Had a restful and lengthy lunch with friends this weekend and opened some interesting wines.
2012 Picco Maccario Lavignone Rosato – this Barbera based rose from Piemonte was showing rich colour, and still has excellent balance – refreshing in hot weather.
1997 Chave St. Joseph – this is at the end of it’s plateau and needs drinking, but still offers quite a lot. The colour is now into the almost Burgundian range, though still with good depth. The nose is copybook Northern Rhone with slight funkiness, not excessive, and pure Syrah fruit as well as some earthy leather and blood notes. Tannins now very soft in the background, but still good fruit levels and acidity. Very decent showing from a wine that many predicted would be past prime almost a decade ago.
1979 Ridge Santa Cruz Cabernet – made from the grapes that didn’t go into the Monte Bello, this cab has always impressed me with it’s consistent quality as well as longevity (I opened an early 90s bottle recently, in great shape). This was showing a sweet oak and dill nose, still had amazingly good levels of fruit, and a nice persistent sweetness in the finish. Great condition.
We had a lengthy relaxed summer lunch starting with asparagus with a tarragon-chive mayo decorated with chive flowers and an escarole salad with blue cheese and roasted walnut vinaigrette, and then went into the main event, Brontosaurus style beef ribs a la Chasens. You get these from prime rib roasts that have had the bones removed, but the problem is that they usually strip all the meat from the bones and you have to ask specially to have them with meat left on. They were baked in the over, cooled and then anointed with Dijon mustard and bread crumbs, put back in the oven and heated. The additions to the bread crumbs escape me at the moment but I’ll edit this if I recall them. In any case, absolutely excellent, served with a potato salad that stressed the vinegar and left out the oil, a nice foil to the beef.
I had brought another Syrah so we started with it:
2005 Bunnell Family Cellar Syrah Boushey McPherson Vineyard – this Washington wine showed a sweet syrah nose, featuring dark cherry notes and hints of dark chocolate and smoked meat. So far, the wine could have been French. On palate, a sweet full bodied presentation with good length, more New World. Nicely balanced wine, drinking very well now.
2002 Karl Lawrence Cabernet Reserve (Herb Lamb Vineyard) – another clearly American cab with a lovely pure fruit nose all about black fruit – cherries, currants…and while the tannins were abundant, they were soft and well integrated, with no edge to them at all. Very good indeed, and showing all the things that I value in American Cabernet.
Delightful afternoon with friends and wonderful wines. Dinner was not even mentioned when we got home! I'm sure it will come as no surprise if I reveal that our hosts were Jenise and Bob!