Lunch - Dow, Talbot, Margaux, Tirecul......

[bills]

Monthly blind tasting lunch notes

1999 Ch Pavillon de Margaux – great start! Lanolin nose at first, a solid wine on palate with a mineral/dry finish, rich. Kept getting better and better.

2001 Tirecul La Graviere – the dry version of the Madame, which I had not tasted before. Great lemony honeyed nose with some vanilla. Also some colour and good weight and lots of complexity on palate. 60% Semillon, 20% sauv blanc 20% muscadelle.

2002 Daniel Lenko Signature Chardonnay – small producer from Niagara. Wine pretty light in the nose department but fuller in mouth, obviously well made. Touch competition.

1998 Vincent Girardin Pommard Les Rugiens – classic non-stinky pinot nose, some spice, floral highlights and an orange peel thing going on. Medium body, long clean acidic finish. Great with the dish of chanterelles in veal reduction.

1986 Ch. Talbot – I never featured this obvious Bordeaux as a 1986 until we had worked our way through the other possible vintages. It had the edge of rusticity, typical of this chateau but the tannins were considerably softer than I expected for the vintage. Wonderful flavour concentration and excellent length. Kept coming back to this one!

1985 Phelps Insignia – this wine was showing contrarily harder than expected! Dark and much mintier than the last bottle I tasted, it was smooth and has lots of time left. Impressive.

2000 Poplar Grove Reserve – made in small lots of 80% merlot, 20% cab franc, this local wine did fit into the Bordeaux mould but it was heavy going after the previous wines. Darker, warmer, sweeter, with some cocoa . Good length

1998 Terlan Porphyr Lagrein – an oddball from the Alto Adige, showing a real coffee nose, a slight leanness but reasonable body. Almost impossible to nail this as Italian. – much more like some international cab/merlot blend.

2003 Carm Reserva – a very young wine from the Douro made from Tinta Nacional, Franca and Roriz aged in American oak. Warm ripe nose, the wine quite tannic and hard to read right now. Good enough to pick up and lay away to see what will happen to it.

2002 De Toren Fusion V – an international style of Cape wine blended from the 5 Bordeaux varietals. Vitamin sort of nose, and ripe. Still fairly tannic, and clean acidic finish. Needs time.

2000 Ravenswood Monte Rosso Zinfandel – I am a big zin fan, but this one wasn’t showing much zin character. Ripe but no berries, warm on palate with soft tannin. Pleasant but surprised the heck out of me when we found out what it was. I had to go home and pop a cork on a Turley 1996 Old Vines just to check out my palate calibration…..

1983 Dow Port – hot nose, and hot in mouth, a bit sweet but not Grahams level and good length. Very nice and a great way to end a lunch – except that one of our group perpetrated another wine on us.

Fort Wine Company Blueberry Wine - we decided this wasn’t a grape wine pretty quickly, but it was well made and finished dry and could have been very nice in the summer. Pink, with an unusual bubblegum and cheese nose, ot would make a great sorbet.

Our host couldn’t resist pulling something else in kind:

Forbidden Fruit Black Cherry Cerise d’Eve – a 17% wine with sweet cinnamon nose, apples in the mouth and a shot of ginger. Actually not a bad way to end a lunch.