To celebrate, I decided to cook a rib steak and make some chasseur sauce, and I made a pear pie for dessert.
Ok, it sprinkled most of the day - that didn't stop me!
A good, old-fashioned dinner required a good, old-fashioned wine, and I picked a bottle of Ridge Lytton Springs Zin '98 that I bought at the Montebello Ridge tasting room in March '08. It was a good, old-fashioned choice, too! I cheated a bit on the sauce and used the Zin as the wine in it - it's really supposed to be made with Chablis or white Rhone as I understand it - but sauce is sauce and the steak was robust and wanted a robust sauce. It came out great!
The Lytton Springs is wonderful old Zin. Blackberry fruit, fully resolved tannins, a bit of the dust of age, great length.
'98 was a "hard" year in the Russian River and Dry Creek valleys. The wines, on release, were mostly very tannic and backwards in fruit, compared to the usual vintage, but I thought they were well-balanced and I bought quite a few bottles from various places, keeping most of them for 5 years or more. This bottle I didn't buy until I drove up Montebello Road in my new Z4.
It was good, and I didn't feel in any hurry to drink it, but here was an opportunity. 77% Zin, "field blend", 14% Alcohol, $45.
Goodbye, old house!
And there's half a bottle left....
John
