My first Tuesday wine tasting group (what an imaginative name) got together at my place last night for a half and half tasting; half red and half white, served double-blind to the group (I knew wines and order of serving). I also used the opportunity to feature a selection of Vermont artisan cheeses.
We started with a replacement warm up wine. My original plan was to serve the 2003 Horton Norton (Virginia), but unknown to me it was sealed with a synthetic cork. Immediately upon opening it was clear that the wine was fatally oxidized. So I replaced it with the following:
2002 Chateau Haut-Serre Grand Vin Seigneur (Cahors)
This wine was given to me by people in Figeac, France and hand carried home back in February. When I opened the bottle about 90 minutes before the tasting it was tight as a drum with lots of stuffing. Not much changed when it was poured as the warm-up wine. Black fruits and tough, tight tannic structure were the dominant themes. It was still quite well received, ranking seventh of the 9 wines served, and when we were re-tasting afterwards it had opened up considerably (now about 4 hours since opening) with more balance between the fruit and tannin. My remaining bottles will be given significant cellar time to allow the tannins to calm down. There’s plenty of fruit for aging. My score of 16.5/20 was exactly the group average.
We then moved on to the main event, but before going through the wines I should mention the artisan cheeses. All sourced from the Lebanon, NH co-op (about 2 minutes from the Vermont border) on Sunday, the fact that they were all from Vermont was a pure accident. I had no idea until I looked at all the labels while preparing the cheese board. It included:
Vermont Shepherd (sheep’s milk)
Blue Ledge Farm “Camembrie” (cow’s milk)
Jasper Hill Farm “Constant Bliss” (cow’s milk)
Lazy Lady Farm “Capriola” (goat’s milk)
Cobb Hill Cheese “Four Corners Caerphilly” (cow’s milk)
Jasper Hill Farm “Bayley Hazen Blue” (cow’s milk)
Most of the cheeses were raw milk, and across the board the quality was impeccable. Group favorites included the Camembrie (it was just melting out of its rind!), the Capriola and the Bayley Hazen Blue, but all were close to gone when I put everything away for the night. I found the cheese almost as rewarding as the wines, mostly because of the happy accident of creating an all-Vermont plate for evaluation.
The first formal flight of the tasting was Bordeaux/Bordeaux-style blends. It matched up two wines that I thought might have some things in common. Not so much.
1999 Pride Mountain Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve (Napa)
Tasted while I was decanting about 2 hours ahead it was showing lots of red and black fruit as well as a streak of cracked black pepper and some vanilla oak. During the tasting it had settled down into a much more integrated, silky wine with the oak virtually gone, and a creaminess of texture in its place. Still lots of tannins and lots of fruit, so further aging is both possible and recommended. Well received, this ended up sixth out of the nine wines, but with a very high score. My score of 17.5/20 was slightly lower than the group average of 17.9/20. When sixth place gets almost 18/20 you know it’s a good night.
2001 Clos Les Lunelles (Cotes de Castillon)
When I opened the bottle at 5:30 it was loaded with fruit and incredibly tight and tannic. In fact this was the wine that caused me to decant the first flight (the second flight was decanted due to an easily recognizable bottle). Well the decanting did it no favors, as by the time we got to the wine (about 8 PM) it was showing very much evolved. It was a stunning transformation from forbidding youth to late middle age. The nose showed lots of secondary character, and while the palate was much fresher it had lost most of the punch which makes this Gerard Perse wine so memorable. I sound like I am totally slamming the wine, and it did come in ninth of nine wines, but with a respectable 15/20 from me and an average of 15.6/20 from the group. It should have been better.
The second flight was a match up of blockbuster Petite Sirah.
1999 Sean Thackrey ‘Orion’ (Napa)
This is the one wine that did not change at all from decanting. It was delicious on opening, and it was delicious when we tasted it 3 hours later. Mint, soy, berry, earth, roasted meat – you name it and it was in there, and all balanced on the tip of a tannic sword. This could evolve for decades and stay in balance. It has all that and more. This was an utterly fabulous wine that I scored at 19/20, just ahead of the group at 18.6/20 and third (yes third!) out of the nine wines. It was one of 5 wines to average 18 or higher in group scoring.
2001 Turley Wine Cellars Hayne Vineyard Petite Sirah (Napa)
Upon decanting it was grossly alcoholic and harsh. I did not have high hopes. Well it changed a lot in the decanter; some of the changes were even good. Ultimately it was like drinking a dry Port or Amarone. There was no volatile acidity (unusual for a Turley in my experience), and the fruit, while on the roasted/dried end of the spectrum, was enough to balance the not inconsiderable alcohol. The wine was a fabulous match for the blue cheese, and while it ended up eighth of the nine wines it scored a very repectable 16.5/20 from me, and 16.2/20 from the group. It did divide the room though, with scores ranging from 13 to 18.5.
We then moved on to the white wine segment of the night. Poured after the reds due to the presence of residual sugar in each and every one (to varying degrees) the white wine flights were in response to some friendly ribbing by a member of the group that I never open any really good German wines for them. Well I think that changed with the very first sip of the first wine from the following flight of older Riesling Auslese.
1989 Dönnhoff Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle Riesling Auslese (Nahe)
I did not record the AP number for posterity, but can add it as an edit later. I opened this wine at about 6:30 PM to check it for corkiness or oxidation, and while it showed a little bit of fruit (most of it dried), there was absolutely no clue of what was to come. At about 8:45 I poured some into my Riedel Sommelier Series Riesling glass (the one that triples for Chianti and Zin), and aromas of fresh apricots, nutmeg, honey, golden raisins, lemons and wet rocks jumped out at me. After 18 years the sweetness of the wine has faded into the overall pattern, with the focus being on something like fresh fruit compote that hasn’t really been cooked, but instead just left in its uncooked state for a while so that the flavors will meld into a seamless whole. Gliding like silk across the palate, the wine finished with no suggestion of sweetness, but just a mineral presence dusted by spice powder. Reactions were similar around the table, and I was pretty much ready to quit right there. Comparisons to ’71 (and some of the guys were around to buy that great vintage) and ’76 (perhaps more apt given the character of the ’89 vintage) came out, but for me it was just the essence of what I hope will happen when I put a Riesling in the cellar. Scoring this wine was an exercise in futility (but the group has been doing scores out of 20 since 1974 so I am not arguing), and when it was all tallied the wine garnered 138 out of a possible 140 points from the 7 tasters. I gave it the perfect 20/20 along with three other folks, and the group average of 19.7/20 made it far and away the wine of the night. Perfect.
And in the unenviable position of flight mate to the Dönnhoff tour de force was:
1990 Fritz Haag Braunenberger Juffer Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese
How do you follow a legend? Well you don’t because even if you’re great it won’t get the job done. The Haag gave a fantastic accounting for itself though. Remarkably unevolved, this showed lots of lime and mineral, along with more evolved elements in terms of a creamy texture and developing pine-related forest floor nuances. Where it fell short (and it’s a total nit, as the wine was fabulous otherwise) was in the sugar/acid balance. 1990 was a vintage of high ripeness, but also high acidity, and on the whole I’m not sure people really judged the sugar quite right. Many wines (including to a limited degree this one) are showing too acidic for their fruit at this point in life, and I don’t think that balance will ever recover. All that said I think it’s a great time to drink this wine, and I actually gave it a very high score, docking half points only for the acidity and a slightly less interesting aromatic profile than the Dönnhoff. I ended up giving this wine a 19/20, which was nearly a point higher than the group average of 18.2/20, placing this wine fourth of the nine wines. On any other night, in any other flight this wine would have shone like a star (though I am still worried enough about the acid balance to plan on drinking my other bottle soon).
And after all that there were still two more, younger wines to go.
2005 Markus Molitor Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese** (Mosel)
It was decanted three hours ahead of serving due to a preponderance of sulfurous odors on the nose. It mostly cleared up by serving time, but just enough remained to have people guessing Prum. This is the kind of wine I am putting in the cellar to revisit in 17-20 years. I had tried it once before, and it was a bit of a disjointed mess, but 6 months have brought the fruit, sugar, acid and mineral elements together into a cohesive, if unevolved whole. It’s a big wine, but it does not overwhelm the senses, but rather persists over time, leaving an impression of not weight but density. There’s no blatant botrytis, but perhaps a slight dusting of spice betrays just a touch. Otherwise it is pure fruit layered atop a mineral base polished to sheen. This was one of two whites that was drained (the other predictably the Dönnhoff), and came in second of nine wines. I gave it a 19/20, about a half point ahead of the group rating of 18.4/20. Lay down any bottles you have and revisit in 20 years.
2004 Kurt Darting Ungsteiner Honigsäckel Scheurebe Auslese
A very solid Beerenauslese masquerading as an Auslese, this had the most blatant sugar of all the whites. I actually expected it to be the group favorite (sugar being the great equalizer in German wine rating), but some phenolic roughness took something (but not much) away from the wine. It had all the ripe tropical fruit that could be crammed into a 750ml bottle, but that slight harshness in the back of the throat is where I nudged it down. Nevertheless it would be a great partner to any kind of tropical fruit tart or sorbet, and I think time will calm some (but not all – it is Scheurebe) of the roughness. Fourth out of nine wines, I gave it 18/20, slightly behind the group rating of 18.3/20. Lest you think these guys easy graders, at last month’s tasting the highest scoring wine of the night was an average of 17.4/20.
Cleaning up afterwards I took a small pour (all that was left) of the Haag, and while delicious it reinforced my earlier opinion.
Not a bad night.