Had a birthday dinner last weekend and the following wines were brought/opened: simple notes as we were doing more drinking and talking than obsessing about the wines.
Chateau Frank Blanc de Noirs 2002 (Pinot Noir and Meunier), Finger Lakes Champange (hey that’s what it says on the bottle)
Clearish yellow tinge with deeply nutty aroma. Almost caramel’d (had been open a few days though certainly no problem with the actual fizz), very ripe yeasty notes. Lots of texture and flavor. Very good.
Verduzzo Prosecco, Spago NV, IGT Italy
Yellow-greenish color with bright, pronounced apple aroma and citrus to boot. Both also come through on the palate, the apple almost overwhelming so. With a touch of sweetnes, this is a lovely easy-going Prosecco when you can’t go the Champenoise route. Good
Dr. Konstantin Frank 2007 Rkatsitelli, Finger Lakes
Yellow tinge and creamy notes but this had also been open a few days and had lost most of what can be appealing about this wine. Not good.
Diel Cuvée Victor 2001, Nahe, Germany,
We had to go on-line to discover this wine’s components: Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay, as it turns out. An almost luxuriant golden color, very honeyed on the nose with notes of quince and jasmine and tangerine. Exotically tropical on palate, with absence of biting acidity. Honey, apricot, pineapple and cream. Very ripe (14% alcohol) and wonderfully balanced. Excellent.
Cereghino Smith Little House 2008, ‘An American Blend’
Lodi Petite Sirah with New York Cabernet Franc, blended and bottled in New York. A vibrantly impenetrable purple color, with the winery’s usual menthol/mint thing going on up front. Very big on the palate, with a dark blackberry presence offset by the green vegetal characteristics of the Cab Franc. Only just bottled and probably needs time to settle. Good.
Guigal Côte Rôtie Brune et Blonde 1999, Rhône
Quickly double-decanted. Nice brick showing on medium red rim. Smoked bacon nose perfectly well profound but disappointly light and simple on the palate and showing an annoying metallic aftertaste. The acidity seemed to have outlasted both the tannin and the fruit on this bottle. It came together a little over the next couple of hours and subsequently occurred to me that it might just have been bullied and overwhelmed by so many higher-alcohol reds around it - especially as a half-glass left over tasted just great the next night. A lesson here. Good.
Turley Charbono Tofanelli Vineyard, Napa, 2001, California
Wine store sticker labeled this as a Petite Sirah, and so did the person who brought it; it took an astute label-watcher to alert us to the fact that we were in fact drinking something else entirely – a California grape that may or may not be related to Dolcetto (to which it shows no similarity) and Bonarda (to which it does). Very very very dark color, threw off a massive sediment, the heaviest of the night by a long stretch. Spicy, meaty plummy nose and has the serious body and weighty heft you’d expect of a Turley wine, though the alcohol is lighter than Turley’s Zins at “just” 14%. Fruit had largely dissipated but this was still an interesting, if somewhat monolithic wine. Not possibly worth its retail price. Good.
Roger Sabon Châteauneuf du Pape Les Olivets 2003, Rhône
Sabon’s entry-level Châteauneuf du Pape, a Grenache-Syrah-Cinsault blend. Double decanted three-four hours prior to drinking. Showed beautifully. Lots of ginger, mushroom and Provencal herbs on nose, a spicy, fleshy, forward, juicy, giving wine, extremely friendly, especially considering the renowned power of the heatwave vintage. Notes of cranberry were reported, too. This went in a matter of minutes. Judging by its drinkability, the heftier ‘03s can probably benefit from further bottle ageing. Excellent.
Torbreck Les Juveniles, Barossa Valley, 2003, Australia
I’d had a very pleasant experience with the 2002 of this wine, a GSM blend initially bottled by Torbreck for the Les Juveniles wine bar in paris. (A case of coals to Newcastle if ever there was one.) In ’03 the wine moved to screwcap and the price dropped dramatically, suggesting a change in the wine-making process. Opened as a comparison to the Châteauneuf du Pape with a similar age on it, this was almost undrinkable. Not because it had gone off, but because the sweetness of the fruit was simply sickly. While there are plenty good GSMs down under, and I have nothing but love for the better bottles of Shiraz that we’ve brought back from Australia on two separate occasions, this Juveniles panders to all the worst ideas of Ozzie wine: a cough syrup, Pepsi Cola kind of wine. Given the “honesty” of the wines we’d tasted up to this point, it was quite pleasing to see that everyone involved poured it straight in the dump bucket. Awful.
Domaine de Coyeaux Muscat de Beaumes de Venise 1991
I love my Muscat de Beaumes de Venise. But I have to say, I’m not used to drinking them with almost two decades bottle age on them. You know what? It showed just fine. A little of the crisp pineapple-almond notes I associate with this grape had disappeared for a more lusciously smooth dessert wine, one-dimensional perhaps after so long in bottle but still Good to very good.
Rutherglen Campbells Muscat, Rutherglen, Australia
A different kind of Muscat and one that I’ve long had a fondness for. Fortunately it redeemed Australia’s reputation at this table, its toffee-colored, caramel/toffee/licorice flavors justifying the Ozzie term ‘Sticky’ though proving a little overwhelming at the end of a long meal. Good.
We had fun....
Tony