TNs: Casual dinner notes

[Michael Malinoski]

My wife and I had another couple over recently for an early dinner, and we ended up opening a fair number of wines by the time all was said and done.

2008 Ramey Chardonnay Ritchie Vineyard Russian River Valley. This wine has a bodacious and delightful bouquet to it, loaded with fun scents of hazelnut, ground nutmeg, cold butter, lemon cream and spiced pear. It’s flamboyant and fun, and invites you right in. In the mouth, it is a pure delight—with a full, round mouthfeel delivering creamy flavors of pear, lemon, hazelnut and brown spices. The high levels of glycerin give it a slinky feel and it definitely flirts with being almost too unctuous at times, but for me it’s absolutely delicious.

2005 Sybille Kuntz Riesling Lieser Niederberg-Helden Scharz Auslese feinherb Mosel Saar Ruwer. This wine is a pretty yellow-gold color, with a richly exotic bouquet to it, featuring kaleidoscopic aromas of tropical yellow fruit, peach pit, nectarine, honeydew melon rind, allspice and white flower petals swirling around together quite appealingly. On the palate, it’s thick-legged and oily in texture, with a bolt of sweet yellow tropical fruit flavors accented by brown spices. It’s very fruity and displays more sweetness through the mid-palate than I was expecting, though the finish is dry. It seemingly tries to perform a delicate balancing act and isn’t always the most focused wine, but it can be fun to drink if you let go of your expectations for a Mosel Riesling a bit.

2005 Sybille Kuntz Riesling Lieser Niederberg-Helden Held Auslese Mosel Saar Ruwer. This is a very interesting contrast to the previous wine, as it features a much more typical sort of Mosel nose that highlights aromas of blue slate, petrol, kerosene, peach and pineapple. In the mouth, it’s higher-toned in nature, with a very good balance between the fine sweetness of the fruit and the crunchy acidity. It does have some exotic facets here and there, but it’s more about precision, class and length. It’s distinctive and well-made, in my opinion.

2012 Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé. This is a nice, clean rosé with pleasant aromas of pink grapefruit, lemon, strawberry, white currants and stone. In the mouth, it’s clean, crunchy and balanced—with a refreshing core of strawberry and pink citrus fruit showing easy balance and delivering a mouth-watering finish. This is my kind of rosé, for sure.

2010 Domaine de la Pinte Arbois Poulsard de l’Ami Karl. This is super-pale and faded in color, maybe just a tad above a rosé, really. It presents fascinating aromas of wilted red flowers, strawberries, limestone and white pepper to go along with suede leather, cedar and lead pencil notes. It’s rather light-bodied on the palate, with a sharp acidic tone to it all the way through. It has a sneaky intensity to it at times, but is otherwise light and airy with mostly surface notes of strawberry, citrus, iron and stone, with occasional glimpses of funk. There’s not much sense of depth or concentration here, but it’s pretty tasty and certainly keeps your interest.

2008 Azienda Agricola Cos Cerasuolo di Vittoria Classico. This wine has a nicely-layered nose of smoky meats, singed iron, black plums, black raspberries, toasted herbs and cedar shavings. It has a pleasing sappiness to it on the palate, with flavors of cherries, raspberries and herbs leading the way. It has good length and leaves a lasting impression of soft spices and rounded red fruits. It’s drinking well right now and it’s far too easy to drink too much of!

1997 Château de Plaisance Quarts de Chaume. This is darkly golden in color but the nose is quite healthy and heady with its lovely aromas of caramel, spun sugar, burnished apricot, tangerine and copper minerality. In the mouth, the botrytis spices are overt and fun, with core flavors of baked apricot, nectarine, dark peach and rock sugar coming across as wonderfully pure, dense and balanced. It might be a bit advanced for its age, but this is a really good time to catch it, in my opinion.


-Michael