This past month’s poker wine tasting event had our host serving wines blind in 3 flights. We learned after unveiling that the “theme” for each flight was wines from the same vineyard. For the most part, that was not easily identifiable, except perhaps in the case of the Gruaud Larose. In any event, it was a lot of fun, as usual, and more than a fair share of fine wines were on hand.
White wines: Clos Pepe Vineyard
2005 Loring Wine Company Chardonnay Clos Pepe Vineyard Santa Rita Hills. I arrived late and did not have an opportunity to sample either of the white wines. I will therefore defer to our host’s notes: “This had noticeably more oak on the nose than the Clos Pepe Estate - creamy vanilla and butter along with some nice limestone and strawberry. Oak was not as noticeable on the palate, with some nice sweet pears and peach notes and a smooth finish. It just lacked a touch of the verve and acidity of the Clos Pepe Estate.”
2004 Clos Pepe Chardonnay Estate Santa Rita Hills. Not tasted. Our host’s notes: “Very intense green apples, cinnamon and a little kiwi on the nose. Nice racy green apple on the palate with a silky mouthfeel, excellent acidity and structure. Still a little tart, a couple more years in the bottle to soften those edges will do it good.”
Blind Flight #1: Clos Pepe Vineyard
2005 Loring Wine Company Pinot Noir Clos Pepe Vineyard Santa Rita Hills. This starts out aromatically dense and meaty, but opens up after a while and actually ends up fairly effusive by the time all is said and done. Black cherries, brambly berries, dark toasted spice and herbal tea notes have a slightly sweet edge. In the mouth, it shows some plump density of Pinot fruit featuring dark cherries, berries and spice. It is medium-weighted, but feels fleshy-textured and shows just a bit of warm sweetness. Soft tannins give a chalky feel, but turn a bit rough-hewn on the finish, which also shows a bit of heat at times. This seems like a little more time in the cellar would benefit it.
2004 Clos Pepe Pinot Noir Estate Vigneron Select Santa Rita Hills. This was my wine of the flight. It features sweet and smoky BBQ notes on the nose, along with tar oil and a deep well of sensuous blue fruits and sexy spices. It has a nice sappiness in the mouth, with a good juicy berry tang carrying it along. It is warm and inviting, but with a cooler streak running beneath. Tannins are a bit drying on the prickly finish, but the whole thing shows very good length and persistence.
2003 Clos Pepe Pinot Noir Estate Vigneron Select Santa Rita Hills. The nose of this wine is overtly candied, with strong notes of warm berry compote accented by fine cocoa powder, fresh mint and foresty green notes. It is grippy and layered in the mouth, with softly mouth-coating tannins, low acidity and a fair amount of alcohol. Not the equal of the 2004, in my opinion.
Blind Flight #2: Gruaud Larose
2001 Chateau Gruaud Larose St. Julien. Well, we all knew we were not tasting Pinot Noir anymore, if by nothing else than by the dark color of the first three wines of the flight. This particular wine is almost black in color and offers up a bouquet of blackberries, road tar, black lava rocks, dark earth, sticky tobacco juice and some dirtier funk and fur notes. It is pretty complex, despite its obvious youth. In the mouth, it is very dark, with a very cool black fruit profile that is fresh and lively, but replete with sticky tannins. Flavors of black beans, blackberries and bitter dark chocolate are sharp and crisp, though not particularly deep. That makes it seem just a bit aloof and suggests to me that it needs a good 5 years to soften up.
1999 Chateau Gruaud Larose St. Julien. After a bit of funk that blows off quickly, the nose on this wine turns cool, crisp and black--with aromas of patent leather, blackberries, black currants and crispy autumn leaves that are sharply youthful and lively. It is similarly cool and dark in the mouth, with a sense of seriousness—featuring dry edges, dark chocolaty tannins in abundance and fruit that is tightly coiled around an obsidian axis. It combines this seriousness with good breeding, but cannot escape the leathery tannins that grow and grow—feeling a bit too austere to enjoy by the time all is said and done. This is another wine that feels like it could use at least another 5 years.
1998 Chateau Gruaud Larose St. Julien. The bouquet here is again black, cool and fresh, with aromas of white pepper, tomato leaf, bell pepper and road tar lying above a deeper well of sweet blackberry compote fruit beneath. It has very fine presence in the mouth and again shows a good deal of class, but also power and youthfulness. The texture is very nicely silky for such a seemingly young wine, aiding in the feeling of finesse associated with this offering. Moreover, engaging blue fruits and spices are framed by much gentler tannins than those found in the previous 2 wines and are carried along by a very bright and juicy acid twang running through the middle. The wine seems to grow on you with each sip. It was my wine of the flight until I tried…
1983 Chateau Gruaud Larose St. Julien. Well now, this is a whole different feeling and it is clear we have made a pretty big jump backwards in terms of vintage date. In a lot of ways, this felt to me like a muscle relaxant after so many youthful and crisply tannic offerings. I smelled it and it was immediately like exhaling a deep breath and just settling into a comfy armchair after a hard day at the office. The bouquet offers up a very open-knit and gentle mélange of soft dusty earth, old leather and warm cherry pie that has an effortless airiness. Still, it is nicely mouth-filling on the palate, certainly showing some age, but also a certain robustness. It is definitely more open-textured than anything before it, though there are still some drying tannins to contend with. It is more red-fruited for sure than the previous wines, with decent structure still evident—suggesting that this will hold a while but probably not improve any more. This is a very nice wine to slowly indulge in right now and my wine of the flight, for sure.
1970 Chateau Gruaud Larose St. Julien. Though our host purchased this for our tasting from a source he has had good luck with in the past, it seems evident that this bottle has been cooked somewhere along the line. Aromas of roasted fruit, sherried notes, alcohol and stewed tomatoes lead to thin and insipid flavors in the mouth. Sadly, it is undrinkable.
Blind Flight #3: Hudson Vineyard
2001 Havens Wine Cellars Syrah Hudson Vineyard Carneros. As with the transition from flight 1 to flight 2, it is obvious that we are on to a different type of wine here in flight 3. The first wine of the flight exhibits boisterous aromatics of jammy blueberry and blackberry fruit, bicycle tire, crushed gravel stones and dark toasted oak. It is fairly thick and dense on the palate, with a big mouthfeel. A bit of heat seems to pop in from time to time, but is not burdensome for some reason. Perhaps that is because the wine is fruit forward and lush, and has a giving nature to its well-rounded pillowy tannins. It is not the most elegant of wines and it feels too young to be showing much layering of complexity, but it seems at least fairly promising with some short-term aging.
1999 Arietta Red Wine Hudson Vineyard Napa Valley. This is a blend of 60% Cabernet Franc and 40% Merlot and according the Arietta web site, it is the rarest of their wines, with only 350 cases produced that year. That is too bad, as I’d love to pick some up to age a bit longer. In any event, the wine is very open aromatically—with pretty notes of black leather, chocolate, forest ferns, caramel, incense, confectioner’s candy, berry preserves and a bit of fine oak. It gets better and better the longer one lets it air out, too, feeling deeper and more engrossing with each passing minute. In the mouth, it is black-fruited with all kinds of lovely soft spices and a nice creamy, yet grippy feel on the palate. It has a sense of outstanding length and fabulous flow. The finish is the only part that is a bit chewy or overtly tannic, but it has great length and a persistence of flavor that seems to caress the palate well after it has been swallowed. This was an easy wine of the flight for me and a definite competitor for wine of the day. I was surprised I didn’t hear more positive chatter about this wine.
1997 Neyers Syrah Hudson Vineyard Napa Valley. The Neyers has aromas of Baker’s chocolate, black currant, dark earth and a bell pepper note that grows and grows with air. It is cool and crisp-edged in the mouth, yet shows some layering and lushness of fruit. There is a nice juicy tang that cuts through the dense chocolaty sweetness and lifts up the soft pillowy tannins that roll in after a while. It is nicely balanced overall and provides fine drinking now, though probably better in 2-3 years.
Flight #4: Random stuff brought by others
2002 Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards Pinot Noir Sleepy Hollow Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands. It was tough to go back to Pinot Noir after all that, I have to admit, so take this note with a grain of salt. The aromas here seem sappy, with sweet liquid berry fruit, forest ferns, grape stems and funky sweat. It is a bit chewy-textured in the mouth, with a sense of stemminess to the profile of red berries and big spices. It is a fairly rich Pinot with an interesting texture, but perhaps too much of that brown stemminess for my taste.
2005 Cliff Lede Cabernet Sauvignon Stag’s Leap District. This wine was just too much of everything for me at the end of a long day of tasting. The nose features dark berries, cool earth and eucalyptus aromas. In the mouth, it is dark and chewy, with very aggressive tannins, very aggressive acidity and too much alcohol sticking out. I’ll take a mulligan based on my palate fatigue, but I can’t say I’m eager to give this one another shot.
Sweet wine:
1995 Weinbau Hans & Berta Bauer Pinot Gris Trockenbeerenauslese Austria. There is a bit of amber to the color of this sweet wine. Early musky aromas blow off to reveal more consistent scents of caramel, butterscotch, spun sugar, hay bale and fresher citrus notes. It is quite viscous in the mouth, really coating the tongue. Yet, it is not ponderous at all—in fact, the flavors manage to have an airy feel to them more than anything. There is a nicely freshening squirt of citrus acidity that balances off the creamy botrytis and brown sugar flavors. The airy feel collapses a bit on the finish, where it ends up feeling a bit too cloying, but I like this a good deal. It is neither too sugary sweet, nor too sternly structured. It certainly was an interesting and enjoyable wine on which to end the day.
-Michael