Last month, a few of us traveled to the South Shore of Boston for a tasting of California Cabernets from the 1987, 1991 and 1994 vintages. We had some unfortunate luck with bad corks and perhaps an atypical bottle, but also some great wines and fine food.
2002 Pierre Gimonnet Champagne Brut Paradoxe. I arrived late and in a foul mood from sitting in a lot of traffic, so was glad when the last drops of this Champagne were poured for me. The nose shows notes of dark ginger, peach pit and copper. In the mouth, it has a toasty rye bread, peach pit, ginger and Clementine flavor profile, with good energy. It shows its age at times but seems to recover with a squirt of citrus fruit toward the back of the palate. It turns a bit sour on the squeaky clean finish, but is generally satisfying.
2002 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley. Served from 375 ml. Peter brought this to give to Kevin as a sort of inside joke, I believe. It is a pretty simple wine, with some direct aromas of creamy cherry, red licorice and tomato leaves. In the mouth, it is totally straightforward and never does anything to really capture one’s attention. Some black currant and dark cherry flavors are rounded over a medium-bodied frame, but the wine lacks verve or character. I was eager to move on…
1982 Château Cos d’Estournel St. Estephe. This wine was served double blind by Bob K. Right off the bat, I’m thinking it is fairly old, as it pours from the bottle with a sort of browning garnet color. Once in the glass, though, it darkens up considerably. The nose is just fantastic--constantly bringing in new notes, riffing on existing themes and eventually circling back to its core profile. Initially, it rustles up fine aromas of dried cherries, deeply worn leather, barnyard scrabble, and soft incense. Some of the fruit begins to show a mildly stewed character at times, but it doesn’t really bother me. Later, it pulls in ever-more-complex aromas of forest floor, soy, sun-dried tomato, hickory smoke and grilled pepper. Overall, it is a contemplative bouquet and one well worth sitting with for a couple of hours. In the mouth, it is extremely silky, with a very smooth texture all the way through. The entry is medium-bodied, but the wine puts on weight and fleshes out as it makes its way to the mid-palate and finish. Flavors of warm black cherry, dark earth and black olives are nicely-integrated and are well-balanced against the tannins that grow more persistent over time, especially on the finish. This wine is a pleasure to drink, but also has plenty left in the tank.
1987 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Napa Valley. This bottle is CORKED. Otherwise, it has some aromatic notes of cherry liqueur and ash to offer. In the mouth, it is squinched and tough and terribly leathery, with an overwhelmingly sour fruit profile. In short, it is just decimated by the TCA.
1987 Château Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon The Montelena Estate Napa Valley. I brought this wine and although it showed rather young at times, it was a real pleasure to drink. To begin, it has very dark, thick and dense aromatics featuring at various times scents of dark toast, tar oil, horse sweat, black and red currants, warm saddle leather, black cherry, creosote, funky undergrowth and frozen persimmon. It just gets deeper and deeper and more and more complex the longer it stays in the glass. Like the Cos, it is a wine well worth sitting with for the duration of an evening to chart how it changes and morphs and grows. In the mouth, it is still big and somewhat youthfully raw, though hardly lacking for complexity or character. Lots of black currant fruit, mocha paste and dark earth flavors are allied to soft sticky tannins in a package that shows great density and depth, along with driving but soft acidity. This is just packed with stuffing trying to get out but not yet fully ready to do so. There is no roughness to it at all, which makes it totally drinkable now, but my advice to those holding bottles is to let it sleep a while longer and let it really unfold.
1987 Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley. The aromatics on this wine are just so much softer. Notes of powdered cherry, raspberry liqueur and red hard candy meld seamlessly with aromas of pistachio nut, soft bridle leather, dusty cedar and a sort of gentle dried dill weed in an elegantly pleasing fashion. It is rounded and fully-resolved in the mouth, but with good persistence of tangy red berry fruit flavor. It is medium-weighted and light on its feet, but has a nice mouth-filling quality nonetheless. There are no tannins to contend with and the finishing texture can be a bit leathery at times, but otherwise this is easy, smooth and enjoyable—finishing with a softly-spiced and cherry-tinged character showing nice balance.
1991 Dominus Estate Napa Valley. The Dominus features layers of warm leather, peppercorn, green leaf, mixed berry, liquid smoke, brown tobacco and clean horse barn aromas. It is very good on the palate, with a nice mouth-filling quality and a lot of flavor pumping all the way through. It has a gutsy feel to it, but also a juicier elegance from time to time. Red currants, dried cherry and dark chocolate flavors are well-integrated with the fine-grained tannins through the middle before yielding to some cool menthol character toward the back. This easily has plenty of life left.
1991 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red Napa Valley. This is softer and seemingly creamier on the nose than the Dominus, but otherwise it is actually pretty tight until about the 1 hour mark. By then, it is showing aromas of bridle leather, spiced cherry and dusty earth, but holding more in reserve. In the mouth, it is very rounded and polished, with a full-bodied weight and creamy texture. It is quite fruity, with warm red cherries, currants and fine spice accents in the mix. There is just a slight twinge of heat on the back of the palate and finish, but it is otherwise a round, fairly luscious wine that is easy to drink.
1994 Dominus Estate Napa Valley. Served from magnum. This is our second CORKED bottle of the day. We try to Saran Wrap it and that takes away a good amount of the TCA on the nose, but can’t do anything for the palate. Aromas of soft suede, beets, black cherry liqueur, cherries and horse barn come forward, but in the mouth, it is chewy, tough and tannic and not at all drinkable.
1994 Château Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon The Montelena Estate Napa Valley. The group consensus seems to be that this just doesn’t smell like a Montelena, and I have to agree. Having said that, it is rather overt—redolent with aromas of raisins, prunes, Port wine, toasted cherry pie and exotic fruitcake. It has a definite appeal—at least for me--but the context just seems wrong. In the mouth, it is extremely creamy in texture, with a really rich quality to the flavors of fudgy cherry, mocha and chocolate mousse. It gets more and more intense with air, turning increasingly lively and persistent—ending with great length. Drying tannins wait until the very end to make their presence felt, but otherwise stay to the side. On the whole, the thinking is that this bottle has seen heat at some point, but the wine is such that it still manages to deliver a good drinking experience.
1994 Opus One Napa Valley. I have to say that the Opus One gave a very good showing on this day. It features aromas of black currant, milk chocolate and mocha, but also some notes of old library, soft browning tobacco leaf and cracked peppercorns. It is totally creamy-textured in the mouth (similar to the Pahlymeyer), and feels layered and polished. It has solid substance to it, with mildly sweet black currant and plum fruit and a good dose of chocolate flavor, but also a very nice under-current of cooler earth tones. The tannins do get a bit pervasive after a while, though, and eventually begin to clamp down pretty hard on the finish. My advice would be to hold off a few years more on this, even though it can give good pleasure now.
We then moved onto some sweet wines served double blind.
1966 Chateau La Tour Blanche Sauternes. This wine is a very, very dark gold color. It features lovely and complex aromas of brown sugar, clover honey, musky tropical fruits, cooked plantain, maple candy, white raisins and dates that are surprisingly lively. In the mouth, it leads with a healthy dose of butterscotch flavors, along with dried apricot, raw sugar and a greener sort of melon edginess. These flavors coat the teeth and leave a pleasing sheen behind. Toward the finish, a squirt of steeped lemon and caramel flavors add further complexity. Some soft but convincing acidity kicks in on the finish and just adds to the overall appeal of this very interesting and tasty wine. Some folks reported that the wine tended to fade pretty quickly after a while, but I found it too hard to hold onto in order to test that. Thanks to Tyler for this.
1998 Domaine des Baumard Quarts de Chaume. This wine smells of lanolin, wool, honeycomb and lemon peel. It has an easy caramel, mango, peach syrup and nectarine flavor profile, accented by some notes of brown sugar and spices. It is medium-bodied and not overly unctuous. It also keeps the sweetness levels in reasonable balance with the acids—yielding a wine of limpid ease and refinement.
-Michael