Tom had five of us over one night to play some cards and drink some wine. We didn’t have any specific theme or flights planned–folks just brought random bottles to try.
NV Parés Baltà Cava Brut B. This is a bit darker-colored than expected, with very toasty aromas of smoke, flint, apples, toasted bread and roasted herbs. It’s a little bitter-tinged, dry and prickly on the palate, delivering taut narrow flavors of pear, lemon rind and smoky herbs. It’s fresh and vibrant, but a bit rough around the edges for my tastes.
2003 Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc Cuvée Roussanne Vieilles Vignes. This wine delivers a lovely bouquet of tropical fruits, lemon peel, nectarine, wool, wax and light caramel aromas that are beautifully layered and glossy. In the mouth, it’s powerful, oily, fantastically cohesive and driven, loaded with bold, weighty flavors of tropical yellow fruits, apples, pears, hazelnuts and ribbon candy. It has a steely/stony backbone to support the rich fruit and almost tannic texture, and overall it’s just a tremendously complex, rewarding and enjoyable wine to drink.
2006 Loring Wine Company Pinot Noir Graham Family Vineyard Green Valley. There’s nice lift and attitude here on the nose, with a core that’s mostly earthy and savory—featuring aromas of tree bark, mushrooms, dried cherries, cranberries and brown spices. In the mouth, it’s zesty with cranberry and raspberry fruit flavors in a nice medium-weighted package. It’s smooth and sappy-textured, with a little sliver of dark caramel and fig sweetness slipping in late to make it feel a bit richer. The finish displays a bit of cinching acidity, but this keeps everything pretty well in check overall.
2005 Domaine Pierre Amiot et Fils Clos de la Roche. CORKED.
1995 Château Calon-Ségur St. Estèphe. The nose here delivers excellent aromas of suede leather, creamed coffee, powdered chocolate, sweet tobacco, red currant, black cherry and cool stone. It has nice decisive drive to it on the palate, and it fills the mouth with effusive and bright-toned fruit flavors of blueberry and blackberry atop a medium-weighted but structured framework. It’s more fruit-driven than the Sociando-Mallet, but with greater elegance and refinement, and though my personal preference went very slightly to the Sociando, I was also a big fan of this wine, to be sure.
2000 Château Sociando-Mallet Haut-Médoc. There’s a lot to take in on the nose of this very nice wine, from serious and savory overtones of pen ink, tar, jalapeno pepper, tomato vine and green tobacco leaf to a surprisingly bold underbelly of dark chocolate, black currant and blackberry fruit scents. In the mouth, it’s cool, smoldering and slinky, with excellent flavors of iron, salt, black currant, blackberry, earth and olive that are tensile, structured, leafy and savory-edged all the way through. There are some mild tannins in play, for sure, but the wine is drinking extremely well right now, in my opinion.
1991 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Napa Valley. Aromatically, this wine is dark and plush, showing off finely-layered aromas of menthol, tobacco, plum, coffee, blueberry, black currant and clean earth. It’s a tiny bit sticky and fudgy on the palate, with dark yet sweet and heavily ripe elements to the black and blue fruit stuffing. It’s thick and luscious, dense and full-bodied. The tannins cut into the finish just a bit, but otherwise this is a meaty, sweet and bold iteration of this wine that could still benefit from some time in the cellar, if this bottle is any indication.
1997 Rodney Strong Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander’s Crown Vineyard Alexander Valley. Here one finds healthy and bright aromas of mixed currant fruit, blueberries, blackberries, cedar, coffee grounds, black pepper, tobacco and cold bacon fat. In the mouth, it’s got classic flavors of black currant, black cherry, carob nut and chalky earth to offer. It’s a bit four-square, but with pleasant Napa Cabernet Sauvignon character and decent overall structure. I don’t find it particularly characterful, but it offers solid drinking.
1999 Joseph Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley. This is quite appealing on the nose, with a strong streak of sweet cassis cutting right through the supporting aromas of exotic toasted spices, hot brick, earth and menthol. In the mouth, it’s loaded with black raspberry and cassis flavors that have nice tension, power, drive and intensity. It’s just quite tasty all around, with some velvety tannins still in play—allowing it to be enjoyed now or held for several more years to perhaps add a bit more complexity down the road.
1997 Clos Pegase Merlot Carneros. There’s some nice high-toned florality off the top here to go along with pleasant aromas of black currants, tar, mountain berries, chalk dust, dark chocolate and charred herbs. On the palate, it opens with a nice shot of cherry-rhubarb pie stuffing to go along with carob and herb overtones. The flavors are quite nice, the acidity is juicy and there are some nice dusty herbal bits in support. The issue with the wine is that it just doesn’t have the length it once did, and the finish can feel abrupt and a bit raisined at times. It’s a pleasing drink, but it’s definitely time to drink up.
1999 Justin Vineyards & Winery Isosceles Paso Robles. This is glossy and highly-stylized on the nose, with sweet aromas of vanilla bean, soft oak, melted tar, blackberry, hickory and espresso roast. It’s certainly the most modern-feeling of the wines, with a fun and exotic personality. It’s smoothly-polished on the palate, too, with slinky sweet flavors of coffee, plums, blueberries and blackberries. It slips right across the palate with ease despite sneaky tannins around the edges. It’s still plenty healthy and delivers a lot of ripe flavor.
-Michael