Last month, my family and I attended a very nice dinner party with some friends we hadn’t seen in a while. We had 9 adults and 4 kids, so our friend Angie brewed up a delicious pot of veal stew and we had tons of delicious sides and starters, as well. The stew had a good dose of cinnamon in it, so those of us supplying wines tried to think of some matches that would work, and I think for the most part we were pretty darned successful.
1999 Chateau de la Font du Loup Chateauneuf du Pape. Angie and John had bought these on release during a visit to the estate several years ago. I was not familiar with the producer at all, so it was a real treat to drink these bottles. Overall, this is an extremely elegant take on Chateauneuf du Pape. It leads with a very pretty bouquet of kirsch and cherry-berry fruit, followed by airy notes of old leather, soft spices, cocoa powder and lavender. In the mouth, it is medium-weighted, with a slightly crunchy backbone of acidity. It seems fully-resolved and generally tannin-free, with a welcome purity of cherry, cranberry, mineral, anise and dried flower sensations flowing along easily with an extremely silky textured and filigreed mouthfeel. It is ready to drink (and probably has been for a few years), so my suggestion would be to enjoy it now.
1998 Braida Barbera d’Asti Bricco dell’Uccellone. This is a horse of an entirely different color. It features a very exotic and utterly full-blown and richly-styled bouquet packed with aromas of spiced plums, fig, Christmas fruitcake, blueberries, allspice and chocolate paste that manage to just really entice and mesmerize. On the palate, it is more traditionally balanced, but still loaded with warm plum, fig and black cherry fruit laced with exotic spices that go great with the stew. It is fleshy and substantial and clearly quite modern in tone, but does a very good job of balancing all the flavors with a solid underpinning of soft acidity. I wasn’t sure I would like this style and I may have been influenced by the food pairing, but I think this is a wine that pulls this approach off extremely well.
2000 Allegrini Palazzo della Torre Veronese IGT. This wine is darker and a bit more treacled on the nose—with surprisingly youthful and thickly-textured aromas of black currants, black olives, charred meat, fruitcake and soft oak. It is dense and velvety-textured in the mouth, with a lot of spiced black fruit and a surprising amount of youthful tannins. It is fairly rich, with a solid blast of black currant, blackberry, dark chocolate, spice and smoky wood ember sorts of flavors that provide an interestingly faceted journey but could probably use 2-3 more years to mellow the tannins and smooth out the finish.
-Michael