Upon arrival at the restaurant, the proprietor informed us that our carnivore in residence and genial host, Mr. Spohn, had called in ill. David said, "We can have vegetables!" Someone else said, "Sorbet!" I chirped, "Salad!"
The proprietor grinned conspiratorily.
With baked crab cake:
Wine #1: Fresh and bright with lemon, light melon, some pear and chalk. Interesting mouthfeel--you didn't sense any acid at all and then at the tail end of the finish came a wallop. That made my first guest pinot blanc. Wrong. Ditto everything else anyone came up with (though to our credit, we gave up without guessing Sauv Blanc or chardonnay), so we were all slapping our heads when Nadine unveiled a 2004 Pedra Longa Rias Baixas.
With a salad of belgian endive, papoer-thin dehydrated pear slices, crumbled stilton and chili oil (Bill, we missed you, but this was GOOD):
Wine #2: Smelled of sweet and dry, like chardonnay, but it tasted nothing like it smelled. Spicey off-dry with a pleasantly bitter finish, intense mid-palate fruit of lychee nut, honeydew melon and rainier cherry. Nadine zeroed in on Alsatian Gewurz immediately, and it was: Oh dear, I didn't get the vintage, but a Clos Gaensbroennel Willm Kirschberg Grand Cru. Very fine, and killer with that salad--the offdryness played into the sweetness of the endive expertly, and both were heightened by the salt of the cheese.
Served as a bridge between this course and the next, Wine #3: Old, bridck red color with orange rim. Hayto went right to the late 70's for vintage, but we couldn't pin down the grape. It was downright beautiful and almost Bordeauxish but not quite: cherries, spice, dates, Coke. I should have written those words and got it immediately as I'd had a later vintage just the night before: it was Chateau Musar, vintage 1977. A stunner, my WOTD, and also my first really aged Musar. What a treat. Bless you, Coop.
With dry aged rib eye and frites:
Wine #4: First sniff: Vitamin B12. Very blue color made us think it was quite young, and nothing about the nose or taste challenged that conclusion. We were therefore surprised when it turned out to be a 98 and Italian at that. With time the vitamins were swallowed by a sweet floral nose, showing more merlot than cabernet. It was the Poliziano 1998 Le Stanze. Would this wine be considered international in style? I wanted to pose that question but another wine arrived and demanded our attention.
Wine #5: Bruce's wine. Garnet red color, some age, forceful cabbish fruit but traditional in flavor. My first question was "Southern Hemisphere?" When we got the nod we all went to South Africa. Where Australian wines are always proud of their size, South African wines seem almost embarrassed by it. There's an understatement, a refusal to flaunt, to them. This had big dark red fruit and a bit of a peppery quality to the nose, and it was kind of plush and rustic at the same time. I thought it might be a 96 or 98, but it was 94 Stellenzicht (this winery's best wine, so it's named as in the South African tradition of some producers with just with the winery name; the blend is not further explained.) Tasted like a cab-syrah blend to me. Drinking beautifully now, and an absolutely perfect steak wine.
Wine #6: Vitamin B12 again, black cherry fruit, some menthol, cabbish. Simple and direct, but in a good way. 2001 Nerderburg Private Bin Cabernet.
Wine #7: Salty minerality, black and red fruit, some rough edges due to tannins. Seemed young and Italian, but obviously high quality and more than just sangiovese. Turned out to be a grape none of us knew: pignolo. Neat wine. The 2001 Jermann Venezia Guilla Pignocoluse.
With cheese:
Wine #8: Very dark color, bit vanilla oak on black plums, black cherry and berry, very balanced and velvety. All guesses went to North America, but it tasted more Washington than California. Turned out we weren't far enough north, it was the 2002 Cedar Creek Meritage from BC's Okanagan Valley.
Wine #9: Inky and dense, almost opaque black in color. Nose of black currant, blackberry and violets. On the palate, intense, concentrated black fruit, coffee and coconut. Almost steroidal in density, but not inelegant. Without much trouble it was correctly determined to be a Washington syrah. The 03 Sequel from the Long Shadows series wherein star winemakers from around the globe are invited to make a wine in Washington state. This was made by John Duval who presided over Penfolds Grange until very recently.
Sure sounds like quite a day you had there. That pignolo sounds yummy.