Small dinner to drink some wines we’ve had for many years.
Lanson Brut – a nice palate refresher/primer.
2004 Springfield Estate Life From Stone Sauvignon Blanc – one of the best Cape SBs I’ve come across, even now with a few years of age showing nice acidity , some colour, good grassy nose and medium long finish. Excellent with salmon en croute.
1961 Ch. Latour – we had acquired this bottle over a decade ago and elected to savour it without food. Amazingly dark wine, a fairly ripe nose of sweet currant and cigar with a bit of vanilla, good but not lavish fruit on palate, a bit of soft tannin and a lingering aftertaste that went on for a long time. If we’d tasted this blind, we’d have probably opted for a 1982 or a 1986! This was another Parker 100 pointer, and while it was very, very good, I have to give priority to the 1961 Haut Brion we drank last Spring. That wine was a close to perfection as I can recall ever tasting, while this one was a half step down from that. And even so it handily beat out 99.9% of everything else I’ve tasted in the last year (the Haut Brion only excepted).
1989 Stags Leap Winery Cabernet – we needed to have a red with the short ribs, and my friend hauled this elderly bottle out. This wasn’t exactly a stellar vintage in California, and I didn’t expect much. The wine was a pleasant surpise, showing dark colour, a fruit and cocoa based nose that was quite decent, resolved tannin, good balance and decent length. In fact this wine was better than another 1989 I’d had earlier this month, the Ridge Monte Bello Cab, which carried much more acidity and less fruit. Good show!
1985 Grahams Port – dark wine with a spicy plum and date nose, less sweet than many vintages of this wine tend to be, slightly hot but not to the point of being unpleasant, with very good length. I haven’t started to drink this wine from my cellar yet, but based on this tasting I’d say it was hitting prime time.