City mouse, country mouse

My old friend and mentée Sophie was in town from her job at Chambers St. in the big city to visit family and us country folks. We put together some wines and I asked Matt, the chef at Vin Rouge, to put together a meal for us. Had I had this meal in 2009, it may have been my meal of the decade. It was the match or better of any meal I’ve had anywhere. The thought that went into the dishes to match them with the wines showed a real depth of understanding and intelligence.

2007 Pépière Granite de Clisson
Marc Ollivier is a fucking genius. Out of magnum and it still disappeared way too quickly.

2002 Domaine Ganevat Savagnin Côtes du Jura Sous la Roche La Combe de Rotalier
An interesting comparison between these two wines. This had much more aggression and “sherry” type character and was more what I was looking for. I guess I value austerity in these wines.

2002 Domaine de Montbourgeau Savagnin L'Etoile
Much rounder and less expressive. This is a slightly confounding wine as the 2000 was a much more intense and deeper experience. Not bad, just not terribly interesting.

1996 Ghislaine Barthod Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Fuées
Corked as hell. There is no god.


1995 Dugat-Py Gevrey Coeur de Roy
Clunky with that beet thing I’ve been getting from Dugat-Py recently. There was an intriguing mineral quality to the wine, but it was unbalanced and disjoint with drying tannins and no real purity or persistence. A great disappointment. I really think these are only impressive as young wines.

1999 Fourrier Gevrey 1er Cru Combes aux Moines
Showed the most concentration of any wine perhaps save the Ganevat, but without deep color or “extraction”. I think the best way to describe this is as sinewy. Tight cords of wine strapped together. The wine wasn’t particularly backward and did the best job of changing around as it opened. Had a profile I’ve come to expect from Combes aux Moines, with plumier fruit and a kind of earth/mushroomy aspect. I’m going to wait a few more years before opening another one.

2006 Ezio Voyat Chambave Rosso Le Muraglie
I had high hopes for this wine, but was disappointed. It isn’t that it was a terrible wine, it was just really bubblegum and obvious. Not what I expected at all. That didn’t change over the three hours we had it open.

1996 Pierre-Jacques Druet Bourgueil Fiefs de Louys
At one point, the nose was really intriguing, but I think this wine is past it’s best for my tastes, although others who like really old wines might like it in 10 more years. I liked it a lot more several years ago.

1994 Ridge Monte Bello
Surprisingly, this might have been the most complete wine at the table. Still, it didn’t show as well as a bottle of 1993 enjoyed in the last few months, it was richer but lacked the style and finesse of that wine. However, this is still a good bottle of cabernet that doesn’t stomp all over the food it’s served with. Luscious fruit with some hints fo American oak herbiness and a hint of vanilla that are integrated rather than sitting on top. I don’t’ think there is any point to further long term cellaring of this. It should drink well for a good 7-10 years. I’ll drink my last bottle in the next couple of years.

2004 Conde de Hervias Rioja
It was late and this was a bit woody, but not too much so. Still had some structure. Did really well with the venison. I might actually grab some of this to lay down, just fro shits and grins. I have no idea what’s going on, but I don’t have any tempornillo in my cellar so what the hell.

WTF is Orin Swift?

My friends Matt and Michael had a rare evening off a few weeks ago and we got together at my place to hang out, have some roast chickens and drink some wine.

2006 Fourrier Gevrey VV
I decanted this for about an hour and a half. I liked it more than my buddies who were at dinner. I think this was a classic example of where Fourrier is right now. You camn see the kinship between these and Pacalet, but where Pacalet’s wines are strident in their definition of what they are trying to be, Fourrier’s wines seem to acknowledge that there are other ways of thinking about wine, while subtly making the case for this way of thinking. Aromatically pure, yet completely impossible to pin down. A moving target that when you try to grab it, it flows between your fingers. Ready to go now and may develop more with age, but I don’t think anyone has quite figured out yet what the aging curve is going to be for Fourrier’s wines.

2000 Château Haut-Bages Libéral Pauillac
This was a big surprise. I have sort of laid off of Bordeaux over the last decade, but this wine was very good. It still had some nice primary fruit of the blue and black sort, but there was also a nascent trickle of woodsmoke, tobacco, and herbs framed by really fine grained tannin. At the right price, I’m a definite buyer of this.

2007 Billard Saint Aubin 1er Cru Les Castets
This was definitely young, but snappy and full of verve. It was slightly better a few days later from the re-corked bottle. Well balanced with the sort of snappy, crunchy fruit that has a sort of cloud of herbs and flowers around it. A promising wine from a producer that I don’t know much about but I will try more wines from in future.

2005 Orin Swift The Prisoner
This was terrible and truly undrinkable. I really don’t know how folks can put up with such a pruney, soupy mess. Really bloody awful, someone should be ashamed.