A good friend and fellow wine aficionado had her 60th birthday last Friday, and I brought three very special wines to the party:
1995 Musigny Vielles Vignes, Comte Georges De Vogue
Everything one would expect from a top-notch grand cru Burgundy from a top producer in a good year. At twenty years out, this wine has really hit its stride. The aroma is abundant, fragrant, and complex. The fruit flavors fill the mouth and dance elegantly on the palate, before tailing off into a long complex finish. Elegance and grace are the watchwords here. There is not a rough edge to be found anywhere in this wine. There is plenty of structure, but it is all in the background where it belongs. This wine should give us at least another decade of pleasure.
1985 Hermitage, Jean-Louis Chave
Very intense syrah color, with some brick-red along the edges betraying the wine's age. Wonderful and intense aromas of black fruits with distinctive notes of smoke and bacon. Mouth-filling and complex flavors, with the acidity and tannins fully integrated. The finish goes on forever. Where the Musigny expressed elegance and grace, this one has power and grace.
1955 Taylor Vintage Porto
Since this is my birth year, I bought half a case of this back in the 1980s when I first got serious about wine. It was fun to have a good friend and fellow wine lover who also was born in 1955 to share it with. It has that translucent brickish-purple color that one sees in fully mature vintage Port. I washed the bottle out after decanting and as one would expect, it had thrown a tremendous amount of sediment. The color was a lot more intense than I thought it would be, and there was more fruit and less brandy both in the aroma and in the flavor than I had expected. This wine is an indescribably great tasting experience. If you want an example of why people bother to cellar vintage Port for decades, this is it.
All three wines merit a Triple Curly with an extra Woo-Woo-Woo!
-Paul W.