Watching the Red Sox come back and beat the Yanks Saturday night at a friend’s house with a very nice cellar. Always a mistake to ask me what I would like to drink:
2004 M. Chapoutier Ermitage Blanc De L’Orée - This is up there with the Silex I had this year for the best white wine in recent memory. Honey dipped waxy fruit, honeysuckle, white pepper, baking spices, white peaches and pears on the nose with a gorgeous granite backbone. Thick and unctous on the palate with flavors that are absolutely consistent with the nose - just fabuolous texture and intensity.
1990 Montrose - Deep plum blackberry, white pepper and beautiful roasted red peppers (like that wonderful aromoa in your kitchen when you roast them yourself). Opulently and elegantly textured with tons of mineral backbone, sweet black fruit, very fine tannins, and a long finish. In harmony from start to finish. The wine is still quite young. It seeemd to close down and get hard for an hour or so, and then really open up and show even more after 2-3 hours of being opened - showing even more spice and leather to balance the fruit. Still plenty of life left and another example of why I love Montrose so much!
1990 Lynch Bages - That tell tale green pepper note really dominated at first being opened, so much so that I thought the wine might be a little under ripe. An hour open did this a world of good. Started to show a lot more red licorice, tobacco, limestone, cumin and white pepper on the nose. Also had fabulous concetration and purity of texture and a long finish. Still also had many years ahead of it. My friend Mike is a Lynch Bages nut,so this was his favorite by far. It just lacked a little bit of the finesse of the Montrose for me, but both are spectacular wines.
1997 Margaux - Opened this after consuming the first 3 bottles between the 2 of us in celebration of Mike Lowell’s clutch hitting, never a great idea for coherent notes. It was a very nice fruit forward bottle of wine, but nothing exceptional, particularly after the two blockbusters we had just had.
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