A good friend of mine and his wife welcomed a baby boy into the world a couple weeks ago. We gathered to celebrate with some special wines. It wasn’t a note taking type of occasion, so these are brief and hazy recollections.
Night 1 (at a steak house)
1990 Krug from Magnum: Lately I’ve found myself enjoying a “fresher” style of champagne than Krug delivers, but this was really good. Tremendous amount of structure and really good acidity. Everyone at the table felt that it was too young in this format. We still enjoyed it greatly.
2007 Coche Dury Corton Charlemagne: This was just insane. The Somm had suggested we order the 2008….I’m very glad we didn’t listen. It began very tightly wound up, but you could tell the greatness was there. With a little time in the decanter, it unfurled itself becoming one of the best young white burgs I’ve ever had. This was so good that it is hard to describe.
2001 DRC Grands Echezeaux: Drinking really nicely right now. Showing just a hint of stems with ripe and round dark red fruit. Not super serious, but delicious.
1998 DRC La Tache: Far more stern and serious than the GE. This showed more stems and earthly/herbal components. I found the finish to be a little drying. The table was split evenly between the LT and GE as far as preference.
Night 2 (We cooked at home and drank a lot 
)
1989 Krug from Magnum: More advanced than the 90 and drinking very well. More of an exotic fruit profile with more mature notes of coffee and praline. I was cooking, so didn’t drink as much as the others, but it was very good.
1993 Ramonet Montrachet: Very tight and showing a lot of sulfur at the beginning. To borrow a term from another poster here, the wine shows a lot of geologic material. Hugely structured with mineral, acid, white and yellow fruits. It was hard to believe how big this was i structure while maintaining a lean and mean expression on the palate. This bottle was too young. I’d give other bottles 5-10 years. Crazy to say that about a 21yo chardonnay, but it’s the case with this bottle.
1990 Dom Perignon: First bottle was tired. Second showed typical 90 dp goodness with soft yellow fruits, brioche and creamy coffee notes. This went quickly.
1990 Roumier Bonnes Mares: Great example of this. Generous dark fruits, smoke and forest floor on the nose. In the mouth is reflected the vintage a bit showing some sweetness to the fruit. A really beautiful wine.
1990 La Chapelle: Another young showing for this wine. So much promise. I’m hoping it will turn into the 78 with more time in the bottle, but this is still primary showing dark fruit, roasted meat, and herbs. I’d put this in a dark corner and revisit in 7-8 years.
1962 Maison Leroy Musigny. This came through PC and we were anxious to see how it would show. Everyone was very pleasantly surprise. Just past the point of fully mature and beginning a graceful decline. It showed a nice combination of secondary and tertiary notes. Gorgeous wine. Old burgundy goodness.
1995 Soldera Brunello di Montalcino Riserva “Intistieti”: This was actaully purchased from the restaurant the night before. I had never seen a bottle and we already had too much wine, so we coravin’d a glass and took the rest of the bottle to go. Really sexy deep cherry notes on the nose along with a beautiful incense like note. Smoke, cherry, tobacco, middle eastern spices. This was awesome.
1990 Rayas: This bottle looked pretty rough. We had opened it late the night before and thought is was heat damaged and tired. It was corked and left in the fridge for 18 hours. I was amazed at the result. This bottle was reborn. The fruit fleshed out and developed the seamless and silky structure that I’ve experienced in good bottles of this. We loved this on the second day and the bottle disappeared far too quickly.
1990 Chave VDP: Super rare wine that I was excited to taste. Flavors of walnut, orange, and persimmon. The nose smelled like a rich mans study with fine leather and hints of pipe tobacco. Pretty full sweet on the palate.
1834 Barbieto Malavasia Maderia: I preferred this to the Chave. Insanely complex, medium sweet, never ending finish.
At 3am after cleaning up, an extra tin of caviar was found in the fridge, so the host wanted more champagne.
1982 Dom Perignon: This was served blind. I guessed 1976 dp oneoteque because you could tell that it had some mature notes, but was showing so fresh. This was killer. More pinot dominate and red fruited on the nose. This reminded me of the 96 vvf. Nice mineral signature on the finish. If I could find bottles this well stored, I’d be buying it all day long.
My flight the following morning was less than enjoyable.
You could tell it would have been an amazing wine, but the cork taint only became worse.
