Brief notes on a few notable wines consumed over the holidays:
On Christmas Eve, at a charming dinner wherein our host cooked all the foods his Italian grandmother made for the Eve when he was a child, it was really cool that everyone brought Italian wines to share. The wine of the night, which was truly wihout rival, was a 2000 Sori Paitin Barbaresco purchased recently at Esquin wines in Seattle. It was surprisingly and nicely mature, with a clearing rim and delightfully spciy nebbiolo flavors rounded out with earth and leather. Another Barbaresco, a 2000 Vila Reserve, was dilute and disappointing. After a short interval in the glass, the fruit just dropped out completely, both on the nose and palate. Shouldn't be dead or dying at this point, but it semeed to be.
A 1995 Allegrini Amarone, my last of four bottles, was enjoyable but should have been consumed a year ago when its brothers were at peak. I thought it could go another year, but I was wrong. Someone brought a 2005 Saggi, a Super Tuscan style wine made in Washington as part of the Long Shadows program and I forget what famous Italian winemaker is behind it, but anyway, it was unabashedly and unmistakenly 14.6% abv new world, heavy, rich, blueberry milkshake sweet and wrapped in vanilla oak. There was nothing, NOTHING, in this wine that tasted Italian, and it was a bull in a china shop in this company.
My second favorite wine was a 2000 Vignalta Gemola , a Cheval Blanc style blend from Italy's Veneto region to the north. It's balanced but doesn't have the acidity of most Italians, and really does present in a right bank kind of way. Very good right now. For dessert, someone brought a brachetto d'acqui that was riddled with VA--vinegar was the first thing you smelled and the last thing you tasted--especially served as it was in liqueur glasses. What were they thinking? I was able to avert a similar disaster with the 99 Isole e Olena Vin Santo that I brought by suggesting we use our white wine glasses, which thankfully had not been cleared from the table. Beautiful wine: apricot, orange, maple and dark chocolate flavors--unbelievably good with Al's delicious Tiramisu.
On Christmas Eve, Jim and Carol brought this really interesting Cremant du Jura, a chardonnay 'Brut-Comte' from Hubert Clavelin et Fils. A non-vintage wine at just 12% abv, it had pleasant apple-y chardonnay fruit with a bit of that biscuity mustiness that good sparklers develop after about five years in the bottle. Very very nice.
With our first course, I poured a 2004 Girardin Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Le Caillerets. Drinks very well right now, but the fruit I expected from other 04 Girardins was missing, and the wine showed subdued, very Chablis-like flavors of newsprint, flint and lemon. With our prime rib, I served a well-developed 1993 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon. Fantastic nose offered the best of new world cabernet aromas, and the wine held up very well while we drank it, but I'll admit to finding it so mature (remember, this is a Washington wine and I've learned not to trust them) that I was concerned it would fall apart at any moment. For dessert (a cheese plate), I opened a half bottle of 2001 Rieussec Sauternes. Bill Spohn can groan all he want about infanticide, but I have to tell you anyone who owns this wine (in 375, anyway) who doesn't sample it now is missing quite a show. This is the lemony, less botrytissed style of Sauternes and it's showing magnificent petrol aromas right now. Made me swoon, it did. And I'm sorry that I only have one bottle, but I'm not sorry we drank it now--it was not wasted.