About a decade ago, we read somewhere about a traditional May Day picnic in parts of Italy -- maybe Rome, maybe the Veneto, information is fuzzy -- that involves favas, young pecorino, salumi, bread, and wine. Always in need of pretending we're somewhere else on May Day -- which in the United States is called "Loyalty Day" (thanks, President Eisenhower) -- we've made the tradition our own, though not as a picnic. (Today's high: about 45F.) Today, we had two vegetables (favas with olio novello and pan-roasted ramps with balsamico tradizionale); two pecorinos (one aged 30 days, one 60); and two salumi (a Smoking Goose "Dodge City", like a Salami Toscano with pink peppercorns, and a small finocchiona). So we figured we needed two wines, too. We've often done Valpolicella with this meal, but this year we decided to have, side by side: our last bottle of Edmunds St. John 2006 El Dorado County Gamay Noir au Jus Blanc, Witters Vineyard, "Bone-Jolly,", and our first of Edmunds St. John 2013 El Dorado County Gamay Noir au Jus Blanc, "Bone-Jolly." The 2006 was 12.7%, the 2013 was 13.5%; the 2006 was designated Witters Vineyard and gives an elevation of 3300', while the 2013 doesn't have a vineyard designation and gives an elevation of "over" 3000'; finally and perhaps most importantly, the 2006 was produced and bottled "by hook or by crook," the 2013 "by thumbnail moonlight." Both under screwcap.
The 2006 showed its age most obviously in the color, a ruby-to-purple center bricking around the edges, but otherwise was surprisingly vigorous; the acidity has softened around the edges but the fruit is still lively, and there's a core of minerality as well as herb or spice (I don't think I was just imagining fennel seed, since we opened this way before we started eating the finocchiona) that seemed to make it slightly more solidly built than its younger sibling, at least for the first couple of hours. The 2013 was much more purple to the eye and in the mouth at first, and the acidity was also more prominent, even slightly disjointed, but with air, this smoothed out well, and the wine picked up some mild (and not unwelcome) earthy-funky notes I don't normally associate with Bone-Jolly, as well as sliding toward licorice. That aside, what strikes me is, first, how well the 2006 has held up with age, and, second, how similarly constructed these two wines are despite the differences in vintage, age, and perhaps also vineyard source, though maybe Steve can speak to just how different they really are. Such a consistently good wine, and so consistently long-lived for something that seems built for drinking young.