WTN: 2 for 4, but the food was great (dinner w/Salil)

[David M. Bueker]

Laura (finally getting over the creeping crud) and I got together with Salil Benegal for dinner last night. Salil is a really good cook, and we're enjoying the range of Indian/Thai/Chinese dishes that he makes to accompany our Riesling-focused meals together.

As Salil was preparing the sweet corn soup we opened the 1999 Donnhoff Schlossbockelheimer Kupfergrube Riesling Spatlese, which was not happy about being disturbed. For the first hour it showed virtually nothing, but did eventually give up some petrol, sweet stone and peach/berry fruit. It went well with the soup, but didn't seem to have any life. It mostly just laid there. I've had better bottles of this, and better '99s, so we'll just chalk that up to a sub-par performance.

The soup was very delicious (Salil - please post the recipe in the Food Forum), and I ate way too much of it. As the Donnhoff disappointed us we moved on to the 2003 J. J. Prum Bernkasteler Badstube Riesling Auslese (AP 14), but it was even worse than the Donnhoff. It was nothing but weak sugar water, and had to have been either subtly corked to strip all the fruit or damaged in some other way.

The Butter Chicken (is that what it's called Salil?) was ready so Salil headed for the back-up brown bagged bottle. I admit that the wine had me stumped. It had a spice and a creaminess that made me think Loosen Urziger Wurzgarten, but that was wrong on two fronts. The fact that it was a 2006 was pretty clear by the intensity and thickness, but I never would have guessed that it was the 2006 Willi Schaefer Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spatlese (AP 12). There's a lot to like about this wine, especially the fact that it has plenty of fruit, sweetness and acid to prepare it for a long and pleasing evolution in the cellar.

After we ate way too much of the chicken (15 hours later I am still stuffed), Salil and I drank the 1999 Wendouree Shiraz/Mataro. Now getting me to drink Australian wine is a lot like the whole leading a horse to water thing, but I really liked this. It had a wonderful aromatic blend of dark berry fruit, beets and leather, and while it was very tannic it also had enough fruit to create a balanced package. It's certainly unlike the vast ocean of unstructured/goopy wine that comes out of the Barossa on the wings of a Wine Advocate score, and if I could get my hands on it at a decent price (apparently this stuff is not cheap) I would buy a lot for the cellar. Thanks for opening my eyes to some really good Australian wine Salil.

David
Getting hold of Wendouree is indeed tough - a mailing list with a waiting list and even then, much less wine than there is demand. Only one shop with any stock here and it's ~£40 a bottle.

Interesting little thread on e-bob before Squires eventually shut it down... It seems that Parker has handed his pal a poisoned chalice. A lot of negative feeling towards the wine styles previously lauded by WA. Those damn *importers eh (* barring GP though )

There are plenty of very fine Aussie wines, across a wide range of styles. Maybe, just maybe, this whole mess will bring forward a new understanding and hence a wider range of wines.

regards

Ian

David, was great having you and Laura over (and look forward to doing it again soon - hopefully in a couple of weeks with some more Rieslings). Glad you enjoyed the food so much - I'll post the soup recipe soon (and the chicken's already up in the food forum; the post is called Murgh makhani).

Agree with your thoughts on the wines. The Prum was disappointing, and I'm wondering whether there was a bit of heat damage there or some other issue (as I didn't think it corked, but definitely lacking in depth and intensity). I revisited the Kupfergrube earlier today; had a half glass with lunch (with some left in the bottle that I'll revisit with dinner) and it seemed much more open and giving today with clearer pear, melon and mineral flavours and faint smoky/petrol notes underneath. The Schaefer was a fantastic wine (and the clear winner of the Thunderbird prize last night) - just really bright and forward with tons of fruit, spice and slate and matched the chicken makhani really well.

I found the Wendouree stunning (if about a decade too young at least). While it was still fairly forbidding and tannic on the palate, I thought the aromatics on that wine just kept getting better and better as the evening went on and the nose may have been worth the price of admission in itself - just an amazing mix of leather, fruit, meaty elements and some faint minty/eucalyptus notes that gave it a distinctive Aussie character.