Birthday wines

[LOS]

Melissa's birthday, not mine.

We opened the 1997 Georges Mugneret Chambolle Fuesselottes with our lunch of grilled groupa in a prosciutto crust. The wine was lovely but seemed to show more aged forest-floor notes than expected; nice with the ham. I've had this wine several times in the past, and each time it showed itself a good candidate for aging despite the vintage. It was with a bit of trepidation that I left half the bottle open for dinner. Not to worry: by dinner time it had picked up steam and was more fruit forward with the forest floor receding into the background. GSM.

For dinner we had salad, salmon carpaccio, scallop carpaccio, lime-marinated grilled shrimp, and baked salmon with a light soy-ginger glaze. This clearly called for some bubbly; I pulled out the 1985 Jacquesson Signature which proved to be lovely indeed. This wine was about as rich a Champagne as I like, while still keeping enough acid to go with the collection of seafood. Wish I had more.