Anniversary Dinner - 83 Bordeaux

[bills]

Dinner last night to celebrate an anniversary. Four people, only two real drinkers, so we made 2 bottles last for 4 courses. Well, that and the fact that we had fortified ourselves with a bottle of Gosset Excellence while waiting may have helped limit our later intake.

With foie gras terrine and duck rillette (she-who-must-be-obeyed had warm Crottin de Chêvignol goat cheese marinated with olive oil and herbes de Provence, Parma ham and grilled pine nuts)

1983 Ch. La Lagune – dark fruit nose, mature now, with good depth and complexity, and it opened up beautifully over an hour without fading at all to add an almost perfumed element. Very smooth and well integrated on palate, with good length and soft tannins. This wine has never showed better. I am tempted to open a bottle with the very good 82, but I think that there would be no point – the 82 would eclipse the 83 and I wouldn’t enjoy the 83 as much as we did on it‘s own.

We finished this bottles with pan seared duck foie gras with fleur de sel on chef's brioche (SWMBO had Saffron risotto with local Honey mussels)

Next up - roasted rack of lamb with wild mushrooms, and:

1983 Ch. Gloria. – I opened both bottles and tasted them and this one initially showed better with more interesting nose and better fruit. With time, this fairly dark wine also opened up to show nice cedar. It was very smooth in the mouth and didn’t have the remaining tannins that the La Lagune had exhibited, so it came across as a sort of melt in your mouth wine – an initial hit of flavours which then just gradually faded into the finish without any hills or dips along the way. This will definitely not improve and should be drunk. On this night I gave first prize to the La Lagune. My friend, who had tasted the Gloria from magnum a week before indicated that it had shown a bit more structure and slightly more forward fruit.

We finished this wine with cheese (slices of brie anointed with truffle oil, which I agree does interfere with the taste of the wine, but which I am nonetheless powerless to resist), while the women-folk chowed down on a panoply of small desserts (8 of them!), protesting that they were too full yet oddly leaving no remnants behind.

I think that this was the perfect way to enjoy mature clarets (and celebrate 27 years of wedded bliss) – a small dinner with good friends, excellent food and no rush to be anywhere else.