Last Friday night we had a Skagit Country Loire-enthusiast and cheese shopkeeper join us for our neighborhood tasting (54 people attended!), and since he had a 50 mile drive home he planned to spend the night at my house. The tasting made me magnanimous and I invited about 20 attendees people over for an after-party, and I grabbed a bunch of bottles from the cellar to pour. I didn't take notes, but these are thumbnails of what I remember of the wines:
1990 Olga Raffault "Les Picasses", Chinon
Since the tasting theme that night was Loire Valley, I pulled a lot of Loires including the pride of my little Loire collection, this wine. The wine is at peak, absolute perfection. Another bottle opened about two years ago still had some rough tannins, but this one was fully resolved, feminine and elgeant. Rose red with a tawny cast, and flavors of mild red fruit, potpourri and dried thyme.
1997 Chateau du Hureau "Cuvee Lisagathe", Saumur-Champigny
Most of my guests aren't used to drinking aged wines and so the charms of the delicae Raffault were a bit lost on some, but no one failed to get how wonderful this wine was. Full-bodied and robust and completely into secondary development, with tons of minerality and saddle notes. It did have an unusual vinyl note in the nose, but that actually made it even more intriguing, for there was so much going on here it was able to integrate.
1999 Charles Joguet "Clos de Varennes", Chinon
I've loved this off-vintage bottling for it's quirky high acid, black cherry and pie spice flavors, but this bottle was tired and oxidative.
1987 Beringer Howell Mountain Bancroft Ranch Merlot, Napa
For the sake of the guests whose eyes cross when you mention foreign wine names, I pulled a few older bottles of other grapes for comparison. The cork crumbled into the bottle (thank god for my Nuance put-in-neck wine filter/pourer), but this bottle impressed everyone. It was still kicking and inviting like an old,c reased leather armchair.
1997 Swan Frati Ranch Zinfandel, Sonoma
I love Rod Berglund's Zinfandels, but 97 was too warm a year for his style of winemaking and though this wine has lasted admirably, this bottle wasn't as interesting as a bottle tasted a year ago. The acid's just about gone, and it's getting soy sauce-y. Still, my guests weren't nearly as critical and they drained the bottle.
2000 Novy Syrah, Napa
I don't remember that much about it, except that I thought it blacker, heavier and not nearly as interesting as the 2000 Novy Santa Lucia Highlands Syrah we'd opened the week before. It was the only bottle that didn't get finished.
Someone then lamented that she was born in 1954 and would never have a wine from her birth year, and it was that beyond-pain time in the early morning hours where such news just about made everyone cry, so I trotted off to the cellar to retreive a 1954 Leacock Terrantez Madeira. and everybody got happy again. Happy birthday, Lynette! The wine was stunning, absolutely magical, with every citrus ever grown and topped off with toffee and coffee notes. One guest said, "I've never tasted so many flavors in a wine," and that about sums it up.
That wine made someone wonder what a relatively new Madeira tastes like, since most of my guests have never had any Madeira before, and so I popped the Rare Wine Company Boston Bual. I've gotta admit, for all I crowed about the Charleston Sercial a few weeks ago, the Boston beats it for accessible appeal. It's a brilliant fiery tawny color that's almost more red than brown and it has superior acidity, all of which makes the wine pirouette in your mouth. Compared to the Sercial, it's more citrus and less nuts, and very very bright. Killer stuff.
