So last night's dinner was a leisurely cold platter (cheese, ham terrine, veggies, crackers) in front of the TV watching the remarkable documentary "In Love with Adolph Hitler" stitched together from camera roll shot by Hitler's naive young lover Eva Braun, a secretary he hired when she was just 17 and he just some mid-level agitator with plans. We followed that with a symphonic and spoken word composition about Ellis Island told thru the stories of seven immigrants who came to America that way and documented their impressions in diaries and letters that have been collected in the Ellis Island museum, and each story was told in the first person by an actors of similar background (i.e. Michael Nouri for a Greek, Barry Bostwick for an Irish). And of course, there were Jews, some the only survivors in their extended families. As a one-two punch, these shows watched together on the same night were highly impactful and it will be days before I get over it. I'd taped both sometime in the last six months from Nat Geo and PBS (Great Performances) respectively, if anyone's interested in locating them. Highly, highly recommended.
It was actually a cold day here and so red wine appealed the most, and we began with a 1998 Ducru Beaucaillou. I decanted just to remove any sediment (there was none) and it was perfectly ready to go. One of the best left bank 98's in my experience, it's absolutely at peak with lovely old leather stuff in the blackberry, tobacco and graphite, but the tannins are mostly resolved and I wouldn't test its patience by holding them much longer.
But dammit, it just didn't last long enough so we also opened a 2011 Evening Land Vineyards Pinot Noir from Oregon's Eola - Amity Hills. What I wrote about the last bottle "bright acidity and minimalist cherry notes carry the flavors along with some tea, mushroom and forest notes" earlier this year remains true, but last night's bottle seemed to have put on some weight and these recent bottles are better any previous. I have two more and am tempted to hold them for two years just to see where they go.
Because we started out with a Bordeaux we were drinking out of Bordeaux glasses we stayed with them, and it occurred to me to compare glassware as the Evening Land is such an acid-driven wine. We have a big round-bowled Riedel made for Italian wines that flattens acidity, and indeed I liked it better out of that glass, but then we grabbed a regulation burg bowl and tried that--even better. We continued to pour the wine back and forth between the glasses to ensure that our impressions weren't order-related, and they weren't. The fruit was truly more layered and interesting in the burg bowl. Nice to be reminded how much glassware matters, and it occurs to me that some people I know who don't drink own or drink much pinot also don't own burg bowls. Could that, I wonder, in part be the problem? They compromise a given bottle's best traits with the wrong glassware, and then blame the grape.
And lastly, I hate the name Evening Land. It makes no sense. So there.