For a tomato and mushroom risotto, I chose a 96 Misere Priorat hoping for a lighter bodied wine with good secondary development to accent the tangy, lightly herbal flavors in the dish, and this wine was perfect. Pale, mauve-y red color. Light red fruit mix with cinnamon notes and earth. Fruit faded and tannins got grippy toward the end of the bottle; if I owned more I'd plan to drink them up over the next year.
For an appetizer of smoked salmon and red onion on Finnish flat bread, I decided to see how the 1998 Weingut Riedel Riesling Halbtrocken Rheingauer Landwein was doing. Straw gold color. Very coconutty nose with fairly monotone white grapefruit flavors on the palate and soft acidity. I remember more complexity, but now just find it pleasant and without much of a future (though I could be wrong, I'm so out of my element with riesling wines.) A Terry Thiese selection for Michael Skurnik.
For another round of tomato-mushroom risotto, we decided to check on the progress of the 02 Mt. Baker Pinot Noir from Washington state. The wine has definitely put on weight over the past year. The cherry fruit has blackened and gone from light to robust, and there's some black pepper on the nose which is good because there's otherwise not much else going on besides some grippy tannins on the finish. Did they add syrah, one wonders.