Notes from a meat tasting dinner. We had all been asked to bring wines we felt worked well with grilled steaks.
We were having both New York strip and ribeye steaks, one pair local with 36 days aging and one from Flannery’s in the US aged 52 days. A beef tasting! FWIW, the American beef was smoother in texture an more homogeneous, showing fat marbling throughout, while the Canadian beef had a few more voids in the stakes, more localization of the fat, and was generally tastier.
2006 Meyer Family Vineyards Tribute Series Chardonnay (Emily Carr) – a very well balanced chard with oak well in proportion to fruit. Perhaps the best BC chard yet.
2000 Clos de l’Oratoire CNduP – smooth and ready to go, nice dark fruit and spice in the nose, pleasant and with reasonable length, but not a cellar candidate.
1997 Ch. St. Cosme Gigondas – I wanted to pull a cork on this one because we’d had the 1998 at the Friday lunch and enjoyed it very much. This was a clone of the 1998, with dark colour, ravishing Rhone nose, not too hat, with good fruit and good acidity.
1995 Dom. Santa Duc Haut Garrigues – more obviously Grenache, and with a leathery less floral nose, this one was also tasty with good length, but on this night the St. Cosme had the sweeter fruit and was the more attractive (if less classic) wine to the majority.
1996 Brero Poderi Roset Barolo – impressive showing with floral nose with tar and someone suggested a bit of almond paste, still lots of tannin, but very good fruit. No rush on this attractive Barolo.
1999 Inama Badisismo – this cabernet from Veneto was a more international wine that would be very hard to nail in a blind tasting. From a well known Soave producer, the wine had a toasty new world sort of nose, big cab in the mouth and gave no pointers to being Italian – an excellent ringer for that next blind cabernet tasting!
1983 Gould Campbell Port – a great way to finish off, with a Port that ad excellent colour (considerably darker than the 1991 Noval I’d had the day before). Not too hot, with very good length. I know that Parker isn’t the go-to guy on Ports, but I was looking up the Inama anyway to see if there was anything about vinification for that wine, so decided to look at the Port as well. His comment on the 83 is “My experience with this house is limited.… The 1983 is rich, full-bodied, well-colored, and complex.” He then gives it a miserly 82 points. I figured WTF?...until I looked at the 1980 note beside it. “My experience with this house is limited.….. The 1980 is rich, full-bodied, well-colored, and complex.” Uh…rubber stamp reviews, or inattentive proof-reading? I’d suspect the latter.