Dinner with Salil on Sunday evening:
2001 Franz Hirtzberger Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Honivogl
Golden color. Some of the youthful Gruner elements of green pea and cress remain, but they are mostly overtaken by slightly roasted peach and deep minerals. There's great depth to this wine, but without corresponding weight, such that it remains refreshing despite its sheer size. An excellent showing, and probably as good as it is going to get unless one is a fan of truly old Gruner Veltliner.
1996 Château Haut-Bailly
This is beginning to enter that second phase of life for a Bordeaux where the earthy elements overtake the fruit. There's still quite a bit of dark red fruit to be had, but leathery, smoky and woodsy (not woody) scents are moving to the center. I would say that it still needs cellar time, since the entry of the wine was dense and complex, but the finish tailed off too rapidly for a wine with as much stuffing as it appears to have. Very good now, but upside for those with patience.
1996 Müller-Catoir Haardter Herzog Riesling Spätlese
When this wine was first released in 1997 I set off on a quest to buy as many bottles as possible. Catoir was heavily allocated back then, so tracking down and acquiring 6 was quite a feat. The wine was stunning in its youth, with blazingly bright acids and correspondingly bright fruit. After about 18 months it went into a hard, sullen shell. I tried a couple of bottles at various times, hoping it would emerge, but was consistently greeted with an angry, lactic, ferocious wine that was like the on-release bottle's evil twin. Last night the promise of the young wine finally emerged as a mature wine that retained much of its youthful fruit, but also integrated acids that, while still bright, were no longer lactic or painful. Layers of aromas and flavors, capturing fruit, salt, rock and faint pine needles, danced as if choreographed, moving from one to the other in ever changing sequences. Thankfully this was not the last bottle in the cellar.