I was a guest to a dinner last night in Montclair at Osterio Giotta where we tasted through several of Annie’s wines. Besides Annie’s offerings, there was a smattering of things to try as well. The food was solid. I have a tough time traveling 30 minutes for Italian food, but the pasta was fresh (as advertised, this can be an issue in NJ) and the seafood was top notch. Notes on the wines are below.
2005 Magdalena- This was reported at 60% Cabernet Franc and 40% Cabernet by Annie. This showed loads of big, sweet fruit up front, with a hefty texture and had good richness. A little of our sorts still, but shows lots of promise. Not totally my cup of tea, but heading in the right direction.
2006 Magdalena- MUCH more my style. A lot more floral and expressive on the notes, and the nuance in the wine is far more detailed than the 2005. Bright and clean with a nice finish. The alcohol was well placed in this as well.
2005 Cerro Sur- Reported at 70% CF and 30% Cab. This was too hot for my palate, as I think it just needs some time in bottle. I came back to this later on and was in a better place, but started to mimic the 2005 Magdalena. Nice, just not for me.
2006 Cerro Sur- WOTN (well, of Annie’s wines). This was super silky and balanced. This was kind of dangerous, I could find myself chugging this one. Had everything I liked in the 2006 Magdalena, but had just a little bit more of everything.\
2005 Quarzo Syrah- From Amador County. This struck me as odd the they traveled to Amador for Syrah, but it paid off in spades. I loved the exotic spice in this wine, and was impressively supple and balanced. This wasn’t a huge Syrah by any stretch, and if this was blind, I might have guessed 03 Cornas. ![[welldone.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/fc9709a841aa9379fd892a9cf0b535b05f473b86.gif "[welldone.gif]"){kind=small}
On to some other wines.
2006 Hundred Acre Ancient Way- $200 for this seems unreasonable to me, but reminded me of Astrales. Rather balanced, good texture, not doctored up, but not overwhelming in any way.
2006 Ornellaia- Infanticide to the Nth degree. Painful to drink now. Monster fruit, monster tannins, and not much else.
2000 Incognito (Magnum)- One of my contributions. After having this in a 98 CDP tasting last year as a ringer, and only having had 1 guy guess it right, I figured this would be a nice treat considering how well it drank then. This was the last vintage from SQN where I felt the wines showed good restraint. It did tonight as well. 45 second finish, great nuance and character. Fantastic showing and really impressed everyone.
My other contribution was an oddity. I was given a single bottle as a gift of 2006 Bergevin Lane Petit Verdot by Annette and Amber. Somewhere along the way, Jay Miller tasted a barrel sample of this and slapped a score on it. The ladies had no intentions of bottling this separately, but culled out 4 cases to give away as gifts to friends. Since I only had the one bottle, I thought it appropriate to share with Annie. This was shockingly good, but too hard to guess. She was guessing Merlot and Cabernet Franc b/c of the green-ness, but what really threw everyone off was the lack of present tannins. I’m glad we opened this last night, as it really strutted it’s stuff. Maybe Washington should start pioneering more single variety PV? Who knows, could catch on!
We also had a trio of ports, and didn’t care for any of them. I was pretty sure the 77 Grahams and 77 Dows had been “mishandled” in some way, as neither showed well at all. The 58 Colheita (I didn’t catch the producer) didn’t have enough fruit or texture for my liking. It had a ton of alcohol too. Kind of glad too, didn’t need to keep drinking this late in the night anyway.