My close, close friends Heather McDougall and Jeff Wong got together with me for another fantastic evening of food, wine and companionship. The last time the 3 of us did this last year, it was a 6-month or so delayed b-day dinner for Jeff. This time it was my turn and we managed to limit the delay to 2 weeks. I chose to have us dine at Woodlot and I think all of us were pleased with the fine food and excellent service there.
2016 Bachelet-Monnot Puligny Montrachet Les Referts
Heather served this to us blind, but it didn’t take much to get to “mmm–white burgundy–mmmm”. This was some fascinating bottle. It opens being beautifully open–true, a touch of reduction, but it’s sublimated into lovely pear, popcorn and mineral shavings–and the cellarTracker note that mentions almond paste is not wrong—and drinks as a very poised glass of wine. Really lovely. 3 hours in? Wow, the reduction has kicked it up a notch and it has closed the doors for business, tightening up on the palate considerably! Crazy right?
Having just had the Jadot 14 Referts on Friday, this may be a vineyard that I want to seek out within the Puligny appellation–really liked both of them a ton.
2005 Domaine Maillard Corton Les Renardes
Decanted for about an hour. I was worried that I hadn’t had a chance to give it more. I needn’t have been. This was a stunner after another 45 minutes in the glass and didn’t stop giving the whole night. Translucency is what strikes you most as you drink this–yes with the Corton iron bits but around a primary of wild strawberries and sweet raspberry. Beautifully accented acidity here, it is an absolute pleasure to consume and will probably worm its way into the WOTY discussion for me.
2006 Rousseau Clos de la Roche
Tremendously generous bring from Jeff which I definitely hadn’t asked for, he has one more. He will do well to leave that one more for quite some time yet. Also no chance to decant before we got there, and squalling infant managed to make its way to petulant child by about hour 4. Fine building blocks of dark, dark fruit with earth and a metallic sheen to it all, very sturdy framing right now—and actually just a little hot to Heather and me. It will probably all settle down. If you have any, I suggest a slumber of at least a decade. Reminded me a lot of the 1999 Jadot Pommard Rugiens I’ve had on a few occasions which I wonder if it will ever grow up. So thrilled to try—this was the last year that this was sold in Vintages at anything approaching a reasonable price.
2008 Muller-Catoir Haardter Herzog Rieslaner Auslese
Picked this little goodie up in Detroit a couple months ago and wanted to try. Deep amber colour in the glass. And extremely hard to get a handle on what we’re having here. There is plenty of freshness and acidity, but almost a sweatiness to the ripe-ish fruit and mixed in with some curious sour in a sweet-and-sour way. I think Heather nailed it with this having some VA, but it makes this intriguing rather than flawed. It exerted a fascination on all 3 of us as well as the wine team at the restaurant. I tried again today and the tastes are still there–I think I’d go with almost-overripe star fruit and a dash of tangerine and nectarine—but the energy has been drawn out. I’ll check on it again tomorrow.
The real highlight was the companionship and mutual affection all three of us have for each other. It has become a new precious tradition for me to do this and I look forward to many future years of repetition.
Sante,
Mike
I’m trying to coax Heather down and to coax Jeff back down for the next Atlanta visit.![[thumbs-up.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f84c5acc11486ee4baba6dee6cf61dbd133abb18.gif "[thumbs-up.gif]"){kind=small}
.![[soap.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7ea1fffd3ef237e8f19d17a83270ad8452218ca.gif "soap"){kind=small}
.