We gathered to celebrate a house sale and purchase and I opted to use that excuse to haul out some wine I had been saving, in this case for a quarter century or so.
We started with hazelnuts and olives served with:
Bruno Paillard Brut Rose Premier Cuvee (nv) – this nonvintage wine was disgorged in May of 2009 and showed a slightly orange salmon colour. The nose was mature and yeasty with some berries present, and in the mouth we observed very good balance. A lovely fully mature wine.
We started with Cream of celery root soup, black truffles shavings, and salami 'croutons' served with:
2011 Guado al Tasso Vermentino – without doubt my favourite Vermentino, this showed a definite green tinge in colour, and typical pear and Oceanside scents in the nose with a slight cheesiness. Fairly full bodied, smooth, and perfect with the super refined celeriac soup.
The next course was Asparagus panna cotta, lobster, and a shallot-tarragon vinaigrette.
2011 Ch. La Louviere – this Graves had a delicious nose of apple/apricot and good mouth texture, full and clean a very good match with the food.
The next course was the main event with Roast Bryan Flannery rib cap, potato-porcini gratin and espresso jus. We had arrived at the wines I had provided and the first of these, which we started in tasting before the food appeared, was:
1990 Castello dei Rampolla Sammarco - I had spent considerable thought on what to pair with the following wine and had considered both Ornellaia and Solaia, but finally settled on this wine, a blend of mostly cab sauv with a little sangio. It showed a very claret like presentation, still very dark ruby red, with a claret sort of nose with the only hints of sangio being a dark cherry component. Excellent balance, sweet entry with excellent concentration and a slight sweetness on palate and very good length. It developed some cocoa in the nose with time. The best bottle of this I’ve opened.
1985 Sassicaia – this was the main event, and is a very highly rated wine, garnering 99-100 points repeatedly, which goes with the c. $2,000 plus pricing these days. I tend to be definitely iconoclastic in my assessments of wines like this. I have seen far too many so called objective tasting notes that were clearly swayed by the fact the RP etc. had given the wine a perfect score, including a couple where the descriptions failed to match the score – clearly corked bottles being rated at 98 points, for instance!
So I leveled a jaundiced eye at this bottle, while crossing my fingers that it would be in good shape as it had been quite a few years since I’d opened one. For once, the wine lived up to the hype. I do not award numerical scores to wine. I think it is impossible to distinguish between a 97 point and 100 point wine in most cases, so why bother. What I try to do is objectively assess a given wine and see if there is any aspect of it that is not yet harmonious, or is somehow lacking or could be just a bit better.
I am very pleased to say that this particular bottle disclosed no flaws at all to this very critical taster. It was also quite dark, and showed a nose of spiced dark fruit that swiftly changed into a sort of perfumed kaleidoscope with new aspect added every few minutes, including some very claret-like cedar and lead pencil, some blueberry, and some smoky earthy mushroom hints. On palate it was supple now with great concentration of flavour, and a finish that lasted minutes. Not a flaw to be found and I gave it a good try looking. Such a great pleasure to hit a top notch bottle of this wine. Objectively, if tasted blind, it showed more like something about a decade old.
We sat back after suitable reflection to enjoy a final course of Gorgonzola dolce, figs, strawberries with 100 year old balsamic vinegar. It seemed to cry out for wine, although we were only four at table, so the hostess offered:
2002 Ch. Rieussec – not a highly botrysized vintage, but still a pretty rich wine, light amber with a luscious fruit nose, sweet lemon with apricot, quite fresh on palate, clean and very nice. With hints of coconut at the end.
Great dinner, great company, great wines.
