WTN: Hot, Hot, Hot (Champagne, Riesling, Burg, Chinon)

[David M. Bueker]

Last minute dinner with friends Spencer & Steve at our local Asian BYO. Unfortunately the proprietors have gotten to know me too well, so they like to kick my food up in the heat scale a bit.

Cedric Bouchard Champagne Blanc de Noirs Roses de Jeanne "Inflorescence" NV
Crystaline purity, good red fruit, quite primary and fresh. Not a ton of weight or depth, so I would drink soon, but very, very good and a fantastic accompaniment to our mixed plate of sushi (mmm...Toro).

1997 Willi Schaefer Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spatlese (AP 12)
Well at least I got to open something. (Spencer brought the other three wines. He has more to drink through than I do.) This is fully mature and needs some time open to pull itself together. When it does there's only a little bit of petrol that overlays a just barely off dry apple/slate accented and slightly creamy matrix. Very well balanced and showing fine integration of all its parts. Nothing sticks out and nothing seems hidden or missing. This went very well with chicken sate and some calamari.

We switched to reds for our main course (beef dishes all around), but the staff at the restaurant like to mess with me once in a while This time they made my Mongolian Beef just a leetle spicy. When I took a moment to examine it closely I could see the red chile pieces flecked all throughout the dish. It was hot, hot, hot. One particular bit of the dish had more than its fair share of peppers & nearly brought tears to my eyes. Needless to say my notes on the reds are sketchy at best.

1999 Michel Lafarge Volnay Vendanges Sélectionnées
Closed, closed, closed. It's a little bit like someone dropping an iron ingot on top of a berry. Even before my Mongolian Beef main course came out I could barely get anything from the wine. Then the intense spice of the beef hit my palate & it was game over.

1990 Olga Raffault Chinon Les Picasses
Initial taste was very, very bretty. Oof. It calmed down somewhat, but I never really got to taste much because of the incredible spice of my beef dish.

Fun evening. I actually liked the beef, but I wish the spice had been at a more normal level for pairing with wine.

Nice lineup. I've never had the Inflorescence but heard good things.
The Schaefer sounds nice.
Too bad about the Lafarge. Some '99s are opening up, but Lafarge probably makes the most structured wines in Volnay, and the VS is generally bigger/longer lived than the regular. I opened a '99 Beaune 1er from Germain/Ch. du Chorey last night, hard to enjoy for first hour, then got nice.
Lots of variation in the '90 Raffault as far as brett, some have too much "ass in the glass" for even me.
Food sounds great even if matches weren't.

Interesting lineup, that Schaefer in particular sounds really lovely. Shame about the heat spoiling the wines - while I love spicy Oriental food too much of chilli/pepper just kills the effect of any wine. Glad you guys had a good time.