Another luncheon planning session for an Autumn trip abroad occasioned the popping of a few corks.
As it was also New Year’s Eve day, we started with:
1990 Piper Heidsieck Rare Millesime – I like my bubbly well aged and this one was – citrus notes in a mature nose and good clean length. Most annoying thing was that they had used regular sized corks in a smaller than normal thin necked bottle, which resulted in snapping the cork off and having to extract the stub with a corkscrew!
2004 La Chablisienne Mont de Milieu – balanced and clean but a bit light in the nose. With salmon rillettes.
2007 California Cult Classics Pinot Noir Las Amigas Vd (Napa) – made here in BC from California fruit, some of these wines can be very interesting. This one was pinot but beyond that it was a bit difficult as it had a big chocolate oak nose, good colour, and was spicy in the mouth a bit hot and was a large framed wine, if not of quite the size of the ‘largest’ California pints. Very decent.
2004 Baudry Chinon Les Grezeaux – a nice fruit driven nose on this one, with excellent mid palate fruit and a fair bit of tannin that went well with food – in this case some spicy veal sliders with tarragon mustard.
2005 Glen Fiona Syrah (Columbia Valley – iron and pepper in this nose, with good fruit levels on palate and some spiciness. Pleasant. With spicy winter soup
1984 Acacia Cabernet (Napa) – while not primarily known for cabernet, I couldn’t pass this one up when offered a choice. A slightly stinky nose blew off leaving mature cabernet, and on palate the wine was faded and had lots of acidity, not unpleasant but well past prime. I am willing to offer myself up to be experimented upon by any number of these 80s cal-cabs, as the pay off when you it a really nice one makes it worth all of the ones that are now over the hill. And you never know which ones will be really good, as they seem to defy logic!
