Tyler, Peter, Andy and I stopped in for some dinner at Kitchen on Common in Belmont before our shopping spree at Marty’s last Friday night.
2005 Domaine de Montbourgeau L’Etoile. This oxidized Chardonnay from the Jura offers up the usual unusual cornucopia of aromas—ranging from vinyl and turpentine to toasted pine nuts, pecan pie, botanical herbs, waxy lemon peel, browned apples and pink grapefruit. It sounds strange, but it works. In the mouth, it displays flavors of pineapple, lemon and grapefruit riding beneath tastes of stony minerality, white pepper and wild herbs. It has a round, matte-textured feel in the mouth, with direct and tingly acidity around the edges—all leading to a bright, fresh and bone-dry finish. For all that, it is actually a pretty easy-sipping wine that delivers plenty of pleasure.
2006 St. Innocent Pinot Noir Anden Vineyard Willamette Valley. It was really hot in the restaurant and we struggled with getting this wine down to a cooler temperature the whole evening. In spite of that, I think it gave a very good showing of itself. First off, the nose is immediate and expansive, reaching out from the glass with delightfully exotic yet pretty aromas of wild berries, fruitcake, cloves, vanilla, cocoa dust and twiggy underbrush. It is nicely sappy-feeling in the mouth, with excellent Pinot berry character. It offers up plenty of woody spices riding atop the glossy and limpid berry fruit—resulting in a full-flavored wine that delivers plenty of drinking pleasure. It needs a bit more flavor complexity that ought to come with some more cellaring time, but this is pretty to drink now.
2005 Couly-Dutheil Chinon La Baronnie Madeleine. This wine has a firm, dense nose of rocky gravel, rhubarb, dark potting soil, dense plum, light smoke and faint green tea. It is showing fine character, but is really more about the promise for future development right now. Later on, it folds in some green pepper accents but generally stays sinewy and dark. For the first several sips, this comes across as rather large-boned as it really almost blows the cheeks out with the way it expands to fill every crevice of the mouth. Interestingly, that sort of settles down and the wine finds a more even keel after about 30 minutes. At that point, it starts to show a chalky texture and a decidedly savory, leathery flavor profile that works well in off-setting the dark, fudgy fruit the wine pumps out. There are plenty of tannins on the earthy, black bean-flavored finish. Overall, this has a lot to like, but it needs to be cellared another year or two.
1999 Behrens & Hitchcock Winery Merlot Napa Valley. In the glass, this wine is dark and murky in appearance and leaves a sort of “second skin” against the side of the bowl as it is swirled—I don’t remember ever seeing anything quite like that before. Anyway, it smells more like a Port than a dry red wine to me. Rich prunes, dried dates, spicy fruitcake, mint, molten chocolate, cold stones and alcohol combine in a sweet, heady witch’s brew on the nose. When I gave some blind to my wife the next night, her best guess was a heavy-duty Amarone. In the mouth, this does manage to be mostly dry, but it is massively-fruited and it hits the taster with a ton of dry extract. It has a dense, bottom note of black currants, blueberry, fudge and sexy spices, but it is just too rich and thick and milkshake-like to work at the dinner table. It does manage to eke out some fuzzy acidity to partially offset the thick fruit, but when one also has to contend with all the tannin the wine presents, it is all just too much. We did try to drink it for a few more nights, but it never really relented and we never found a suitable food match.
-Michael