Gosset NV Champagne (about four years in my cellar)
This is how Annabelle and I libated ourselves while waiting for the boys to come home with the day's catch of Dungeness crab. Disappointingly, they only got four keepers in four traps, one of which had been picked clean by some SOB who should have his nuts tied to a Duo Prop. There, I said it.
This bubbly never disappoints: musty, rich and traditional.1997 Bollinger Vielles Vignes
Then we served crabcakes with what is the finest champagne I believe I've ever had. It's also the costliest in terms of original purchase (vs. present value, whatever that would be), but here's that rare instance where you can taste every dime and yes the experience WAS worth $100 a glass. Never thought I'd say such a thing. From three different pre-phylloxera vineyards that total an acre and a quarter, per the brochure that comes with this nectar, it is incredibly intense and concentrated, and both equally rich with every version, raw and baked, of red and yellow apple imaginable and yet firm and precise at the same time, which would normally be terms at odds with each other but in this case, no. Even this morning, just thinking about it, I'm agog that I got to drink that. Magnificent!
2007 J. M. Boillot Montagny 1er Cru
To accompany small caprese salads, I served this white burgundy. I drink so many big chardonnays (and enjoy them), that it's with some wonder that I wander back into the fold of antithesis wines like this, so fair, so unassuming, and tantalizingly so. What a nice difference a year has made in the progress of this wine: still demure but no longer shy, the acid and fruit have made peace with each other and the result is a very pure, leafy, green apple, seemingly oak-neutral wine so minimalist, it's stylish.
1987 Penfolds Grange
Decanted about an hour before dinner, once the oohs and ahs died down, and that took awhile, this 23 year old stunner invited all the usual complaints about the failure of most new world syrahs to achieve anything close to this kind of special. Dark, youthful color with a nose as big as the room, with tar, blackberry, blueberry, black cherry, violets, iron, and just a bit of old leather complexity trading the limelight in every sip. Where the first pours were perfect, the tannins ramped up a bit on the second pour--could mean the wine's past peak, but I would almost be more inclined to think it just wants a nap. Big thanks to J and A for bringing this gorgeous treat.