WTN: Wimbledon Final wines

Made Tom Ka Gai, Piccata Milanese, and spaghetti with my own Luganiche tomato sauce for Remo and Nicole, watching boring Formula One and a nearly as boring a Wimbledon Men’s Final, which our homeboy Roger was fortunate to win.

Château Pavie Macquin St. Emilion 1995
Full, warm garnet-ruby with black reflections, faint watery-orange rim. Dried tomato, Rayas-like Kirsch, smoked meat, some cherry and dried herbs, faint spicy Greek black olive and graphite notes. Old-viney extract, nicely firm and juicy-mouthwatering acidity and tannin, quite long, nicely balanced, exceptionally natural-tasting Bordeaux. Soft metal and mineral underpinning. Only just entering its plateau of maturity, but certainly open enough to provide pleasure. Rating: 91+/92?

Château La Mission Haut Brion Pessac Léognan 1988
Perfectly stored half bottle. Smoke, cigar tobacco, brick clay earth, cherry fruit of impressive subtlety, hugely intense yet noble minerality and earthiness, merely lacks the fruit thickness and sweetness of the greatest renditions. Now definitely mature enough, oxidizing ever-so-slightly with prolonged airing. Nicely juicy and mouthwatering acids. Roast beef juice fruit, sweetly decadent on the quite long finish, utterly lovely. Faint tarragon. Drink up, at least from this format. Rating: 93-

Pesquera Ribera del Duero Crianza 2004
Thanks to Remo. Opaque purple, tiny purple-ruby rim. Syrupy blackberry and subtle small blackcurranty forest berry mix, mild cinnamon and vanilla oak. Very fruit-driven if not syrupy-sweet vintage. Good amount of acidity and tannin, significantly less powerful and tough than the 1994’s at release. None of the animal sweat the 1994 already showed back then, either. Altogether more primary-fruity and syrupy, more superficiality, less minerality, more modernistic style. Balanced, fairly firm finish, quite long. Recurring strawberry sweetness on the finish. Not sure I like the stylistic makeover, but it certainly makes for greater “approachability” (I would still cellar it, hoping it will show more depth with bottle age). Rating: 90+?

Greetings from Switzerland, David.

The LMHB has been a stunning wine every time I've tried it. I last tried it in 2005 and it was holding well, but peaked.

Consistently stunning, I agree.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.

[David M. Bueker]

The Formula 1 was indeed boring (as most of those races are - all overtaking done in the pits), but I thought the Wimbledon final was about as good as they can get without a 17-15 final set. The tennis was well played & the match was tense and close until the very end.

Nice notes by the way.

Thanks! We found the Wimbledon Final suspenseful only in the sense that it looked as if Nadal would win, but boring from the perspective that it would have been fun to see a match between these two in which both played their best. Roger didn't. Nadal did as well on grass as we've remember having seen. Roger ended up surviving two tie breaks and four possible break points against him in the fifth set, thanks to nerves of steel, that is, great serve. Without that, his not too effective and overly defensive playing might have cost him the match, he really could get much closer to losing and still win this one.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.

In any other era, Nadal would be the number 1. Sampras is lucky that when he played (and not to try to take it away from him), his competitors were not as strong as they are now. Many critics ar now saying that Federer is more dominant in tennis than Tiger is now at golf. Wow...

[David M. Bueker]

I found the first three sets very good, and the last set tense (mostly due to that 15-40 Federer situation that he survived).

The fourth set was not at the level of the rest.

In any even we are lucky to be seeing such a great rivalry. I can go back through my tennis memories, and the wealth of great rivalries over the last 30+ years is much better than in any other sport.

I agree, the rivalry between the two greatly spices up their encounters, the more so because their respect for each other is obvious (at times too obvious for my taste on Roger's side). One must wonder if Nadal's style will allow him to play on this level for long, though, one doesn't need to be a physiotherapist to see he's putting a lot of pressure on his joints, his knees in particular. Actually, even though I gave up tennis for pool billiards in my teens, I remember being humbled a great deal by grounds on which one can't slide one bit changing direction, just as I've always preferred walking up a mountain and taking the cableway back down, rather than the other way round. I hope Nadal's here to stay for years, but his style is definitely much less economic than e.g. Roger's.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.

[David M. Bueker]

I remember being humbled a great deal by grounds on which one can't slide one bit changing direction, just as I've always preferred walking up a mountain and taking the cableway back down, rather than the other way round.

You are lucky to have the cableways. Almost all of my hiking (except for that brief holiday in Grindewald in 2003) has to go up and down. I completed most of a rather rigorous hike on Saturday & my leg muscles are very upset about the pounding they took on the way down (and my knee is even more upset about the beating it took when I fell down).

Ouch! Get well soon!

Greetings from Switzerland, David.