TN's: '00 Belgrave, '73 Pape Clement plus random TN's

[Michael Malinoski]

These are catch-up notes on some wines drunk over the past few months.

Hanging out with Andy J. at my house (two different occasions)

2000 Chateau Belgrave Haut-Medoc. Served from 375ml. This is a very dark, opaque, black-tinged wine in color. It sends our very nice waves of aromas like saddle leather, spiced cherries, nettles, mace, brown tobacco leaf, roasted coffee grounds, creosote, spiced blackberries, and fruitcake. It shows a nice aromatic layering, for sure, but after a while in the glass it actually starts to contract and simplify a bit, rather than expand upon this nasal footprint. In any event, it is a chewy-textured wine on the palate, with a decided rustic quality all the way through. It is very dark-fruited, with loads of fudgy tannins framing flavors of black currants, coffee, black cherry, herbs, lemon peel and dark Belgian chocolate. It feels more fuzzy and chunky than in any way elegant. It is showing some grainy oak, especially on the finish, but it also has a redeeming squirt of sneaky citrus acidity that comes in at the very end to provide greater overall freshness to the wine. For the price, this is a great QPR, with a lovely bouquet early on, but enough toughness on the palate to suggest a need for additional cellar time, even in half-bottles.

1973 Chateau Pape Clement Pessac-Leognan. Andy bought 11 bottles of this at the Skinner auction and I agreed to ‘take a few off his hands’. As we got together to divvy up bottles from other lots, he was gracious enough to pop this bottle for us to get a taste. Peter C. kindly opened another bottle several nights later, too, but this bottle was clearly the better of those two. First off, the bouquet of the wine is lightly perfumed with lilac, pine, raspberries, spicy aged leather, and distinctively strong notes of dusty ash (as with some ashy cheese rinds) and jalapeno pepper. It feels airy and feathery, but intense, and it gains in depth and weight as it sits out over a few hours’ time. Really nice! In the mouth, it features some slightly sour but lively and still somewhat bright red fruits such as cranberries, sour cherries, strawberries, red currants and lemony citrus to go along with pine notes and ashy jalapeno again. It is full of life and has decent structure hanging on, but is definitely on the lighter, elegant side of things. No tannins are noticeable, though perhaps they pop up just a bit on the finish as the wine begins to stretch out its legs. It is really easy to drink and indeed the bottle was gone before I even knew it (and nary a hangover the next morning).

Dinner with some neighbors:

2008 Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc Viognier California. The bouquet of this wine is strong and immediate, with a lot of things swirling around--including vibrant aromas of white peach, pear, gooseberry, cateloupe and wet chalk paste. In the mouth, the acidity and tingly nervosity are such that the mouth actually waters for another sip. Flavors of green grapes, green melon, and gooseberry are bright and tangy with acidic depth, but the longer one stays with this the more it demonstrates additional concentrated fruit character. Especially with its hint of watermelon on the finish, this seems like a great summertime wine option.

2002 i Clivi Colli Orientali del Friuli Galea di Ferdinando Zanusso. I wish I had checked my tasting notebook before I picked this up on close-out. I had tried it before at a store tasting and not enjoyed it much—preferring by a good amount the 1999 version (which I did buy back then). Anyway, the nose here features a hard and tough shell of green herbal elements hiding a center of only occasionally-glimpsed but more engaging notes like wet chalk, cantaloupe, watermelon rind and lemongrass. It is a bit of a disconnect on the palate, where it is round and viscous, with lots of body and creamy character. There are lots of woody spices, too, but the big problem is a very notable aluminum or flat metallic bit that keeps popping up with regularity. It finishes very dry but manages only decent length there. Overall, I was hoping for more, but should have known better.

2007 Georg Mumelter St. Magdalaner Classico Griesbauerhof Alto Adige. This wine is a pale, thin garnet color and features a cool, crisp, taut nose of gravel, cranberry and crisp leaves. It is light-bodied, and feels rather transparent to the soil, featuring minerality in abundance to go with flavors of cranberry, fresh uncrushed berries and soft wood smoke. It feels cool, crisp and stony, with a narrow but refreshing cut of fruit and acidity. This is a light, refreshing food wine with a distinctly mineral-driven personality that seems true to its place.

Dinner with a good friend in Miami

2003 Dominio de Atauta Ribera del Duero San Juan. This was a real treat to drink with a good friend of mine, sitting outside at a nice steakhouse in Miami one night a while back. He had just picked up the bottle from a restaurateur friend of his in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I was unfamiliar with the story of the producer, but it is worth doing some reading about it. In short, the wines are made in a higher, cooler, more Eastern part of Ribera and are produced from long-forgotten ancient Tempranillo vines from the Atauta area. This is one of the rare single-vineyard wines, much of which I think makes it to said restaurant in the other San Juan. In any event, this is a very young wine in need of a vigorous decant. Aromatically, it displays a fascinating mix of rich plum skins, star anise, nutmeg and sweet creosote. It is clear that in time this mélange will only gain in complexity and nuance, but it is still rather compelling today. In the mouth, despite the decant, it is showing its unfined and unfiltered qualities—with a good deal of sediment floating around. More importantly, the wine is quite good. It has a sort of airy coolness and cut to it, but yet shows a massive depth of flavor. It features tastes of earthy dark fruit and intense and distinctive minerality that I simply can’t convey. Really, this tastes totally unique and distinctive in my experience—perhaps a reflection of its unique tiny terroir. In any event, it is also quite tannic at this early stage of evolution. It is also full-bodied and solidly-structured beneath the airier qualities. This wine really needs 5 to 10 years and cellaring and should last long beyond that.

My wife and I actually sat down at home and had a meal with just the two of us a while back. No food was thrown and no drinks were spilled. Nobody wanted to know why their sister had gotten 6 pieces of carrot and they had only gotten 5. There was no whining for second or third helpings of dessert. In short, it was heaven.

1997 Signorello Chardonnay Estate Unfiltered Napa Valley. This is a very special wine for me and my wife, having been the white wine we had at our wedding reception in 2000. This was the one bottle from that day we thought to hold onto, but we decided it just couldn’t remain in the cellar any longer--despite the wonderful memories it sat there representing. So, we popped the cork. First off, it looks fairly healthy, but is a bit burnished gold in color. What is amazing to me is that despite being 9 years older, we both immediately “recognized” the aromas and taste of the wine that was at its core—it is just now darker in tone and more advanced across the spectrum of qualities. It is still obviously complex aromatically—bringing back those old memories of vanilla bean, graham crackers, clove, nutmeg, lemon drops, mango, butterscotch, pistachio nut shells and the tiniest hint of botrytis-tinged meringue. In the mouth, it is full-bodied and very creamy, still showing a good deal of flamboyant oak treatment and lots of toasty brown spices. It is rather luscious still, with a lot of glycerin that coats the glass. It fills the mouth with layers and waves of key lime pie, meringue, apricot and oak spice flavors. This wine is still a power-house in many ways, but it is nicely balanced by some of the nuances of flavor that probably have emerged with age. It has lost some freshness, I’m sure, but it still delivers a lot of flavor, body and drive. It was best at about one hour after opening, after which the texture began to turn a bit mealy and rougher-hewn. The alcohol was never apparent, though, and the wine certainly does not appear to be cracking up or anything. Still, I have to say that I really wish the oak had integrated better, as it gets rather tiresome after a while to have the finish so dominated by oak flavoring. It just detracts from the luscious flavors it offers up through the mid-palate. Still, we were both rather gratified that the wine had good life left and we were quite happy to re-live those memories!

N.V. Opus One Overture Napa Valley. This non-vintage Opus is from a blend of 1999 and 2000 juice. While not nearly as good as a previous bottle we’ve had of 1996/1997 a few years back, this is still decent, especially with a meal. Initially, it is fairly compact on the nose, opening up only slowly to reveal more substantial aromas of bridle leather, tobacco leaf, dried cranberries, black raspberry and milk chocolate that give it a quiet, refined character. It is much the same in the mouth—coming across as a gentlemanly wine. The entry feels a bit thin and bitter-edged, with crisp red fruit and a crunchy character through the mid-palate—featuring pretty flavors of tangy cranberry, black cherry and powdered chocolate. After about an hour the fruit starts to fill in a bit and make the pretty character a bit more significant, even though it never really turns the corner on serious depth. The finish turns decidedly more herbal, with a menthol and dry-aged oak graininess that I could live without. Still, the whole manages to be more than the sum of these parts, and while nothing special, it manages still to deliver a fine level of surface pleasure in a calm and quiet fashion.

My Father-in-Law's Birthday (a casual dinner with just a few of us)

N.V. Roederer Estate Brut Anderson Valley. Dark smoke, black bread, graphite and lemon peel aromas are a bit tighter, tauter and more formal than two other bottles of this wine earlier in the year. It is also more tightly under wraps on the palate, with some quinine, sharp pear, smoke and cherry skin flavors that are more rigid than luxuriant. It does manage to build up to more fruit notes over time, with some grapefruit and other citrus notes leading the way. Mostly, though, it stays masculine and introspective. Previous bottles have been more giving than this one.

2005 La Colombera Colli Tortonesi Timorasso. In appearance, this wine is dark yellow with a gold tint. It smells of crushed gravel powder, lime rind, fine smoke, cherry pits and Spring herbs. It grows and grows with air, evolving from crisp and sharp to a more nuanced and layered feel, pulling in nice notes of lemon oil, apple skins and something like mineral spirits. It is dry on the palate, with an interesting texture like fresh sliced apple flesh. It tastes of mealy spiced apple and pear, nectarine and grapefruit. It attacks the palate with a vibrant feel, but rolls up into a rounded ball of flavor through the middle. It finishes pretty long, turning a bit more bitter--with tangy grapefruit and minerals carrying it to its conclusion. It has a natural and balanced feel to it and overall represents a very good QPR, in my opinion.

1996 Louis Jadot Nuits St. Georges. This bottle opens with a bit of bretty band-aid funk and sweaty horse, but eventually settles down a bit to fold in more nuanced notes of old leather straps, persimmon, rust, faded red flower petals, hardwood flooring and dried black cherry fruit. It is rather resolved in the mouth, giving a nice little controlled burst of aged red berry fruit, earth and leather before fairly quickly receding into drying acidity. That acidity and overall profile are soft enough to let the gentle fruit continue to offer glimpses of stately old charm, but it stays light and generally under-fruited most of the way. However, once we began to eat the food (roast duck with Madeira reduction sauce), the wine seemed to get up off the mat and bring more to the party—giving a good final swan song to the last glass or two. Still, a bottle 2 years ago managed to show more freshness than this, so my suggestion would be to drink up.

My Mother-in-Law's Birthday (more of a cocktail party kind of thing with a bunch of family friends--had to have all white wines due to carpet staining fears. Ah, mothers-in-law...gotta love mine anyway!)

N.V. Gloria Ferrer Brut Blanc de Noir Methode Champenoise Sonoma County. There is not a whole lot going on aromatically with this bottle—showing only some hints of smoke, cocoa dust and lime. It just never really opens up beyond that. On the palate, it is rounded and relatively full, with a pleasing weight and overall mouthfeel. It may have a tiny bit of sweetness to it, with layered fruit and a sort of white chocolate note that is interesting. There is decent persistence of interesting flavors like grapefruit, ash, papaya and white currant. It finishes clean—not really crisp but hardly flabby, either. It comes across as nothing too special, but pretty solid.

2007 Cave de Saumur Saumur Blanc Les Pouches. It’s not giving up a lot on the nose right now, showing a bit of honeydew melon, chalk dust and yellow Chuckle candy. It is lively and crisp with acidity, but with a nice chalky fleshiness to the texture. Peach pit, kiwi and honeydew melon flavors are rounded but forcefully directed along the palate to the grapefruit and bitter smoke-tinged finish. It has a nice crisp edge all the way through and feels young and vibrant—drinking refreshingly if not particularly profoundly. Give it another 6-12 months, though, and see if it develops greater complexity.

2002 Tardieu-Laurent Cotes du Rhone Blanc Guy Louis. This wine offers a mineral-laden nose to go with aromas of botanical herbs, lemon peel and ocean brine. However, as it comes up to temperature, a strong vanilla oaken profile begins to grow, eventually becoming ponderous. Similarly on the palate, this is best when served cool—showing cool, crisp and minerally but perhaps a bit bitter and fruit-deficient. The oak again grows to unwelcome proportions and there is not enough fruit to stand up to it. It has plenty of body for a Cotes du Rhone Blanc, but the acidity is turning a bit shrill and the fruit is all but gone at this point.

2005 Coopers Creek Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough. This seems to have fallen off since the last few times I tasted it. The nose continues to feature plenty of gooseberry and green melon fruit, but is now showing some grass mulch and over-ripe fruit rinds in the background that detract a good deal from what should be a clean refreshing aromatic profile. It is still zesty in the mouth, but frankly a bit boring at this point—with some simple green apple, gooseberry and flat smoke flavors not showing much drive or penetration. Could just be over the hill.

2005 Hexamer Meddersheimer Rheingrafenberg Riesling Quarzit. This Riesling features bright notes of peach, kiwi, quartz and faint kerosene on the nose. On the palate, it is a bit sweeter than I expected, but it pumps out the flavors of apricot, peach, tangerine and pink grapefruit pretty effortlessly in an easy-flowing and medium-bodied package. It shows a bit grainy-textured at times, but otherwise offers good bright fruit to go along with a crowd-pleasing amount of body.

Dinner at my wife's Uncle's (a foodie-fest, wherein my only contribution was to eat and to bring several of the wines)

N.V. Janisson Baradon & Fils Champagne Tradition Brut. We started off with this sparkler that was OK but nothing special. On the nose, it opens with a lot of graphite and pulls in some peach, apple and bread dough over the course of an hour or so. In the mouth, it is easy-drinking and not especially taxing on the palate or the mind. It is fine for sipping, but does not have much complexity or character.

2006 Foxen Pinot Noir Santa Maria Valley. The nose of this lighter-styled Pinot Noir offers up a lot of nuanced surface pleasure with very bright and pure strawberry and light raspberry fruit and soft wood aromas. It is similar in the mouth, with lighter body, fresh acidity and tingly red berry fruit that can be a bit mouth-puckering. It is a bit rough-edged in its youth at times, but otherwise pure, fruity and fresh. It is not deep, complex or mysterious—just vibrant and fun.

2006 Wild Horse Pinot Noir Central Coast. Aromas of tart young blueberries, brown sugar and toasted oak are not especially engaging or flattering. It is polished and smoothed out on the palate, without a lot of acidic cut or much in the way of tannins. It is medium-bodied, with flavors again of tart blueberries to go along with lime zest and a lot of coarsely toasted oak staves—giving it a feeling of inelegance on the finish, especially after the polished entry. Otherwise, it is pretty simple and seemingly made for easy drinking. It is just not very interesting.

2006 Bergstrom Pinot Noir Cumberland Reserve Willamette Valley. The nose here is decidedly more earthy, with some darker fruits, mushroom and forest undergrowth notes. It is somewhat closed and brooding on the palate, with dark fruit and full body, but again with the woodsy qualities. It has a rounded feel to it and displays fine balance, but needs some time to unfold and show its full character.

2006 MacPhail Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast. Of the four Pinots tasted at this meal, this one was by far my favorite. It is a very nice wine indeed, exhibiting loads of exotic Oriental spices and a puree of crushed strawberry and maraschino cherry fruit aromas. It is very silky and oh-so-smooth in texture, providing an elegant but forcefully-fruited feeling to it. Zippy spices and fine-pitched acidity carry it along, as it just slips down the throat with ease. My WOTN.

2005 Sbragia Family Cabernet Sauvignon Monte Rosso Vineyard Sonoma County. This Cabernet is very plummy on the nose, with lots of soft oak spices and tons of cedar dust and mint right up in your grill. The oak is definitely on display. In the mouth, this is again rather plummy, with dark but rather soft and rounded fruit throughout. It is a bit primary, but is not showing much in the way of tannin or structure. It is actually drinking pretty much straight-forward in a large-boned, rounded and up-front fruity sort of fashion. It is not a fruit bomb by any stretch, but it sure is open-knit and easy-drinking for such a young Cabernet. I think more structure or framing would help give it some focus and better overall drive, which it lacks for the most part at this stage of its evolution.

2005 Sbragia Family Cabernet Sauvignon Rancho del Oso Howell Mountain. Now, for something completely different. This is all about mountain fruit, with tons of briery mixed berries on the nose, to go along with stem, green fern and moss aromas. It manages its oak spices much better and has a forthright cool berry character to it. In the mouth, it has a lot of tight structure, solid acidity and abundant tannic bite. It is brambly but tight, tannic and brutish—needing a good deal of time to come around. Really, something in between the two extremes of these Cabernets would be quite nice!

2004 Beringer Vineyards Nightingale Napa Valley. Served from 375 ml bottle. 70% Semillon, 30% Sauvignon Blanc. I had never had Nightingale before, and this particular bottle was a disappointment. Initially, it offers aromas of creamsicle, spice, lime peel, apricots and an odd off-putting sort of over-ripe mango note. In the mouth, it is surprisingly sharp and direct, with a crisp tensile edging that feels stand-offish. Lifted flavors of meyer lemon, key lime pie and yellow tropical fruits are simply not elegant, refined or particularly fleshy. I mean the flavors themselves are nice, but they just feel pushy and maybe unmelded. I am going to give this the benefit of the doubt and say it is just perhaps too young, but I am not confident.

-Michael

[JEP_62]

Nice Notes Michael.

Concerning the 1973 Chateau Pape Clement Pessac-Leognan - man I was so happy when we opened that bottle. I picked one with a lower fill and it was really nice. I patted myself on the back for making such a wise purchase. Then Peter opened one and it was just an oxidized mess. Kind of burst my bubble.

Oh well, we'll just have to see how the other 9 do.

Andy

[stefan]

Interesting cross section of wines there, Michael. I would have expected the 73 Pape Clement to be DOA.

Roederer Estate continues to be our favorite lower priced CA sparkling wine.

i would have expected the 96 Jadot NSG village wine to be in its prime now.

stefan

[Michael Malinoski]

Hi Stefan, we were very pleasantly surprised by the '73 Pape Clement. However, a second bottle a few nights later was showing lots of oxidization. For what Andy paid, it is hard to complain (unless all or most of the remaining bottles show more like the latter!).

On the 96 Jadot NSG, I posted a positive note 2 years ago but warned that the wine had turned the corner and ought to be drunk up soon. Indeed, this has proven to be the case, though individual bottles with pristine provenance may certainly be closer to prime, I suppose.

Thanks,
Michael

[JEP_62]

I opened another of the '73 Pape Clement yesterday and it was just like the first bottle. A hint of the green pepper, but otherwise a nicely aged, although on the lighter side, elegant, complex Bordeaux. My son and I polished off the bottle with ease. So far, 2 out of 3 the bottles showed well - not bad odds.

Andy

[Michael Malinoski]

Glad to hear it, Andy. I'll hope my success ratio is at least that good with my 3 bottles! Happy Father's Day.

-Michael