Fabulous dinner at Adelaide’s Chloe’s restaurant for our ‘Breakaways’ wine group on Friday night. Our hosts Bernice and Julian were extremely generous with their wine selections and baffled and bamboozled us with some tricky options questions.
1996 Pol Roger: Rich, textured and creamy with some quite peachy notes threaded with fresh flowers. Good volume, presence and persistence and just about in the perfect spot right now.
1996 Cristal: This was a great bott, youthful, direct, fine and piercing. It has a razor sharp mineral spine with crunchy granny Smith apple aromas and flavours. There’s a touch of yeast and the whole package shows terrific balance and poise.
1991 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: The aroma has a hint of the exotic and a little candy. In the mouth it has great shape, is rich and textured with a solid mineral base. It finishes long and minerally and is drinking just so well.
1996 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: Just a whiff of aldehyde to the aroma but otherwise looking good. There are some custard apple and leesy notes on the nose along with pure white peach. It is piercing and direct with some green apple and loads of minerals. It is long and linear with excellent length.
2000 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: The table was astounded when this was revealed as the 00, most of us were around 05 or 07, it is just so primary and juvenile. It has a complex aroma of white lilies, grated ginger, lemon, white peach and minerals. In the mouth there’s great intensity and near perfect shape and balance. It is an extraordinarily classy bottle of white wine and its such a shame that BdM is subject to premox as good bottles of this 00 should easily be cranking as they enter their third decade.
1999 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet ‘Folatieres’: oxidised.
2004 Comtes Lafon Meursault ‘Clos de la Barre’: 04 whites are just as easy to identify blind as their red counterparts; they do have a green element. This showed some celery and pot pouri aromas along with a little ginger spice, lemons and white peach. It has a certain vintage derived leanness that suits the usual more flamboyant Lafon style and is a very tasty drink, enjoyed by all at the table.
2000 Domaine Leroy Clos Vougeot: Really vibrant with sweet, sappy lift and just a hint of beef stock development creeping in. Full, round and sweet in the mouth with a lush, supple texture and real length, polish and drive.
1999 Meo Camuzet Clos Vougeot: Has a gorgeous sweet perfume but is more demure and restrained than the 00 Leroy, showing some graphite and meat characters. In the mouth it is sweet, lush and intense with just a little coffee and some darker fruits. It is still just a pup but a delicious drink now none the less.
1999 Giacosa Barbaresco: oxidised.
1995 Gaja Barolo ‘Sperss’: Good complexity on the nose with a perfume comprised of red currants, cedar, dried flowers, peat and charcoal. It is rich and chewy with plenty of earth mixing it up with the intense red fruits. It is a wine of certain polish yet possesses definite Barolo soul.
1989 Gaja Barbaresco: Incredibly good. Youthful, polished, focussed and seamless. There’s a kaleidoscope of paisley fruits, dried flowers, lipstick and cedar. It is complex yet you feel there’s certainly a little more room for further development, looks 10 years younger than it is.
1999 Solaia: Mid weight, lovely balanced wine with a cool fruit feel. Notes of red currants and cedar, creamy mouthfeel and a very long finish.
1999 Ornellaia: First impressions are of wine that is quite oaky, with a big blast of vitamin B and sweet cedar. It has oodles of dense, ripe Satsuma plum fruit but the whole package feels just a little forced and over-extracted.
1999 Sassicaia: Beautiful mid-weight Cabernet that was the classiest of these three aia’s (aia is Italian for ‘barrique means extra bucks for your wine’). The fruit is sweet, threaded with tobacco and underpinned by a little graphite and lead pencil. It has excellent length and should be a splendid wine in another 10 years.
1982 Montrose: Take a large horse, slap a band aid on its rump, tar its hooves and roll it around in chicken shit and you have the 1982 Montrose. The brett was a little overwhelming here and monstered any of the wine’s other elements.
1990 Penfolds Bin 90A: Some caramel oxidative notes at first but breathes up well in the glass. There’s some bitter chocolate and the most intense heart of liqueur cherries, cassis and blueberries. It is incredibly dense and intense and finishes a little sweet and sour.
1990 Wegeler-Deinhard Geisenheimer Rothenberg Riesling Auslese: Lychees, guava, lime, smoke and mandarin peel combine to provide this wine’s aroma. It is gently sweet in the mouth with good tension and vibrancy and there’s just a hint of petroleum development sneaking in.
1953 Huet Clos du Bourg Moelleux Vouvray: There’s some indication of serious age with a little white mushroom, marmalade and caramel but there are also fresh and vital things in the form of green apple and fresh lemon juice. In the mouth it still bristles and crackles with energy (does the acid ever die in these things?) and is a cerebral wine of many subtle layers and incredible poise.
Cheers
Jeremy