These are actually notes from dinners 3, 4 and 5. hey were all smaller, coming straight after the first two dinners which wore us all out! Here are the wines from these three nights in one go.
05 Desaunay Bissey Grands Echezeaux: This is very new world initially, quite forest berry driven. With time it picks up some stalkiness, but is still plush with fruit. Some thought it just needed time to build complexity. I was quite disappointed - this could easily have been Central Otago.
04 Bilancia La Collina Syrah: Hawkes Bay, New Zelaand. This is sexy. Ive had this wine before and forgotten how good it is. Concentrated berries, a whiff of white pepper, some liquorice and just a hint of fisherman’s friend menthol. This slinks around your mouth announcing its presence, and in a gentle sigh of fine tannin it’s gone – but the memory lingers and the next sip is calling. Outstanding stuff.
08 Felton Road Dry Riesling: Central Otago, New Zealand. Nice delicate wine - drunk in a hurry, no real notice taken of this.
00 Muddy Water Dry Riesling: Waipara, New Zealand. Ooh interesting - another old Waipara Riesling. Honeyed, lime and honeycomb. Citrus, a touch of Vaseline. Still bright and fresh in amongst all these flavours. Nice wine. Elegant finish, reasonable length.
07 Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr Spatlese: Lively juice from one of my favourite makes and one of my favourite Mosel vineyards. Not showing the floral component you usually get from F-H, but still some lovely lifted citrussy stuff.
04 Craggy Range le Sol Syrah: Hawkes Bay, New Zelaand. The starting point here is the La Collina. This starts out a bigger but simpler wine, and over time it opens to show more complexity and structure. Hmmm, leave 'em in the cellar, they may well blossom to be an absolute delight in the longer term. Another lovely Kiwi Syrah.
06 Felton Riesling: Central otago, New Zealand. Ooh aah, nice wine. Just picking up some development now, but full of Felton Road goodness as usual.
01 Armand Rousseau Gevrey Chambertin Clos St Jacques: Holy cow, this needs some serious airtime, and after about 2 hours it begins to show something. A delicate flower that looks quite anorexic in colour, but the airtime really lets it strut its stuff. Violets, purple fruit, some pinot sap, wrapped in a shroud of ultra silky tannin and very fine boned acidity that carries enormous power and incredible length, somehow still framed very delicately. Leave these alone for many years yet to blossom and strut their stuff. Wine of the week, easily.
Olssens of Bannockburn Pinot Noir 1999: Central Otago, New Zealand. A big dry red style wine initially that wasn’t identifiable as pinot. A drought year that produced big black fruited wines, this also showed some mintiness. Completely atypical in the current CO context, really interesting wine to put forward for an options game which well and truly fooled me.
Next wine: A lovely rich fruited wine with some leathery notes on the nose, changes a bit over time in the glass, showing sweetness and some leathery age. There is a combination of tight smal berries and plushness which suggests a Cabernet Shiraz blend to me, but not so - this is the 2000 Seppelt St Peters – a top example of the non-bretty version of this wine.
Next wine: Initially shows some age via some leathery fruit, and there is also some white pepper and hard edged apricot to this – tipping its hat at being a shiraz viognier, cooler climate. But with some air shows some lovely rich red fruits. But where from? The line and length of the tannins say Australia and they also say Cabernet, so I'm a little lost here - there are flavour components I don't identify with Cabernet, it must be from a very cool site. Turns out to be the 2000 Domaine A Cabernets.
05 Trapiche Single Vineyard Malbec: Argentinian Malbec. Horribly corked!
Somethingorother Barolo 2001: Missed the name. Violets, purple jubes, lovely rose petals. After some time in the decanter this starts to go very tannic, or maybe we are just buggered from so much wine over a week.
And so ended a week of drinking some outstanding wines. These bottles were drunk on 5 consecutive nights between 5 or 7 people, depending on the night. The venue was Cromwell in Central Otago - perhaps this shows by the selection of wines.
I also visited a few cellar doors - Wooing Tree, Carrick, Akarua, Bald Hills, Amisfield, Peregrine. Some poor planning saw me miss out on Felton Road, Maude and Rippon.
General impressions:
- Pinots are getting better across the board.
- The region is brilliant for Riesling - most operations produce a reasonable one, Carrick, Felton Road and Amisfield produce things of beauty.
- New plantings are exploding, particularly in the Bendigo area on the road back towards Omarama (and Christchurch)
- As far as subregions within CO go, they are quite distinct. Bendigo, Lowburn and Bannockburn are the bomb, and the Cromwell basin is also promising. The good wines from the Gibbston Valley cellar doors seem to come from these regions as well.
Cheers
Andrew
