As many of you are aware, December the Fourth each year marks the sad passing of friend and mentor Tom Low. This year, with more of our disbanded wine group showing no or only belated interest in this event, it was decided with the Low family to hold a more informal gathering at a local Turkish restaurant and once again, the wine from our respective cellars delivered many memorable moments on the night.
For starters, I decided to open my last bottle of Tyrrell's 1992 Vat 1 Semillon. Bought in 1997 as an "aged release" this remarkable white set the height of the bar for the night's proceedings with an outstanding performance. Majestically deep but bright and only light-medium gold with youthful green hues, this remarkably fresh Hunter Valley Semillon took a while to open up on the nose, eventually revealing notes of hay, citrus and roasted nuts, then melon and just a little toast and lemon butter. The palate was singing and ready for business although, for its age, still tight and invigorating. Steely with a wealth of herb-tinged linear melon and citrus fruit intertwined with some lovely bottle-developed flavours of toast and honey, the most significant trait was the incredibly zingy integrated acidity that delivered an expansive finish that blew me away. Astonishing wine needing perhaps another ten years to peak! 94 points
Next up was a ringer from one of our guests - a 2005 Fraciacortia La Montina Spumante. Served masked, everyone at the table was most impressed with this vigorous fresh Italian sparkler loaded with bucketloads of ripe green fruit - melons, apples, guava with only a twist of detectable autolysis character. Incredibly vivacious and thrilling in the mouth showing excelllent balance, terrific length and considerable potential to develop further in the bottle for perhaps another five to ten years. An eye-opener and 92 points from me.
My Champagne followed - Jacquesson's Avize Grand Cru Blanc de Blanc from 1995. Predictably, more developed and revealing far more yeast autolysis character than the previous wine, this chardonnay-based bubbly reeked of brioche and more complex pastry shop smells over a sophisticated pear and stone-fruit core. With a palate displaying immaculate swirling mousse and mountains of bready, nutty flavour followed by a terrific long powerful finish, this Blanc de Blanc is now "a point". 93 points
Toi and the girls then graced us with a surreal experience - the Low's last bottle of 1989 Bonneau du Martray Corton Charlemagne. Infantile colour and fresh as a daisy in every aspect, this exceptional Grand cru white Burgundy delighted just about everyone with its sumptuous bouquet and palate of butter and grilled nuts over exquisitite delicate white peach fruit wrapped in a shroud of impossibly good, integrated new spicy, mealy oak. Impeccably balanced, rounded and beautifully honed, this example is testament to the finest definitions of understatement and elegance in an aged Chardonnay. A brilliant effort by this domaine and worthy of 95 points. Will hold for another decade in a top cellar.
We then embarked on a trio of reds from the mid-eighties. First up was a bottle I secured from Tom's cellar, the 1985 Ch. Palmer (Margaux) -a marvellously mature and mellow claret that delivered a wealth of herb, earth, licorice and cassis with that eerie barnyardy character lurking in the background. So easy to pass through the mouth with low acidity, rounded ripe curranty flavour and oodles of complexity and significant carry, this top class left-banker has shed most of its tannin but will hold for another five years. Lovely wine. 93 points.
Recently, Toi mentioned to me that Tom was a great fan of Doug Bowen reds in the seventies and eighties and she would like to show one for this memorial dinner. Bowen Estate's 1986 Coonawarra Cabernet was a very good wine on the night, although it needed a good breathe to shed some slightly off-putting fishy (probably bottle stink) smells at first. The wine held a solid brick red colour, an attractive nose of sweet earth, old leather, old ripe fruit and a faint hint of mint followed a largely intact palate giving up mature, smooth and rounded flavours but finished with fading fruit and was just too tart for my liking. I progressively downgraded my score on this wine on the night, but still a pretty fair effort for the vintage.
Our final red was a fitting end to the red bracket - the utterly brilliant 1986 Penfolds Grange. This wine was in top form on the night (it seems to have garnered a history of being variable bottle to bottle!). Inky and unyielding in the glass at first but blossomed as it saw more air, giving way to a cornacopia of seriously complex fruit and tarry oak that by the end of the night blew me away. Full of beef blood, cedar, dense plum and black cherry fruit with hints of violet and eucalypt resin as top notes, Australia's premier blue chip icon delivered identical flavour in the mouth but with such incredibly youthful structure suggesting perhaps another twenty years of evolution. A veritable tour de force in global winemaking. 95 points. Brilliant.
With desserts, I opened my only bottle of Ch. Coutet Cuvee Madame 1986. Without a skerrick of doubt, one of the best vinous experiences of my life. I'm loathe to give any wine a perfect score, but this top-of-the line Barsac rivals the Ch. D'Yquem 1975 as, perhaps, the best dessert wine I've opened. Like all things otherworldly, words cannot do some things justice. In this case, and at an advancing hour of the evening, I was forced by the sheer emotion of this experience, to give up putting pen to paper. Needless to say, this wine was my wine of the night and a strong candidate for my wine of the year. It was sublime in every aspect. Totally thrilling and compelling from the first visual in the glass, to the awesome aroma that bled from the glass, to a palate that had me begging to go back for more and a finish that would make you weep. This classic sweet Bordeaux had that ethereal mix of inert raw power tapered by supreme elegance, almost unbelievable balance and pure class. Not a hint of a fault in sight and with twenty, but probably considerably more, years evolution to savour. What a wine! 97 points.