2002 Louis Jadot Corton-Charlemagne En Charlemagne – a lemon and lychee fragrance, nice fruit in the middle, and long clean finish. Very interesting wine.
2008 Foxtrot Vineyards Chardonnay – a BC wine I hadn’t tasted before, and a very serious one too. Pale colour, steely nose with both citrus and sulphur evident, crisp and clean on palate and medium long dry finish.
2000 J. Moreau Chablis Grand Cru Valmur – slightly muted lemon and hay nose, clean and mid length, well made but it didn’t cry out to me as being Chablis.
1983 Chave Hermitage Blanc – this was a rare treat. Showing some colour, but not as much as one might expect at this age (we were at least a decade out on vintage) with a ripe, rich sweet nose that seemed to include many different fruit elements including pear, peach and a hint of almond, excellent balance and a long dry finish. One of the best mature white Hermitages I can recall drinking.
2007 Warm Lake Estate Pinot Noir Estate – (New York, Niagara Escarpment) – Mark had asked what sort of wine he might bring to lunch when he’d contacted me and I’d suggested a red, but hadn’t filed away anything in particular as to what he might show up with. When I first nosed this one, my guess was that we were back in the Rhone again. When he said no, I went for my second best guess and correctly said Pinto Noir, after which I shut up and let the others figure out where it had come from. The wine had bright acidity and had good fruit (plums?) but it needs a couple of years to settle down. More French than US in style, I liked it. Very dry finish.
2001 Pelissero Long Now – this one had us pretty much stumped and we made our way all around the globe before asking, almost in desperation, if it might be Italian. Dark purple colour, sweet nose of stone and dried plums, some ripe tannins and a long finish. Interesting wine. A blend of Nebbiolo and Barbera, yet stubbornly revealing the characteristics of neither!
1999 Clos l'Eglise (Côtes de Castillon) – ripe notes, smooth on palate, with soft tannins, medium long. This was 70% merlot and was what I call a pleasant luncheon weight claret. No doubt being held by the person that brought is in the hopes of scamming his way into a Pomerol vertical some day (a good cellar mate to his Ch. La Feet and Ch. Shovel Plonque)
2002 Kurtz Family Lunar Block Shiraz Individual Vineyard (Barossa) – Take fruit from 50 year old dry farmed vines, age the wine in new French oak for 26 months and produce a total of 720 bottles and you get this wine. The telltale here was the mintiness in an otherwise sweetish fruity nose that also showed a bit of black pepper, and but for the mint might possibly have mislead people toward the Rhone. Not an over the top gluey monstrosity as are so many of the Aussie wines perpetrated on us in North America, by agents under the clearly mistaken belief that we like them that way. One attendee, perplexed by my deviation from my normal practice of bringing mature wines asked me why I had opted for such a young wine. The answer was that I was driving my new sports car and discovered that it had no place to store a bottle out of sight in an upright position (the ‘trunk’ being a cruel joke) and that I had several bottles at least a decade older in my hand before discovering that and switching to something that wouldn’t have sediment. PS – I rather liked this wine and it went very well with cheese.
1999 Ch. Suduiraut – what a nice way to finish up! Lemon colour (it seemed to be a citrus sort of day all round) with a very pleasant nose showing a little Botrytis, apricotty and fairly sweet in the mouth but with enough acidity to balance.
Jenise was absent with house horrors to deal with. Mark says hi.