4/7/2011: Had this wine at RN74 in San Francisco and it paired perfectly with the food. Was hard to judge the colour as the restaurant was quite dark but it was quite clear and a fairly deep, garnet hue. Nose showed some lovely floral qualities, slight strawberry and a hint of raspberry along with earthy, mushroom funk. Medium body with a nice mouthfeel to it, the palate had a touch of cherry, decent minerality, and earthiness to it. Medium acidity, smooth tannins and quite a nice med+ finish, longer than I expected from this wine. This seemed quite lively with a lot of life in it still though after about 1.5 hours after opening, the nose was start to fall in on itself and vanilla (oak) really dominated. So would recommend pop and pour (which is what we did) versus decanting at this stage of the wines life.
RN74 is a fun place and the food was good. For a pinot lover like me the wine list was fanatastic! If my wife and my buddies’ wife hadn’t set a pretty low budget for wine at dinner I would have really gotten into something really special. Turns out the women want to have money left for shopping while we’re in SF… It was cool to see two Alesia wines on the wine list too (2006 Green Valley and 2005 Chileno). Rajat Parr dropped into the restaurant briefly (unless he was hiding in the back) as well but didn’t have the chance to speak to him. Would have been fun to bring up some of the conversations from Berserkers with him and see what he said (probably drives him nuts - heh).