WTN: Clerc Milon, Pique, Majeur, Calera, etc.

[Jenise]

From over the past week:

2004 Château Clerc Milon Pauillac Red Bordeaux Blend
Not decanted. Plum and black cherry fruit with coffee grounds, walnuts and saddle leather. Acidity's good and the tannins are still providing some backbone. Very traditional, more rustic than refined, but quite satisfying.

2004 Château Picque Caillou Pessac-Léognan Red Bordeaux Blend
Little buggers got away from me. Not brown but not much fruit or persistence, should have drunk them up years ago.

2006 Calera Pinot Noir Mount Harlan Cuvée
Four years since anyone else reviewed this one on CT; unusual. But not everyone enjoys old pinot like I do. Initial nose of iodine and Luxardo cherries followed by a little caramel and stewed plums. Long finish but on the edge of showing some oxidative notes so drink up. Meanwhile, was very good with grilled breast of pheasant in a mustard sauce on wild rice.

2015 E. Guigal Côtes du Rhône
I fondly remember discovering Guigal CdR a few decades ago only to be disappointed by most vintages since. This is one of the good ones--just medium body with spicy grenache fruit and a touch of that Rhone barnyard thing on the nose. Very attractive and easy to drink.

2015 Marqués de Cáceres Rioja Crianza Tempranillo Blend, Tempranillo
Was happy to see this among the bottles of relatively plonky domestic wines that showed up at a non-geek NY Eve party. Dark red fruits augmented by flavors in the fruit cake spectrum like raisins, dates, warm spices and orange peel, are augmented by lively acidity and a solid finish.

2008 Craggy Range Te Kahu Gimblett Gravels Vineyard Bordeaux Blend
Over-achieving green tannins persist but there's enough development now to round out the experience. Floral and forest nose with black fruit and menthol on the palate. If there's enough acidity here to pave the way, it has the tannins to hang in thru 2030.

2009 Force Majeure Collaboration Series I Ciel du Cheval Vineyard Red Mountain Red Bordeaux Blend
PnP'd. Much better than January's bottle. The alcohol has calmed down so instead of brawny and clumsy it was sensuously opulent with black fruit, cigar box, dark chocolate and a bit of spice cake. This is the peak drinking window.

[David M. Bueker]

2006 is “old” Pinot Noir?

[Jenise]

Not IMO, no. And of course there is a variety of factors like low popularity of vintage and maybe even producer during that time frame, but still. Four years without a review on CT is a long time. No one else held onto them.

[David M. Bueker]

I see very few new or old Calera notes. They do not seem terribly popular with the wine board crowd.

[Jenise]

Agreed.

But back in the '80s, a particular vintage of Calera's Mt. Harlan (84? 85? 87? not sure) became an overnight darling of the pinot world. Don't recall any particulars like a 100 pt score from the Speck, but something of that sort occurred and it was a time when there weren't that many pinot-specific producers, and no one south of the Russian River got much attention. I was living in Alaska in the 90's when a guest with a name something like Zoltan showed up at a gallery opening, an event that in Anchorage was tantamount to an offline where one showed up with gallery-worthy bottles, arrived with one of those. I knew all about the wine but never thought I'd see a bottle. It was divinely different from any other pinot I'd ever had.

So eventful was that that I remember no one else or any other wine of that evening and wouldn't remember this gallery opening from any other of the many gallery openings we attended but for the appearance of Z-word and his Calera.

In the years since--eh. Never hear about them. But a friend in California opened a recent Calera about two years ago that we were all pretty impressed with. As I was later with a Calera chardonnay. So when a few older bottles of Calera showed up on Winebid recently, I picked up a few just to see what's up. This bottle was one of them.

I had that '04 Picque Caillou, it was a fun little wine for price ($9!)but last one was years ago

[Jenise]

Dale, I have this very vague memory of several of us picking up that wine to do some kind of test regarding storage. Cellar temp vs. ambient and try over a period of years--something like that? I then forgot all about it until unearthing these bottles (all cellar temp) a few weeks ago. They hadn't even made it into my inventory.

I'd forgotten about that!
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=31456&p=266488&hilit=picque+caillou#p266488

[Jenise]

Wow, Dale, can't believe I missed your post on that. Also, knowing I fully intended to participate, I can't imagine what happened to my non-cellar bottles...oh wait, maybe I do know. That was the year from hell in which our four-month kitchen renovation became a whole-first floor 16 month renovation because of all the problems uncovered. I remember precisely where I planned to store my non-cellar bottles, wonder if they're still there? It was one of the only places in the whole house that didn't get dismantled by construction, though I might have decided to give up and move them to the cellar for safekeeping.

2004 Bordeaux is definitely one of those overshadowed "classical" vintages of recent memory.

[Jenise]

Many 04's didn't/don't have much gumption for the long haul, but some producers excelled in that vintage anyway. Palmer ranks at the top for me of those I've tasted so far.