After months of reading about the consensus WGWOTW (wine geeks' wine of the year), the '04 Dom. de la Pepiere Muscadet Sevre et Maine Sur Lie, I finally got my hands on some and opened up a bottle with a Thai dinner
-- not the best match, but a decent backdrop for the wine
nose: limes, minerals palate: medium weight, crisp, fruity, balanced
Great stuff! I have to familiarize myself more with the smell of crushed seashells, because if there were any here I couldn't tell. Next step is to try this with oysters on the half shell and let it show its stuff (note to Dale: Clos de Briords awaits)
Later on, with a dinner of BBQ "St. Louis" ribs:
2003 Ch. D'Oupia Minervois
n: tart, cherryish fruit, a bit of pencil lead p: good acidity, bright fruit, a hint of bitterness
Worries about '03 wines? No hint of overextraction here! Still fresh with some recognizable Languedoc character, but not overly memorable. (This was a last minute substitution for the '04 Iché Les Heretiques that I'd wanted)
With a dinner of ribeye steaks, I pulled from the cellar:
1992 Stag's Leap Cask 23 c: dark ruby with no sign of browning n: berryish fruit, huge amounts of cedar shading into mint p: medium body, fully resolved tannins, still completely primary, smooth finish
Served blind to Jean (she made me promise not to reveal what she guessed), it was incredibly young tasting but showing no promise of gaining any complexity. A very pleasant, but not profound, wine.
Tonight, with pasta:
2001 Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva
n: ripe cherryish fruit, pencil lead p: medium body, good acidity, ripe fruit
Picked up at the grocery store (who also sell Villa Maria SB and Seghesio Zin) for $11, this wine didn't disappoint. Not likely to supplant Felsina or Isole e Olena in the cellar, it's a nice QPR wine.
Mark Lipton