With leftovers
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No wine, no turkey this year. I chose a random hole in the wall Sichuan place for lunch last week, which ironically has so far turned out to be my favorite restaurant food I’ve had while visiting Japan, and the owner and I quickly became friends. When I went back on Thanksgiving, thinking of a quick Sichuan oil braised duck meal, and it happened to be slow, we ended up having dinner together with some breaks between customers that came in.
She served already prepared chicken gizzards, flavored with star anise and cinnamon, and what I’m pretty sure was pig stomach, both delicious. Then a mouth numbing Chengdu style noodle dish with minced beef. We sipped on shochu and later had a little Luzhou Laojiao Erqu Jiu baijiu (a first for me), with fried peanuts and roasted almonds.
I’m almost always on the road/traveling this time of year and it’s usually an interesting experience. 7 hours, 4 languages, exotic food/drink and a decent amount of Google translate was one for the books.
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How was Grange? Looks to be a 97? I have one I’m sitting on.
How was the 2016 Gimonnet doing? I gifted a bottle of that to my sister a couple years back and I’ve been wondering when I should suggest opening it.
Ours was surprisingly and disappointingly long in the tooth, although we have moved a ton so probably not done the bottle any favors.
Ripping now! Was the highlight for much of the group.
An in-home example of the declining wine consumption across generations!
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We were delighted when my stepson accepted not one, but two, small glasses of the 2009 Huet Haut-Lieu Demi-Sec we served as the white with our meal.
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Hope everyone had a lovely holiday!
We had some fun wines:
Lighter/juicer reds for my girls family who don’t drink much wine
2013 Titus Petit Verdot was amazing. INCREDIBLY concentrated, aromatic and perfumed. Like putting your nose into a violet scented candle. It was a little too intense for my parents but we thoroughly enjoyed it. The wine had decades of life left.
Weller Full Proof Barrel pick from my favorite local bottle shop was the ideal pairing with apple pie. Simply delightful.
A little Champagne and Riesling to fill the gaps. Happy holidays everyone!
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I’ve been thinking about that Caymus since Thursday. I really, really expected it to be “just ok”, that the negative hype was just wine snobs being overly dramatic. However, it really is an OFFENSIVELY bad wine. Just incredibly flabby and disjointed…it really is the closest thing to drinking bourbon-barrel aged plonk. With no structure or acidity, it was a terrible food wine as well.
With its popularity, I expected an almost confected sweetness to the fruit that might’ve brought some pleasure but the fruit is just muddy and behind a wall of vanilla extract and wood. I cannot believe that people pay $80 for that stuff.
Other Thanksgiving booze ended up being:
Roederer 245 (very nice, felt more oxidative than 244)
Lapierre 2023 Morgon Cuvee Camille (layered fresh red and black fruit, complex, elegant, structured. Wow!)
Hudelot-Noellat 2019 Bourgogne Rouge (many thanks to @MChang for turning me on to my favorite house red)
Suduiraut 2011
With a one-month old baby and me working basically right up to dinner, no time for cooking this year so went with a Thanksgiving kit from Aquavit (Michelin 2* in NYC with Nordic cuisine), including a caviar and Swedish waffle course.
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I probaby shd have stayed with my 5 year rule re Bedrock OV Zin…My SIL liked the 2022 Bedrock OV Zin but I thought it still needs another 2-3 yrs…My youngest daughter who previously wasn’t gonna drink, decided she only likes Prosecco with appetizers but wanted Pinot Grigio with dinner…The Prosecco(my wife’s choice) went back in the cellar for when we host the next gathering and we stopped at our local big box store…found a PG from Winebow “Stella” that I had never seen before…Her daughter is named Stella and our youngest granddaughter…works for me…grabbed a bottle plus a bottle of Zenato PG as a backup… The Stella was ok, The Zenato had more to it…and life goes on,dealing with my youngest ddaughter is an ongoing adventure
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