Sue & Dick Daniels came over to our house for Xmas dinner this year. We started in the living room around the coffee table and in front of a nice fire in the fireplace with smoked salmon pinwheels topped with crême frâiche and chervil, a brie en croute with berries, and a 1985 Diebolt-Vallois Blanc de Blancs à Cramant - rich flavors of toast & fruit with a full mousse, and a long finish. It was a nice start.
When we had finished that, we moved to the dining table for dinner. We had nice rare to medium rare slices off a prime standing rib roast with red & rainbow chard, steamed with garlic and finished with coarse sea salt and Tuscan EVOO. With this we had two syrahs - 1999 Dobra Zemlja Amador County and 2000 Ridge Lytton Springs Dry Creek Valley. The Ridge was much darker than the Dobra, but both had big rich berry fruit, with long finishes. They were very good with the prime rib.
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We just had a similar Christmas dinner with Andrew & Xiaopei, Aida and Lester.
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