Dinner with some wines we’d been saving.
2006 Loimer Gruner Veltliner Langenlois Spiegel – the only wine served blind. Clean fruit nose, mellow smooth presence in the mouth, just a slight bit spirity, balanced and pleasant.
1961 Ch. Haut Brion - Every once in a long, long while you get to taste a wine that is simply beyond criticism. It doesn’t happen often, but it happened to me for the first time this year and made the dinner a stand out event – best so far this year, by far. This was from a mid-shoulder fill bottle. The wine was amazingly dark, and the edges were not browning at all. The nose reminded me of walnuts and dark cherries, but very complex and on palate the wine was absolutely insanely good with a finish that went on for more than a minute. There was silence after we first tasted this, until my soft ‘Holy s~~t!’ (translated as ‘Oh my goodness!’). We were in the presence of greatness, and it was one of those times where I could not have come up with any niggling small criticism whatsoever, and I am good at being able to compare things like verticals of Ch. Margaux and opine as to how the 83 might fall slightly short of the equally superb 82. This wine, however, was literally beyond reproach and we sat in awe just enjoying it small sip by small sip, occasionally drawing away to nosh on some rare duck breast before going back for another small sample. This wine epitomizes why I love Bordeaux, and those who know me will know that I am not given to effusive praise – probably the opposite in fact. Wow!! We kicked around the hypothetical question as to what we might have guessed for vintage on this had we been tasting blind and all agreed that we’d probably have been around 20 - 30 years off the mark. This is very literally as good as it gets for claret.
After investigating the bottle for any errant drips, sediment or not, we went on to a completely different but very good pair of wines with lamb shanks.
1984 Penfolds Grange – I have always admired how old Max could make the wines that were at once both monumental yet somehow not monolithic. This is a skill that many a California producer could seek to emulate. This one was my favourite of the two. It demonstrated a dark colour with no browning, an excellent nose of blackberry and anise, with a little mint. immediate intense sweet fruit in the entry, massive weight and lots of softy tannins and a very long tasty finish, all accomplished with only 14.2% alcohol. 95% shiraz, 5% cabernet
1985 Penfolds Grange – a similarly big impressive wine, with a slightly lighter and less complex nose, harder tannins, good fruit, not as sweet as the 84 and more tannin coming in at the end. 99% shiraz, 1% cab. Good wine, but on this occasion, not as good as the 84.
We slowly worked on the two Aussie giants through the lamb and then cheese, before retiring, absolutely sated. Great tasting.