Wednesday night wines in West Chester

WINE TALK
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But not your typical Wednesday night wines - well, maybe for Jeremy Holmes these are typical, but not for me ;^)

A group of us got together at Andiario, a primarily Italian restaurant where the chef has been doing some pretty cool things over the past 15 or so months. IMO, the best wine & food pairings were a tagliatelle dish with Bolete mushrooms that was paired with the La Tache, and a triangular pasta called Fusi Istriani with a rabbit ragu that went with the Monfortino.

And three non-premoxed grand cru Burgundies in a row - must have been the luck of the Irish!

The tasting order was as follows:

Sauzet
Bouchard Monty
Bouchard Chevy
La Tache
Monfortino
Clinet & Angelus (with a very nice squab dish)
Y’quem


Wow, the nose here is simply spectacular. So much going on here.

Sweet & sour cherry on an expansive palate - mind-blowingly good!

Lovely caramel on the nose.

Long on the palate - delicious! Unctuous.

  • 1995 Château Angélus - France, Bordeaux, Libournais, St. Émilion Grand Cru (9/11/2019)
    I liked the Clinet better, but this is still drinking well tonight.
  • 1995 Château Clinet - France, Bordeaux, Libournais, Pomerol (9/11/2019)
    Very nice, although tough to follow after the La Tache and Monfortino.

Still, on a Wednesday night in the suburbs, one could do a lot worse ;^)

I decanted this about 3 1/2 hours ago, but this is still a baby.

Great, but at least IMO, better in 10-20-30 years (assuming I am still around to know)!

This is richer and more evolved on the nose than the Sauzet was. On the palate, this is not as chiseled as the Sauzet, but is still quite nice.

Quite tight on the palate - seems crazy to say this, but probably too young. Or at least with plenty of time in front of it.

  • 2004 Etienne Sauzet Montrachet - France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Montrachet Grand Cru (9/11/2019)
    Color looks perfect here (and as you might imagine given the producer, we were worried about that).

Tight nose at the outset, with buttered nuts in the background. Pristine bottle on the palate - lengthy finish. Really nice.

Posted from CellarTracker

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Not typical for Jeremy Holmes. Too much Bordeaux and only 1 DRC. [wink.gif] Although if you’re going to drink a '71 La Tache, then why not pop a magnum?

But seriously, Bob, that sounds like an incredible night. [worship.gif]

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Some pretty heavy duty lumber there!

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Always hard to drink a great La Tache first, as everything pales by comparison. The 71 is a stunning wine,and may be my favorite of all time.So glad you got to drink it from magnum.One of the greatest red burgundy experiences you can have.( assuming a good bottle ) . Of course YMMV since in those days they bottled barrel by barrel, so there is some variation,but on balance one of the 5 greatest red burgundies I’ve ever had.(and I’ve had a few :slight_smile:- )
Congratulations and thanks for the write up.

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Interesting about them bottling them barrel by barrel, Ed. This is the 2nd time I’ve had the '71 La Tache from magnum (same super generous friend!), and I think I appreciated this bottle more, but that may just be because it was the most recent.

And while I get your point about the La Tache being a show stopper, I did not want to try it after a much younger and tannic Monfortino, so we decided to pour the reds oldest first.

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Funny, after I posted I was thinking similar thoughts about starting with the oldest,but I usually default to great Burgundy last because anything after never shows as well and it really doesn’t matter what comes before( although never sweet )
Even now the Domaine bottles only 6 barrels at a time,although thats much better than BxB.