On Saturday night, we felt like one more glass of wine, and such was the point of the evening where you don't want to open anything important, so I finally pulled the cork on The Bottle I Looked Forward To Getting Rid of More Than Any Other due to it's highly importune, rack-averse, extra-wide shape: an orphan Jory 1997 Lion Oaks (California) Syrah. Loved this wine when I first tasted it, probably due in part to the considerable charms of it's maker, Stillman Brown, who has quietly garnered some fame for making wine in both California and New Mexico. A bottle that belonged to a friend, drunk about a year later, was nothing but bottled tannins. Onee of my two bottles, three years later, was identical and I've regarded my last bottle with dread and suspicion ever since. On opening: bright blueberry shiraz-type nose with a shy midpalate and rough tannns on the finish. We left the rest for yesterday, where the blueberry was now very pronounced but dull, and some soy sauce flavor had shown up on the finish. All pretty much as expected, it was so far out of balance it was unlikely to ever return. Good riddance!
Having loved a couple bottles of the 2005 Magneaux (a white Bordeaux) a couple months ago, I was happy to find more this weekend so we popped a bottle to enjoy in the late afternoon sun. Yuck! This is so not like the other. First, color: where the first bottles had been extremely light, almost clear, this poured yellow. And what had been intriguing aromatics of white flowers and sweet green herbs is now bland grape skin. A B+ wine is now a C-. Unacceptable bottle variation.
To go with grilled top sirloin and tomato slices dressed with sea salt and a crumble of basque blue cheese, I chose a cru bourgeois from the Haut-Medoc, 1996 Citran. My first experience with this producer. Somewhat shy nose of berry fruit and earth, and rather average Bordeaux flavors. It was better with food than without, and the first glass was better than the second when the finish got pruney and parched. The wine's past peak and fading.