Notes from a dinner with friends, wines tasted blind:
Gaston Chiquet Blanc de Blancs d'Ay (nv) – clean crisp wine with excellent mousse, refreshing. 100% Chardonnay
2007 Dom. de la Mordoree Tavel – deep colour, excellent nose without any heat, finishing nice and dry.
2002 Bourillon d’Orleans Vouvray La Coulee d’Argent – immediately identifiable Chenin nose (but then I’ve had 3 Vouvrays in the last couple of weeks) with floral scents, the wine balanced and smooth with excellent length. Not old enough to have developed much secondary characteristic, but lovely fruit now.
1998 Dom. du Caillou CNduP – some terminology necessary here. This is not les Cailloux, run by Brunel, this is the wine made by Sylvie Vacheron at Le Clos du Caillou, but marketed in this vintage simply as Domaine du Caillou, and in later vintages as Le safre, under the label Le Clos du Caillou. Confused yet? Garnet without any bricking, the nose initially an excellent fruit based creation without any animal scents, but it paradoxically reverted with air to add a funky but interesting element. Full in the mouth, with fairly soft tannin and a finish of great length showing black pepper. Absolutely perfect fro drinking right now and should last a few years. Makes me want to open a bottle of the 2008 Reserve which is also in my cellar. This was the first bottle of the regular cuve I’d opened and I seem to have hit it right on for drinking window.
2000 Ca del Baio Barbaresco Asili – it was funny because my host, David Cooper and I have very similar taste in wines and we both love Rhones and Italians. When we first smelled these wines side by side, we were both thinking that we had chosen wines from the same area, but he was thinking Italy and I was thinking Rhone. A bit of air changed the CNduP enough to change our mind but the nose on this one, while more constant was also more perplexing. It showed significant cocoa with a bit of dill, and it wasn’t showing at all like a typical Nebbiolo – so much so that we were thinking cab, and possibly new world. Aside from the lack of typicity, this was a nice wine, very smooth in the mouth with only slightly high terminal acidity as a clue about source, with very good length.
We finished up with a couple of half bottles of interesting dessert wine.
2002 Ch. Briatte Roudes Sauternes – unknown to me and a new listing hereabouts, this was quite pleasant with medium yellow colour, light botrytis in the nose, with a fresh, clean lemony finish. For current drinking.
2005 Schloss Johannisberger Riseling Spatlese Trocken – I figured this for a German Riesling and made my way to Spatlese based on bouquet sweetness and intensity pretty quickly, but when I tasted it I almost felt cheated! As is often the case, I felt that the wine would have been much better with a higher level of RS which would probably also have carried a higher level of midpalate fruit. It wasn’t bad, just not up to initial expectation.