Inventory Clearance Lunch with Saxon

Tuesday started off as a very innocent day with plans to drink a few older Pinot’s and a chance to eat some delicious Veal Chops. What actually happened defied the laws of wine drinking and damaged our egos tremendously. Saxon’s cellar took one of the greatest hits of all time. It’s a good thing we got a great day of skiing in yesterday to soften the blow.

Here are the wines…little detail…because little is needed. Mind you, this was just me and Steve.

We started off with a very nice white out of half bottle that turned out to be the best of the bunch until the Hungarian.

2005 Vincent Girardin Puligny-Montrachet Vieilles Vignes - Killer stuff for just $10

The original 4 wines:

1996 Martinborough Pinot
1998 Martinborough Pinot
1969 BV Beaumont Pinot
1980 BV Beaumont Pinot

All completely dead…I mean gone.

So following that debacle we decided to start raiding the cellar for some of the good stuff. All of the following wines in order and all…DEAD:

1978 Simi Reserve Cab
1986 Dominus
1977 Mondavi Reserve Cab
1974 Krug Lot F1 Cab
1994 Flora Springs Hillside Select
1991 Newton Merlot
1991 Pride Cab

Some not completely dead but way below what they should have been:

1991 Togni Cab
1997 Pahlmeyer Cab

Some of the day’s best:

1998 Quilceda Creek Cab
1998 Kay Brothers Amery Hillside Shiraz - Turned out to be a really nice Shiraz that still needs a few years.
2000 Smith Haut Lafite

We then decided to indulge and ate some Chocolate Cream Pie. We pulled the last cork around 4:30pm:

2000 Chateau Dereszla Tokaji Aszú 5 Puttonyos - This wine was rockin’ with tons of bright fruit and acidity. Thank God! We finally got one right.

Basically, this was the biggest FAIL lunch I have ever been a part of.

New buying strategy…buy only Burgundy. [1974_eating_popcorn.gif]

Looks like 100% failsauce on that lunch, but on the bright side, you cleared up space for more bottles!

Get this economy rolling again! BUY BUY BUY!

Hope that Pahlmeyer Red wasn’t the one from me.

Sad… [cray.gif]

Ouch. I mean shit happens…but when its that much shit happening, that aint good.

That’s too bad and rather shocking about the Dominus, Mondo, Krug and Flora. I’ve had the 74 vintage selection and thought it was good, surprised to hear the F1 would be any different. Also shocked about the 94 Flora, the trilogy seems to be kicking along and I thought the Hillside would outlive the trilogy.

Glad you enjoyed the 1998 QC. I have only had a few Quilceda’s and it is by far my favorite.

Here here!!

Bill, I don’t think the Pahlmeyer was yours, it had a label from Pike Street up here in Seattle.

Except for the Pahlmeyer all of these wines were bought from WineCommune and a couple from WineBid when Phil was in Iraq. They were wines he and I wanted to try when he got back so even though I was shocked by the number of bad wines I expected a lot to be bad.

Many lessons were learned from this lunch and it only cost me $950.

Oh, Phil, you left out the 84 Lyeth.

Phillip - wasn’t Iraq dangerous enough for you? [cheers.gif]

That makes more sense. Like Rico I was wondering about all those four being dead. '86 Dominus dead? Somebody wasn’t very nice to it for quite a while me thinks.

It would make more sense if those were all Burgundy’s wouldn’t it?

Probably bad storage where it was bought. I had a 77 Mondavi Reserve last year and it still had quite a bit of life left in it.

Gee, ya think? I never would have guessed storage could have been the issue.

It takes Charlie’s Captain Obvious wisdom to bring Justin out from the darkness.

[rofl.gif] [rofl.gif] [rofl.gif]

Do you mind letting me know when and where the 86 Dominus was purchased ? I sold some on Winebid last year. I’m very confident about the storage since I purchased them on release, but I’d hate for anyone to buy a bad bottle of something I consigned.

Don’t worry Scott, I bought the Dom on WC…but thanks for being concern.