My wife and I had dinner recently with another couple at their home, and they served some nice wines to go along with some amazing home cooking.
NV Billecart-Salmon Champagne Brut Rose. The aromas here are bright and nicely focused around soft red fruit and toasty bread notes. It feels well-balanced, purely-flavored and well refined. A lovely start to any evening.
1998 Louis Jadot Corton-Charlemagne. The nose offers up all kinds of interesting and unexpected notes, including creme brulee, butterscotch, lemon drops, dark ginger ale and raspberry-vanilla candy. In the mouth, this bottle sadly proves much less interesting than on the nose. The first thing I notice is that it is not especially rich—indeed, it feels almost thin. Also, I find a lot of intrusive heavily-toasted oak planking toward the back of the palate and on the finish, which does at least have good length. I decided to re-visit a few hours later, and indeed it was a bit less oaky and overall better integrated. Still, I don't care for it, other than the really interesting bouquet it offers.
1978 Château Lascombes Margaux. Popped and poured. Dark garnet, healthy-looking color. The nose opens with intense aromas of coffee grounds, along with earth and funky tobacco leaf before some mixed berry fruit makes itself known. On the whole, it is quite a nice bouquet. In the mouth, it is medium-bodied and totally without tannins, and there is some crunchy acidity to contend with. Most of the action takes place in the mocha-tinged mid-palate, where the fruit is cool and feels a bit aloof and remote. There is very little in the way of any bass note, and frankly it doesn’t have a lot of staying power on the palate. For all that, it is a pleasure to sniff and this particular bottle served just fine as a dinner claret.
1983 Château de Fargues Sauternes. From 375 ml. The color here is like a combination of melted caramel and dark iced tea. One then encounters a nose of dark molasses, bananas foster, spiced rum, burnished sugar, and something like rich wood varnish. It is viscous-textured, and features flavors of molasses and fig. It goes down nice and easy, with mild acidity, and leaves a pleasing aftertaste of citrus tang. Very nice.
-Michael