For the Independence Day of my home away from home, a hipster hippie lineup to say hip hippie hooray for the U. S. of A.
2005 Edmunds St. John Paso Robles Shell and Bone 14.2%
With Artisanal Hoja Santa (goat). Blend of Viognier and Roussanne. Decanted for 9 hours. Beautiful golden hue. Very aromatic and floral nose. I expected this to be slightly lacking in acidity but it was fine, in good balance with the caramel sweetness and anis fruit. One of the guests found airplane glue, but I couldn't see it. A slightly bitter finish, usually a downer for me, was quite lovely here, and tinged with salinity. A good showing.
2007 Scholium Project Naucratis Lost Slough Vineyard Verdejo 14.9%
With Artisanal American Camembert (cow). Decanted for 10 hours. Aroma is mainly faded fruit salad, the kind in which the banana wheels are already becoming over the hill. Some yeast and wet dishrag, acceptable. Residual sweetness in the mouth, slightly hot, slightly acid deficient. Not bad, but disappointingly tame, since I know how exotic wine this can be. Perhaps the long decant dampened it too much.
2005 Edmunds St. John California Rocks and Gravel 14.2%
With Artisanal Laurier Bay Leaf (goat). A blend of Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre and Counoise. Decanted 2 hours. According to Steve Edmunds, making this wine “involved combining parts of fourteen different wines from eleven different vineyard sites, encompassing five or six different growing regions in California....” Ripe cherry aromas, laced with nail polish. Lush and satisfying mouth feel, excellent acidity, but fruit seemed on the simple side, and beginning to fade. In defiance of its low price, perhaps I expected a little more complexity, given the multiplicity of its components.
2005 El Dorado County Syrah Wylie-Fenaughty 14.6%
With Nettle Meadow Kunik (goat with cow cream). Decanted 3 hours. Rich cassis and airplane glue nose. Excellent mouth feel and acidity grip, perfect acid/sweet balance, complex and attractive fruit, with molasses and cloves. Attractive tannins. A lovely wine, with many years ahead of it, and most people’s WOTN.
2004 Coturri Zinfandel Freiberg Vineyard Sonoma County 16.2%
With Grafton Village Maple-smoked Cheddar (cow). Decanted 6 hours. An exotic wine made from botrytized grapes. Complex nose, very port-like, with molasses, charred coconut, acetone, forest floor and the plastic used in band aids. Drier than expected (i.e., drier than port) but still sweet, with rich additional notes of coffee, cocoa, cedar and tobacco. Tannins had a pleasant grippy grain. On the finish, has that yeasty aftertaste, common in natural wines, which I don’t like. Otherwise quite special. PS: cork not good quality, rather Swiss cheesy; Coturri should invest in better corks or go straight to screw caps (by reputation, can’t think of any producer who would benefit more from that).
A fun evening, without my American friends, but with the next best thing, American cheese and wine. And no artificial corks.