2009 Certan de May

At Vidalia to celebrate Max and Laura's 1st anniversary, took along the first bottle of '09 Certan de May purchased in Paris from a distributor of some sort, through Craigslist. He listed a bunch of excellent Bordeaux and this one caught my eye as it's been a fav since 1985 when I purchased 4 bottles at the chateau during the great snowstorm of January 1985--30 yrs ago this month come to think of it and a year before Max was born. I love Pomerol and this one was prototypical of great ones. Round soft mellifluous and complex with blackberry, cherry, spice, pine and with airing pronounced sherry wood and caramel aromas. Exquisitely balanced fruit/acid with virtually undetectable tannins yet still pretty youthful looking, the finish was extremely long, complex, fruity and just basically what Pomerol is all about. Great that it drinks so well at young age. Hard to believe it'll get better but I'd guess it'll hold for another 3-5 years. 95 points.

2011 Alto Moncayo Garnacha

Well I'm admitting to having a few more glasses of wine since jan 16, at Max and Laura's wedding and now this. Also want to note with great approval 2004 Pinot noir from Oregon enjoyed at Dino's restaurant with max and Laura on Monday jan 20 after the wedding, with Emily and dear friend Clay in attendance. Reminded me how great Pinot noir can be and age worthy too. I have to look on their menu for specific vineyard...

Meanwhile this 100% Grenache from Spain ! Oh man is it heavenly.  This is the way I like Grenache --fruit bomb-like. Nose of eucalyptus, vanilla creAm and huckleberry/blueberry/blackberry with a touch of lavender and pine. Silky fruit on the palate with plenty of softish tannin and acid for aging. Long, warm finish. With age will probably grow even more in complexity but this is just wonderful now. Reminiscent of my reference standard  the 2004 De Lisio from Australia . And I see below Aussie winemaker Chris Ringland is involved...news to me but not surprising!

Parker 95 points and I agree: "I tend to drink Alto Moncayo during its first 5-6 years of life. Although I was sure they had aging potential, I did not realize just how much longevity these wines possess. They are generally full-bodied, powerful (with at least 15.5% natural alcohol), concentrated, rich wines made from very old vines and tiny yields. If you are not into flavor concentration or care about artisanal wines from great terroirs that have been ignored for centuries, this may not be the wine for you. Not one of these ten vintages was close to full maturity. The two most recent vintages, 2010 and 2011, were both late, cooler years and both have turned out to be sexy wines. I suspect that in many ways, 2011 will behave like 2006, being precocious and delicious, but not as long-lived as some of its siblings. These wines appear to have 20-30 years of aging potential, although the sweet spot for drinking them appears to be between age 8 and 15.

This was a great opportunity to look at one of the flagship wines of importer Jorge Ordonez’s portfolio. Alto Moncayo is a 100% old vine Grenache cuvee (900-1,000 cases produced depending on the vintage) that is a joint project between Jorge Ordonez and Barossa winemaker, Chris Ringland. Five generations of vignerons have farmed over 210 acres of primarily old vine Grenache at Alto Moncayo, a wine that is produced from incredibly low yields of 500 grams of grape bunches per vine. There are never more than six to eight bunches on these ancient head-pruned Grenache vines. The wine is fermented in open-top wood fermenters, and spends 19 months in 100% new oak prior to being bottled unfiltered. The fruit is all destemmed. I tasted these ten vintages of Alto Moncayo in September, and I was blown away by how well they were showing."

Mouton Rothschild 1982 at Vidalia

The wine (see picture below) is remarkably youthful. The rim was showing some age but could've been a 2000 by its looks. Started out with blackberry and leather nose then began develop an almost Margaux like perfume of sweet black cherry and lavender and violet with a long sweet finish and some very soft tannin. It took maybe an hour for alcohol and acid to fully integrate with fruit, another lesson in the importance of letting the wine rest in the glass and savoring it over time to enjoy the changes and usually, improvement. The perfume aspect became more pronounced than with earlier '82 Moutons. Certainly the relative youth and staying power of this wine combine with its balance and classic Bordeaux flavor profile to merit its legendary status. 

Enjoyed this at dinner Thursday night January 16, 2014 before Max and Laura's wedding on 19th, at Vidalia in DC , still a consistently excellent restaurant and probably my all around favorite in this city

2005s maturing: La Croix St Georges (Pomerol) and Pontet Canet (Pauillac)

I bought a case of Croix St Georges back in 2008 based on strong reviews from Parker, hoping it would mature into a fine Pomerol as the Le Bon Pasteur promised to do. The first tasting was very tannic, much less open and rewarding than the Bon Pasteur. So I opened another bottle last week. It has indeed softened and opened. It does resemble the Bon Pasteur more, but it's still more tannic and less developed. I'd say it needs another couple years. It's got exotic spices to go with the cherry plum fruit and perhaps in 2 years it'll be a more interesting wine than Bon Pasteur. It's pretty good and fresh drunk tonight about 4-5 nights after first opening, with a cedary and saline component quite noticeable now but still plenty of plum and spice. I'm looking forward to watching St Georges develop.

Meanwhile, tonight is half-price wine night at old favorite 411 West Restaurant. Emily was supposed to accompany me and Francie but wasn't up to it, so we went and brought her take-home. I've been eyeing the most expensive wine on their list for a few years: 2005 Pontet Canet, a Pauillac that was long mediocre but which new ownership brought up to potential in recent years (reports Parker). So it was 96+ points from Parker and 95 from Tanzer in the great year of 2005. 411 has it on the menu for $250 normally, or $125 on Monday nights, which is a price below retail in a wine store (it's $139 at MacArthur in DC). I hoped it would be sufficiently mature to drink at nearly 8 years old and, to compensate for various recent stresses, finally ordered it tonight.  It's a great Bordeaux. It's deep, complex, blue and black berry melded with oak vanilla and exotic spice. It's a very tannic wine, with tannins softening but at glacial pace. Needs another 3-4 years to really drink to its potential. And to his credit Parker says it won't be ready till 2017. Still it was a hell of a glass of Pauillac even tonight, and characteristically so--dramatically less "feminine" than the 2005 St Georges.

2005 Vieille Cure

Great nose of blueberry compote, plum and cherry. Deep purple color. On palate pretty austere, some veg. Not what one would hope-90 pts right now. It has enough tannin to last a good while but I'm not sure the fruit will outlast it. On the other hand there's also a good acid backbone so there's hope. 

Parker was very big on this one 93 points in 2008: La Vieille Cure’s amazing 2005 is even better than their terrific 2003 and 2000. The 2005 boasts an inky/ruby color as well as a gorgeously sweet perfume of charcoal, black cherries, black currants, and spring flowers as well as an underlying mineral component. Superb concentration, full-bodied power, wonderful symmetry, purity, and texture, and a multidimensional mouthfeel are all found in this fabulous sleeper of the vintage. Anticipated maturity: 2010-2020+

1989 Meyney (St Estephe)

This may be the last of our 1989 bordeaux purchased in honor of Emily's birth that year. Meyney was esp good in that year. Unfortunately the prior bottle we opened about 5 years ago was corked. This one was not. It was past its prime but very nice nonetheless. Opened at Medium Rare (essentially all you can eat steak and fries of surprisingly good quality) with Max, Laura, Emily and Taylor in attendance. What this bottle showed was how a bordeaux tastes when there's just no detectable tannin left. It was all berry fruit, a bit of spice and vanilla and pretty low acid. I suppose it could be called flabby, but I enjoyed it. Too bad we didn't have it 3 years ago, but it was by no means a mediocre bottle. Hard to rate it given its age; I suppose 89 points?

2007 Chateauneuf de Pape Janasse Cuvee Chaupin

Parker raved about this year and this particular bottle so procured 3 about 4 years ago. First one tasted was very good but young. 3 years later quite a difference. Just a beautiful expression of old vine grenache, intense cherry and strawberry fruit, sort of like fruit candy drops, overlaid by wintergreen and other spices and maybe lavender or other flowery notes. Tannin barely detectible and acid pretty low. All in all what I'd call a pretty glass of wine. The aromas are still a bid subdued compared to the up-front fruit on the palate. Don't know if this will get better with a couple more yrs in bottle. Probably. Meanwhile, I look forward to future bottle of '07 and also have a couple of '10's to drink. 94 points from me.

By the way I visited this wonderful Janasse vineyard with Francie, enjoyed generous personal tasting (no charge) and warm welcome from the owner family. Great memory.

Says IWC/Tanzer: Opaque ruby. Spicy raspberry and cherry aromas are complicated by garrigue and Asian spices. Sweet, focused red fruit flavors are given spine by zesty minerality and pick up an exotic floral quality with air. Expands nicely on the finish, leaving behind sweet lavender pastille and raspberry notes. 94 points.

The less restrained Parker 98 points==he says drink til 2031:
Made from 100% Grenache (60- to 80-year-old vines) aged largely in neutral oak foudres with a small amount in new barrels, the inky/ruby/purple-hued 2007 Chateauneuf du Pape Chaupin is the greatest example of this offering since the 1998, but it is even more concentrated than that wine. A cold terroir and sandy/clay soils have given the wine an extraordinary amount of acidity and freshness that serve it well in buttressing the fabulously concentrated, massively extracted, old vine Grenache. This blockbuster wine possesses enormous richness and density as well as an incredibly unevolved, young personality. Everything is there, including awesome aromatics, unbelievable layers of kirsch, raspberries, licorice, incense, and blacker fruits, and a finish that goes on for close to a minute. However, I would age this wine for 2-4 years and drink it over the following two decades or more. It is a tour de force in old vine Grenache as well as one of the vintage’s most compelling wines.