity than charm. There are good raw ingredients here, but it is not drinking with much finesse or overt enjoyment at this stage in its evolution. I would definitely not give up on it, but rather re-evaluate in 5 years.
2003 Paolo Bea Sagrantino di Montefalco. This is outstanding stuff, which features a finely complex and exotic bouquet of persimmon fruit, soy, mixed flowers, dark red fruits, rhubarb and rawhide. Building on the very nice nose, the palate is just a pleasure—with flavors of nuts, soy, darker-tinged red fruit and exotic spices. The high tannin level shows the wine’s youth and can be a bit drying at times, but the wine overall is classy and finesse-driven, with a powerful undertow. There is definitely solid structure here, but it never gets in the way. It feels long and drawn-out in the mouth, with great persistence but also just lots of interesting angles and tons of character. And it should continue to evolve positively for years to come.
2004 Fattoria Petrolo Galatrona Toscana IGT. This is an entirely different kind of wine, with a sweet rich nose of chocolate brownies, coffee shop, mocha, vanilla and nougat. It is rich and sort of thick in the mouth, but it flows quite nicely from the rich chocolaty entry through a very expansive mid-palate that coats the whole mouth with flavor. The tannins are sweet, but turn a bit fuzzy toward the finish. Otherwise, there is a ton of fruit, but also no real flabbiness or overt limpidness. Yes, this is quite young and probably should not really have been touched at this point. Still, a lot can be said for such a rich and sweet wine that shows so much solid structure, nascent complexity and high-wire balance.
Final results on voting for wine of the day had the Clos Rougeard first, the Paolo Bea second and a fairly big drop-off to the Heitz Martha’s for third.
There was also a 2006 Kosta Browne Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast and a day-old Kuleto Cabernet that I never got around to trying. I was out early, but it was a great afternoon nonetheless.
-Michael