Notes from a brown bag blind tasting dinner July 2019
2016 Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles – pale colour, nice lemony nose, green hints, light to medium body, decent.
2012 Serge Dagueneau Côtes de la Charité Les Montées de St. Lay Pinot Beurrot – hints of chard as well as sauv blanc in this nose, slightly funky, some shortbread cookie elements, finishing with a buttery sort of feel. Pinot Beurrot is the Burgundian name for Pinot Gris.
2007 Marimar Estate Pinot Noir Don Miguel Vineyard – Russian River winery run by Marimar Torres. Pale edges, dark garnet colour, slightly musty dark cherry nose, ample soft tannin. Medium length well made pinot.
2013 Casale del Giglio Cesanese Rosso – this IGT from Lazio made from a local varietal. Quite dark colour and smoky toasty nose. There was an almost perfumed impression, but it was evident in the mouth not the nose, if that makes any sense. Contrary to indications from the nose, the wine was actually medium bodied and quite pleasant.
2016 Kettle Valley Petite Sirah Naramata Bench Reserve – take a look on Cellartracker – there are exactly 6 bottles of this wine listed and they are all in my cellar. This adventurous BC winery obtained some Durif clone 5 and planted it a few years ago and this was the first wine made from it – the only Petite Sirah/Durif that he knows of in Canada. They made 25 cases of it. It was a dark bright wine with plummy fruit in the nose and some spice coming in on palate, medium long with good clean acidity. They treated it well – it went through full malolactic and they used French oak for 21 months. Very promising first taste (I was dreading a Turley PS at the age of three years experience).
2002 Cheval des Andes – only the second vintage of this joint venture between Cheval Blanc and Terrazas de Los Andes, this was al cocoa in the nose with a bit of heat, still youthful but drinking well. It is a blend of Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, (40/60% but they added Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot in later vintages) The finish was long and showed soft tannin. Lovely supple wine – a real treat.
2007 Stratus Cabernet Franc – Canadian wine from Niagara region, this dark wine was obviously from a warm vintage with some herbal notes in the nose, lots of tannin, and terminal acidity and a hint of the usual cab franc greenness in the finish. Very good showing at that age.
2015 Deep Roots Pinot Blanc – a BC winery (with which I have zero previous experience) made a sweet Pinot Blanc and managed to come up with a wine that had a nose ike distilled water (i.e. bugger all there) and a taste that was simply…sweet. No acid, no redeeming qualities – might as well have been tasting simple sugar syrup. Gack!!!!
2014 Trius Late Harvest Vidal – Trius is an Ontario winery and Vidal is a hybrid grape. Darker (which isn’t saying much as the previous wine looked like water) and with a decent varietal nose, had the varietal been other than Vidal. Too sweet, though not notably lacking in acidity. Another miss for me. A tasting that got off to a very nice start and ended in anticlimactic shambles. Oh well.
