Feeling properly virtuous (and flush with cash) having spent Thanksgiving at home this year, we rewarded ourselves with a Saturday spent in Chicago, thereby avoiding the madness known as Black Friday. Jean and I took the opportunity to dine sans offspring at One Sixtyblue, a Franco-American restaurant that's received some good press. The cooking was excellent, though the service left a bit to be desired. With our first courses, we each got a glass of:
2004 Baumard Cremant de LoireA very nice, lemony wine with a light mousse. I've been told that it's mostly Chardonnay, which explains why it comes across as a decent BdB Champagne.
With our main courses, we got a bottle of:
2004 Chandon de Briailles Pernand-Vergelesses "Les Vergelesses"Decanted 30 minutes beforehand. Lovely, bright strawberryish fruit, smoke and a hint of earthiness came through in a lively, light wine. This was a real joy to drink, even if it's still far too young.
The wine list of One Sixtyblue was fairly interesting, with numerous good white wine choices, though the markups were on the high side of reasonable at ~3x retail.
Yesterday, shopping at Sam's I noted a much improved selection of wines from the Loire, including quite a few LDM wines, including a lone remaining '04 Clos des Allees -- proof conclusive that FL Jim doesn't shop there. Before anyone looks, though, I did snap it up. However, there are some remaining bottles of Huet's '02 (and '05) demi-secs for still reasonable prices.
Mark Lipton