TNs: '00 Yon-Figeac, '01 Pavie Decesse, '01 Monbousquet

[Michael Malinoski]

Six of us gathered at Ed’s house a little while back for some BBQ take-out food and some random wines. There was no theme to the evening’s wine choices, so it was an eclectic but very fun line-up. All of the wines were served non-blind.

Whites:

1989 Mount Eden Vineyards Chardonnay Estate Bottled Santa Cruz Mountains. This is starting to get a little light gold in color and the nose is showing some gently-aged aromas of baked apples, ginger, caramel cream, toasted herbs and a little sliver of copper. In the mouth, it’s actually still a bit oaky to go along with dense flavors of pear, apple and all kinds of baking spices. It’s got a lot of interesting character to it and shows fine balance and a pleasingly smooth texture. It’s clearly near the end of its life but I find myself liking it pretty well here toward the end.

1971 Kirchmayr Neuburger Neusiedlersee Konig Altwein Solist. This wine has a really intriguingly layered bouquet to it, giving up gently sweet and oily aromas of honeycomb, grapefruit, peach pit, white flowers, chalk and lime. It’s a fair bit drier in the mouth, where there is excellent drive from the crunchy acidity and great definition from all of the mineral overtones. Lanolin, herbs, yellow apple, verbena tea and copper flavor tones give a singular personality to the wine that draws you back time and again. This was my second time with this bottling in the past year and it’s one you just want to slowly sip and consider its unique pleasures.

2007 Albert Boxler Riesling Grand Cru Sommerberg Dudenstein. This was served from a 500ml bottle. It has a crisp but rather generous aromatic profile to it that features very nice aromas of petrol, resin, white peach, baked apple, white flowers and plantain. In the mouth, it has a delightful off-dry quality to it and fun flavors of lime, tropical fruits, white peach and Delicious apple that are nicely framed by an inner mouth perfume of meadowy flowers. The finish is a bit compacted, but otherwise this is delicious now and shows a good deal of promise for additional development.

2001 Sybille Kuntz Riesling Dreistern Trocken Mosel Saar Ruwer. This wine is a pure delight to sniff, rising up with full-blown, lively and expansive aromas of white peach, diesel fuel, lime zest, cantaloupe, minerals and mixed flowers that really pull one in. In the mouth, it keeps the ride going with lively, rich and rounded flavors of grilled herbs, lemon hardball candy, verbena tea, and all kinds of yellow tropical fruits. It has great body and a full-bottomed feel that keeps the flavors pumping through to the nervy, lasting finish. This is drinking great right now, I’d have to say.

1976 Weingut Robert Weil Kiedricher Riesling Wasseros Auslese Rheingau. Here we have a wine that pours out of the bottle with a decidedly browning color, but which immediately soars up out of the glass with all kinds of wild and intoxicating notes of lavender and dried rose petal, tropical citrus, honey, praline and maple syrup aromas that just totally work together. In the mouth, it has an oxidized core but still somehow comes across as fresh and alive, with twangy acidic drive and great persistence of sticky caramel, rose hip, toasted orange peel and walnut flavors. I’m not exactly sure how it works, I just know that it does!

Reds:

1987 Mount Eden Vineyards Pinot Noir Estate Bottled Santa Cruz Mountains. This is certainly an extremely earthy California pinot—starting with the bouquet of horsehide, mud, leather, mincemeat, forest undergrowth, cranberries, nuts and a little sliver here and there of barnyard funk. In the mouth, it’s quite light-bodied and maybe even a bit thin at times, but it presents such a nice old-fashioned flavor profile of earth, black tea, cranberries, black cherries and toasted herbs that I can still enjoy it a good bit despite some austere acidity at play. It’s definitely time to drink up, though.

1996 Flowers Pinot Noir Camp Meeting Ridge Sonoma Coast. This is an entirely different animal, smelling much more aggressively of sassafras, birch, pine pitch, grape stems and creamy raspberry fruit. The blue and black berry fruit tastes cool and smoky, accented by a smidge of oak and some burly tannin that sort of dries the palate out a little on the back end. It’s an OK wine, but I just don’t seem to find much connection with it on this night.

1990 Domaine Jean-Michel Gaunoux Volnay 1er Cru Clos des Chênes. Like the Mount Eden, this is a rather earthy-styled wine, though with less appealing character to my way of thinking. It smells of scorched earth, soy, ashtray, worn leather, toasted bread and pine forest. It seems to show some impact from a warm vintage in its syrupy texture in the mouth, but it’s otherwise rather old-fashioned and a bit rustic in its notes of cooked-down cherries, tar, leather and ashes. I don’t find it to be very compelling, I’m afraid.

1996 Dominique Laurent Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Sentiers. The nose here is quite nice, showing a sexy side to very pleasant aromas of creamed cherries, raspberry paste, birch bark, suede leather, cola nut and toasted oak spices. In the mouth, it’s layered and creamy in texture, with sticky flavors of cherry roll-up, strawberry licorice rope, cassis, smoke and spice supported nicely by savory undertones. Overall, it feels controlled and structured in its bottom-note concentration but giving and warm in its grippy red fruit stuffing. I don’t like it quite as much as the 1996 Laurent Gevrey-Chambertin Champeaux, but it’s still quite nice and likely to improve over the next 4 to 5 years.

2000 Château Yon-Figeac St. Émilion. This wine has a very nice bouquet to it, showing off pretty aromas of pasty cassis, red currants, flowers, pencil shavings and earth. It’s smooth and smoky on the palate, with medium-weighted black cherry and mixed currant fruit showing a cool and classical personality. It feels balanced and well-made, with an easy-sipping character but good structure and length, as well. It offers very solid drinking enjoyment right now, I believe.

2001 Château Pavie Decesse St. Émilion. This wine offers densely concentrated and big-boned aromas of cherry, raspberry and cassis that are very direct and expressive, but fairly fresh and far from over the top. It’s pretty rich, dense and pasty-textured in the mouth, but in a pleasant way. There’s a mellow energy hiding beneath the abundant fruit stuffing, and the wine offers a big mouthful of luscious flavor. It may not be the most complex wine, but it’s just really easy to enjoy.

2001 Château Monbousquet St. Émilion. This wine, on the other hand, takes everything too far for my tastes. It comes across as thoroughly modern on the nose—with thickly-slathered aromas of mocha, raw oak, cedar shavings, crème de cassis and sweet raspberry paste. In the mouth, it is big and rich, with polished but gloppy flavors of mocha, chocolate and cherry vanilla. Maybe I’ll like this better down the road, but right now I’d proceed with caution.

2010 Tenuta delle Terre Nere Etna Prephylloxera La Vigna di Don Peppino. This was pretty hard to accurately evaluate within the context of this line-up. For me, the nose is rather high-toned in nature, offering up a lot of bubblegum, cotton candy and powdered blueberry aromas right there alongside scents of granite and green olive. It’s definitely different and probably requires a bit more attention to really understand where it’s coming from. In any event, I like the flavors better, where it’s again a bit sweet, but interestingly stony, cool and earthy on the palate. It’s definitely young, so I’d be curious to come back to it in a few years’ time.


-Michael

[AKR]

I had a couple glasses of the 2000 Yon Figeac [St Emilion] last night. I've had this since release and it had a nice clean cork and great fill. Unfortunately, I didn't think the wine was anything special. I remember SteveH from the old BWE board raving about it in its youth, and trying it back then and finding it a nice big ball of fruit. For my tastes it has lost that initial vibrant fruit, but additional interest and layers have not emerged. Still dark, without any real lightening yet, and has a light trying tannic edge to it. Not in the old school nor modern camp, fairly balanced in that dimension, carries its 13.5% abv well. I would have enjoyed this more younger, but its still solid enough. For my ledger its a B.

Despite the name, it doesn't show that Cab Franc spicy, resin, pine, minty notes that the Manoncourt's Figeac can.

[marcs]

I had the 2000 Yon-Figeac for Thanksgiving and it was very nice. It is a medium-weight, smooth and easy drinking wine that lacks the depth, lively fruit, or additional complexity to stand out as great in any way. But it is has enough fruit to be tasty and enough character/complexity/earthiness to be clearly Bordeaux. Wouldn't disagree with rating it a solid B, so long as we specify that we are talking before the era of grade inflation when a B still meant something.

[Carlos Delpin]

I’ve had several bottles of the 00 Yon Figeac over the past year and they have all been good to very good. At $25 it is a bargain.

[marcs]

agreed, the Yon-Figeac is a fantastic QPR

But of the 2000 Bordeaux with an original price of around $20 I have had recently, it was not as good as Grand Mayne or Haut-Bergey