Tuesday night, grilled rib eye, wanted something elegant and with some bottle age.
Colour was a clear mid red with a little bricking on the edge. Immediately upon opening the nose was lovely. A complex melange of red fruits, spice and some earthy funkiness. The intitial glass was an intense mouthful of bright crunchy red fruits framed with a lot of acidity. After an hour and some of the rib eye, it settled down a lot and showed some lovely savoury nuances and got richer and deeper. The HN house style is much in evidence; elegance, purity and balance, nothing overstated. This is early mature for my taste, plenty of room to grow but so pretty and enjoyable today. This is a testament to why buying and cellaring burgs can be so satisfying.
I must say my experiences with 1998’s have been very positive in the last few years, this is another very pleasurable example.
Bottle almost gone, wife asking where has it all gone: My lame but true answer was “it was too delicious”
Hey, this is a bit of a hijack, but has anyone had problems with H-N leakers? All of mine have extremely high fills, and I have one leaker, with no sign of trouble with any of the others. Are these leakers because of the high fills like Leroy?
It was maybe 5-6 years ago that one of my favorite retailers was heavily discounting this wine among a number of other 98s. I picked up three bottles. They were all wonderful! I wish I had more, but I thought all three were consumed at the right time- a couple of years ago. My own preference was not to pair this style of Burg with a steak…I found it too elegant for a robust steak.
Harry, I understand your point on the food wine pairing. Generally I like PN based wines with Salmon, chicken or duck. But surprisingly the match worked out well. No loss of elegance and it really shone through. It was more the urge to open the wine than a well considered match that drove the decision