Monday, December 29, 2008

Dinner at Red Lotus #2

Another dinner at Red Lotus trying to work my way through the menu. This time, the standout was the braised pork belly with bok-choy. The beef with spicy peppers and dried tofu was also good, but not as good with the wine.

In general, the more I have Montbourgeau wines, the more I like them. This may be becoming my favorite estate in the Jura. I’m curious if others feel similarly.

2002 Domaine de Montbourgeau L'Etoile Savagnin
Surprisingly open and accessible. Even though I’m not sure that sous voile wines are really terroir wines, I really like them, just as I really like sherry. This had the bitter nut skin on the nose and palate buttressed by stone pit yellow fruit. Waxy and mineral at once that was generous and a bit bracing. Supposedly too young, but I find it delicious now and don’t see any reason not to start drinking it.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

nathan, we just put on the montbourgeau sparkling at coquette. interesting bottle, particularly for it's pricepoint. i've also been digging on the vin de paille savignin from puffeney. best, scott

Unknown said...

I was a little let down by the crémant, actually. It was pleasant enough, but relatively bland. Lacked the depth of Tissot.

Montbourgeau's vin de Paille is pretty bangin', though.

Unknown said...

i'll check out the tissot, who imports it?

i found the montbourgeau cremant to exhibit focused, high-toned fruit and minerals with some nice jura-nuttiness on the finish. we paired it with a tartelette of reblochon and escargot on NYE and it really worked with the funk of the cheese/snails while refreshing the palate of the reblochon/mornay like a champ.

Unknown said...

Okay, I have since had the crémant again since my previous comment and I hereby change my stance.

Tissot isn't available in this area anymore, and when it was, the local distributor was getting it from some importer based in the DC area whose name I forget. I do remember that they also brought in Guindon Ctx d'Ancenis and Labbé Abymes from the same source, though.