TNs: 77 Mayacamas, 94 Diamond Creek, 90 Lagrange, 95 PLL

[Michael Malinoski]

Back a while ago, my wife and I joined two other couples for a gourmet home-cooked meal and some nice wines to say thank you to one of our members for a very special favor done for me earlier in the year. It was a relaxing yet festive celebration and the wines just added to that overall feel.

N.V. Pierre Moncuit Champagne Blanc de Blancs Cuvee Hugues de Coulmet. This wine sports a rather effusive set of fresh, juicy aromas like flint, lime, smoke, appleskin and sweet chalk that are nicely inviting. On the palate, it has good acidic crunch to the flavors of mineral, lime, green apple and pear. It possesses an easy lightness, with effortless ease and fine zip. It may not be the deepest or creamiest wine, but it is a fine, fresh apertif with a nice smoky finish and nice overall personality.

2001 Mount Eden Chardonnay Estate Bottled Santa Cruz Mountains. Contrastingly, the bouquet of this wine is all about ripe, giving aromas of honey, yellow apple, white peach, soft oak, vanilla, butter, smoke and mineral in a full and fleshy package. It delivers tons of body in the mouth, with peach, apricot, hazelnut, honey and vanilla flavors leading the charge. It is fairly meaty and dense, with the nutty, honeyed quality just coating the long finish. For all that, it never seems at all out of balance, just full-flavored and very tasty.

1977 Mayacamas Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon California. This wine was slow-oxed for about 2.5 hours before being served. It starts out with an unusual but extremely vivid set of aromas that seem to immediately say “old-fashioned wine” in some mysteriously communicated way. The aromatic profile is ever-changing, swirling and morphing, never really settling on just one facet. My notes cite aromas of iron, tobacco leaf, jalapeno pepper, dried blood, dirt, wintergreen, multi-vitamin pill, black cherry and mixed currant before I got tired of trying to pin all the aromas down. In the mouth, it shows a lot of earthy character early on, with flavors of fennel bulb, dirt, iron, blood and green pepper slowly yielding to sweeter fruit elements of black cherry and black currant. The wine shows little left in the way of tannin, but it still sports lots of structure at over 30 years of age. The finish is the most savory aspect of the wine, with dried sweat, earth and leather flavors giving way to a bit of tough acidity at the very end. All in all, though, the palate is pretty tightly-controlled, structured, mid-weighted, finely-balanced and impressively energized. What a treat!

1994 Diamond Creek Cabernet Sauvignon Gravelly Meadow Napa Valley. The aromas here are a bit denser and more broadly painted than in the Mayacamas. It is really great to sniff, with all kinds of pleasing notes such as baking chocolate, lava rocks, white pepper, tomato plant and black currants in the mix. In the mouth, it is again thicker-textured and more fanned-out than the Mayacamas, though similarly mid-weighted. Flavors of black cherry, earth and tobacco are more sour-tinged in nature and there is much more tannic character here to contend with—giving it a bit less overall charm than its flight-mate. Again, though, this is a great example of older-fashioned California Cabernet, with a nice long finish leaving a very pleasing memory.

1990 Château Lagrange St. Julien. As with my past experiences of this wine, the nose is really exotic and inviting—full of aromas like fruitcake, dates, mulling spices, mixed red and black currants and savory counter-notes of tomato leaf and green pepper skin. In the mouth, though, this particular bottle is less full-blown sexy as a couple of previous bottles have been, playing more toward the classic claret side of things in its red fruit, mineral and dusty scrabble profile. It feels balanced, free-flowing and generous, with a creamy texture and fine, lingering flavor. Overall, it is medium-weighted, on the dry side, and goes really well with the meal.

1995 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande Pauillac. This was decanted for about 4 hours before serving. That seemed to help, as the nose comes out as really overt, strong and beefy, yet also managing to seem floral and lilting. Scents of red flowers, iron ore, red currants, raspberries, raw cedar shingles, dusty chalk and new leather all make appearances, as the bouquet grows and improves with every passing minute seemingly. I think it has a lot more even to give, and at times I admit it does still seem really youthful. In the mouth, it has a lot of push, vivacity and youthful vigor, with a good dose of deliciously juicy mixed red and black fruit, but also a fair bit of spicy tannins right now. There is life and lift here that I like a lot, and the wine feels wiry and ropy in a good, promising way. To me, it is drinking awfully well with enough airtime, but the general feeling at the table was that this will be better still down the road five or more years from now.

2000 Royal Tokaji Wine Company Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos. It has been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of a Tokaji, and this one has all the classic aromas I like—figs, burnished apricots, peach skin and botrytis spices and cream—though in a somewhat lighter package than some others I’ve had with a bit more age to them. It is also slightly less unctuous than I expect in the mouth, but that actually makes it a bit more refreshing with the dessert. The flavor is all pure apricot, with a touch of marmalade and honey perhaps. There is plenty of acidity and lift to it, and it even feels a bit fresh on the finish despite the sweet lusciousness that lingers there. My guess is that this will flesh out even more and find greater complexity in another 10 years or so.


-Michael

[JCNorthway]

As usual, very detailed notes. And quite an interesting collection of wines. The Lagrange sounds consistent with the few bottles I drank (way too soon!).

[JEP_62]

Michael,

Thanks for the notes and my thanks to you and Gerry for a great night of food, wine and, of course, people.

It was amazing how that '77 Mayacamas just morphed every time I touched the glass. It was certainly a wine that just drew you back again and again to see what it showed now. Not that any of the other wines were slouches. It was truly a great night.

RE: the Tokaji - I just don't know why I don't stock up on those. I've never had one that disappoints, the flavor profile really floats my boat without being cloying and they last for ever. I guess I just don't know enough about the producers to be confident, so I buy one or two bottles rather than a half or full case. That has to change in the coming year.

Thanks again,

Andy