Earlier in the week I cracked a 2006 Cape Mentelle Chardonnay that looked particularly youthful with a perfect balance of fruit, acid and oak, subtle secondary barrel complexities, lovely mouthfeel and a zesty, dry and crisp lingering finish. 92 points.
Thursday night was my birthday dinner with my family and best friend at a nearby restaurant that was good enough for the occasion without breaking any records for quality or the budget. We opened the following -
Vincert Girardin 2004 Mersault 1er Cru "Les Perrieres" - a marvellous fusion of terroir, fruit and oak - one could almost smell and taste the stony soil in this wine. Stunning aromatics of ripe green melon, nectarine and guava with complex meal and stony/mineral notes followed by a palate with gorgeous pear/melon/guava fruit flavour/quality, a subtle earthy/stony accompaniment, perfectly-judged minerally acids and a whopping long departure. A beautiful thing. Drink now - 2014. 93 points.
Bruno Clair 1993 Savigny-les-Beaune 1er Cru "La Dominode" - I'm prepared to give this wine the benefit of the doubt and quantify it's less than stellar performance as a case of several years too late. The colour was enticing as was the nose - redolent with juicy red cherries, mushrooms, sap and spice. The palate had dropped it's fruit. There were no staleness or oxidation - just an abundance of virtual "nothingness", stripped of its fruit, a lot of astringent dryness on the inside of the mouth and not much length. Passed it. Bummer. 65 points for colour and nose!. A one-off recent "chance" purchase. This wine could have been very good indeed 5-7 years ago.
As this above wine was met by strange looks and the occasional set of rolling eyes, I decided to open my reserve red, Wynns 1992 John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon. As befits one disaster, another is sure to follow, and the cork, even with careful extraction with a trusty screwpull, crumbled into several thousand small pieces leaving a significant amount of fine cork in the first few pours. The wine was sound with a deep colour, typically weedy/cedary nose underscored with deepset curranty fruit and suggestions of capsicum and dried herbs. The palate revealed plenty "more of the same", firmly structured but just a tad green and astringent to my taste. There's still plenty of "oomph" here and perhaps it needs the statutory minimun 20 years of bottle age before it hits its best drinking window. My guess is it will never be great. 86 points on a good day from me.
We skipped desserts and my 1982 "sweet" Loire, so I opened my final offering for the evening - a Seabrook bottling of Chambers 1971 Vintage Port. Made from "Port varieties" this exceptional fortified represents one of the finest wines of its type I've tried for some considerable time. Saturated dark ruby/deep blood red colour. Massively concentrated but hauntingly beautiful nose full of lavish aniseed licquer, licorice, lantana, Asian spices, sweet earth, treacle, creosote, blackberry jam, wonderfully clean lifted spirit and a subtle rancio top note. The palate no less impressive with an identical bevy of nuance, incredible density, wonderful flavour profile, still so fresh and vibrant with that rare quality of seeming immortality. Immaculate structure with mountains of cleansing acid/astringency matching/counterbalancing the wealth of fruit with a gorgeous, integrated fine-grained tannin structure holding through to an almost perfect conclusion. Rates up there with some of the all-time greats of Australian fortified wine production. 97 points. Drink now- 2021+.
