Hi everyone, I've been on a little 3-month hiatus from transcribing my tasting notes and participating in discussions, but I hope to make up for lost time over the next week or two--with a backlog of some 130+ tasting notes. In any event, let's start with a not so recent poker game, where all wines were served blind, except the starters and the after hours wine.
Starters:
2004 Chateau Le Thil Comte Clary Pessac-Leognan Blanc. The bouquet here smells of lanolin and wax, lemon peel, peach pit and a little hint of copper minerality. In the mouth, it is much more tart and sharp-edged than the nose leads one to expect. Flavors of green apple, herbs, chalk and citrus are sharply cut by the bracing acidity. It comes across as taut and cleansing, if not especially exciting.
2005 Hartford Court Pinot Noir Land’s Edge Vineyard Sonoma Coast. This was from a bottle opened the night before. It smells of pine resin, brambly berries, spicy toasted oak, sassafras and lots of stem tones. In the mouth, it hits the palate with a lot of flavor, but also seems to me a bit goopy or jammy at this stage. It is spicy, plump, woody and a tad overwhelming, and I’ll take a pass after just a few sips.
Main line-up:
2007 Potel-Aviron Moulin-a-Vent Vieilles Vignes. Here we have a nose of smoke and soot, dense berry paste, sweet plums, toasted herbs and a little dusty fruit sweetness deep underneath. Still, it seems pretty young and takes a while to coax out of its tight shell. In the mouth, it is again pretty primary at this stage, with a dense core of solidly-built fruit but also a good dose of drying, woody tannins. The acidity is a bit too soft to counter the rich baked plum and cherry paste fruit flavors and the finish feels young and pasty—with a raspberry Razzle candy sort of profile that is a bit disjointed. My advice is to give this time to hopefully find more charm and delineation down the road a bit.
2007 Jean-Paul Thevenet Morgon Vieilles Vignes. I like the lifted and airy feel to the bouquet of this wine, yet can also sense some nice balancing bass notes that make it feel complete, as aromas of mixed berries, chalk, and dusty earth are accented by the occasional whiff of mint leaf and balsa wood. On the palate, the wine shows a lot more consistency with that mint and sandalwood note and folds in beneath that a solid core of dusty cherry, berry and earth flavors and fine acidic drive. It is medium-weighted and juicy, with a lot of character, but also some drying tannins toward the back of the palate that it could stand to shed. Very tasty wine.
2004 Ferrando Nebbiolo di Caremma White Label. This appears to be a bit light in color, with a faint clearing at the rim, as well. It smells of spiced cherries, red flowers, strawberry licorice rope and cocoa powder. It is kind of feminine, ethereal and rather inviting, actually. It is loaded with flavor, though, and has a direct and zingy personality in the mouth, where it features flavors of scorched earth, soil and spicerack in support of mixed berries and bright cherries galore. I like this—it has a lot of different facets to it and enjoy them all.
1999 Ridge Monte Bello Santa Cruz Mountains. Mildly CORKED. Still, one can almost get past that to sense the fine aromas of cedar, black currant, green pepper skin, black olives and dusty barnyard scrabble. In the mouth, there is a good dose of the green pepper to go along with complex layers of aged cassis, earth and spices. But the texture is tough and chewy from the TCA, and after a while it gets harder and harder to ignore that taint. A real shame—it seems pretty clear that this would otherwise be outstanding. 72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 2% Cab Franc and 1% Petit Verdot.
2000 Ridge Monte Bello Santa Cruz Mountains. The bouquet here suggests a much more highly-polished version of Monte Bello, with its abundance of classy and slinky black fruit and camphor aromas. But there are also some creosote and tar notes that give it a bit of grounding, as well. In the mouth, it is seemingly quite youthful, showing a fair dose of wood and tannin right up front. However, it is also impossible to ignore the beautifully smooth, polished and glycerin-laden fruit this wine pumps out through the mid-palate and into the finish. It is pure, intense and deep, with again some spices coming in late from the wood. The fruit is the shining glory here and it just needs to integrate some wood and tannins to be truly great. 75% Cab Sauvignon, 23% Merlot, 2% Cab Franc.
2001 Bodegas Marques de Murrietta Rioja Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial. I guess this wine was inserted into the Ridge flight just to throw off base those few of us who were aware that there would be a Monte Bello vertical somewhere in the line-up. Tricky! Anyway, this bouquet feels somewhat less overt and stylized than the previous wine—with swirling aromas of creosote, vanilla paste, cassis, cherry paste and some lifted, funky underbrush that work together well. In the mouth, it is a lot more warm-fruited in personality than the previous two wines, with creamy cherry, cedar, eucalyptus and spicerack elements in a lighter and less structured frame. Still, the fruit is lovely and the wine is open and giving, though it clearly gets woodier and tighter with time in the glass. This is probably going to be best in another 4 or 5 years, but shows really fine potential.
2001 Ridge Monte Bello Santa Cruz Mountains. This offers a return to the rich, ripe, juicy character of the 2000 Monte Bello, though with a bit less gloss and sheen. Aromas of dark chocolate, cassis, blackberry and blueberry combine nicely with a faint bit of green pepper and tobacco leaf edging that really works for this wine. It is chocolaty on the palate, with some rich plum character, as well. It feels seriously extracted and is throwing a good deal of sediment it would seem. Otherwise, though, it is layered and finely-balanced with very nice fruit flavors that combine for a real nice tasting experience. 56% Cabernet Sauvignon, 36% Merlot, 8% Petit Verdot.
2002 Ridge Monte Bello Santa Cruz Mountains. The nose here is again much in the same vein as the 2001—with aromas of chocolate, earth and blackberry fruit, but with more of an exotic tar oil and scorched earth element than found in that wine. I like the mouthfeel of this wine a lot, as it just slides across the palate effortlessly while peeling off waves of rich and sleek mixed currant, dark cherry and fudge flavors as it goes. The finish begins to show a fair amount of drying tannin, though, after a while, so I might give this one a bit more time before trying again. 74% Cab Sauvignon, 18% Merlot, 8% Petit Verdot.
2003 Chateau Saint-Pierre St. Julien. This wine is a whole different animal—with a much earthier, Old World feel all around to it—with fine aromas of dirt pile, forest greenery, clay, pepper and blackberry fruit leading the way. It is warm-fruited, chewy and earthy in the mouth, with plenty of grippy tannins along for the ride. It does present a nice creamy texture through the middle, but its rugged youthful character is never too far away and those tannins definitely need some time to tame their raw character. I think this is going to provide good drinking pleasure with a bit more time in the cellar.
2003 Ridge Monte Bello Santa Cruz Mountains. I was drinking very slowly, and alas, this wine was all gone by the time I went to pour some. I do recall there being very positive feelings all around about it, though! 85% Cab Sauvignon, 8% Merlot, 7% Petit Verdot.
2005 Flora Springs Cabernet Sauvignon Rutherford Hillside Reserve Napa Valley. The last wine of the official line-up is cool and reserved on the nose, with tight aromatics featuring some black cherry and dark earth elements. It is smooth and more warm-fruited in the mouth than the nose would seem to suggest. It has a nice juicy quality to the red fruit that interplays nicely with the dusty earth and oak that are so readily apparent. For me, this is one to put away for a good long rest.
After hours (not blind):
2007 Merryvale Cabernet Sauvignon Starmont Napa Valley. The nose here is a bit confectionary, with sweet candied blueberries and mixed jam aromas competing with syrupy cassis and an odd whiff of industrial rubber. In the mouth, it is quite rich and probably the most full-bodied wine of the day—with a rich fudgy core, a lot of creamy body, but also wood in abundance. It feels a bit open-knit and under-structured, but that could just be because it pumps out such oodles of fruit at this early stage of the game. In the end, I just find it to be a bit bruising to the palate and really wouldn’t want to approach it again for like another 5 years.
-Michael