Alex and Laura hosted dinner for 10 a little while back, with a vertical of Paloma Merlot as a perfectly good excuse to get together. A friend of theirs cooked up a ferocious storm in the kitchen and we dined like kings, with some wines that really surprised me with their expressiveness and fine balance. We drank the Palomas in two flights, with people voting on wines of the flight for each one. None were served blind and all were drunk over dinner.
Starter:
NV Guy Larmandier Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Grand Cru Cramant. Steve generously brought along this magnum of Champagne to get things started. It delivers directed but effusive aromas of green apple, chalk, citrus peel, apple blossom and pear in a refreshing and clean package. It has a nice creamy texture on the palate, with fruity but dry flavors of lemon, apple, pear, chalk and smoke. It features a yielding structure and is definitely open for business, providing fine drinking pleasure right now.
Flight One:
1995 Paloma Merlot Napa Valley. This is just nice and easy on the nose, very well-done right from the first sniff--featuring lovely aromas of lilac bushes, cassis, cherry paste, soft oak, vanilla bean and dusty mint, with good depth and concentration but also class and distinction. In the mouth, it’s loaded with bright cherry, red berry and blueberry fruit flavors but also an excellent juicy streak of vibrant acidity giving it effortless balance. The tannins feel completely resolved, and there are no hard edges anywhere. It’s a medium-weighted, easy-flowing and incredibly likeable bottle of Merlot that I would suggest drinking now.
1996 Paloma Merlot Napa Valley. This is more classically-structured all around, beginning with the fanned-out bouquet of dense black cherry, raspberry, cassis, menthol, cedar and tar aromas that are richly-styled but lovely and inviting. It’s creamy and voluminous in the mouth, expanding out beautifully through the mid-palate. It’s more structured than the 1995, with a fine backbone and tons of staying power to the pasty cherry, cassis, chocolate and mocha flavors. This is quite delicious now, but will be the long-distance runner of this first quartet of vintages.
1997 Paloma Merlot Napa Valley. This is definitely the ripest wine of the flight on the nose, leading right out with rather warm and plush aromas of red currant, cassis, cherry, red flowers and cedar. In the mouth, it’s again the headiest wine of the flight, with warm red fruit showing big and bold all the way through. Flavors of mint, soft oak, cassis and cherry paste are highly-expressive, fun and outgoing. It’s not as well-structured as the other wines in the flight, but it’s far from overdone or heavy-handed. It’s just a bit more obvious than the others, though I still really enjoy drinking it.
1998 Paloma Merlot Napa Valley. With each of the previous two wines starting to ramp things up slowly, this wine brings things back to a much cooler, earthier, darker-fruited place. I really enjoy the nose, which demonstrates great control and restraint, coming on in subtle layers of black fruits, herbs, menthol leaf and woodsy undertones. In the mouth, it’s medium to full-bodied, with fine cohesion and some sneaky tannin. The cool black cherry, black currant and blackberry fruit profile shows a different facet to this wine, as does the dark earth underbelly. This is a finely-made wine for the vintage, and a nice change of pace.
At the end of the flight, the 1995 got 4 votes for wine of the flight, while each of the other wines received 2 votes. I could definitely see why people were pretty evenly-divided across the wines, as they all had something to offer and could appeal to different palate preferences. My own personal rank order was 1996, 1998, 1995, 1997, but it was close.
Flight Two:
2001 Paloma Merlot Napa Valley. I thought this was the wine of the night, possessed of a beautifully finessed nose of blueberry, raspberry, cedar and eucalyptus aromas that are airy and full of flowery overtones. In the mouth, it’s classy and refined, but also loaded with bright and generous flavors of wild berries, eucalyptus and spearmint that have a wonderful sense of buoyancy and cut. I think a lot of us were wondering if this Wine Spectator Wine of the Year would deliver the goods, but I have to say we were all duly impressed.
2002 Paloma Merlot Napa Valley. This wine is more contemplative and meditative on the nose, with a plummy dense core of blue fruit and dark spice aromas. It’s sort of fudgy on the palate, with thick and concentrated flavors of plum, chocolate and blueberry showing no hard edges or obvious tannin despite the ropy texture. This is a more typically dense style that could use a bit more lift, but tastes really nice just the same.
2004 Paloma Merlot Napa Valley. To my way of thinking, this is a real dramatic shift in style. It seems far more extracted on the nose, with oversized, muscled aromas of black olive, rubber, blackberry, iron and charred wood coming across as a bit over the top. In the mouth, it’s the first wine I would call jammy-fruited and also the first wine I would say shows a bit too much alcohol. It’s sticky-textured and a little sweet with its blackberry fruit stuffing, but it’s quite long and persistent on the finish. Maybe another 5 years or so might do this some good, I’m not sure.
2007 Paloma Merlot Napa Valley. This is quite young on the nose, showing some candied blueberry, dried cherry, cedar and suede leather aromas. In the mouth, it’s a bit candied and jammy, with loads of glycerin and a really polished texture surrounding flavors of mocha, raspberry syrup and a hint of cherry cough medicine. Like the 2004, it’s a very different style of wine—one that needs time but which I’m not entirely confident will ever match the older wines from this producer.
At the end of the flight, there were 8 votes for the 2001 as wine of the flight and 1 vote each for the 2002 and 2004. My own personal rank order was 2001 and 2002, followed distantly by 2007 and then 2004.
For those interested, my rank order for the entire tasting was as follows: 2001, 1996, 1998, 1995, 2002, 1997, 2007, 2004.
Dessert:
2005 Château Coutet Barsac. This lovely wine is popping with burnished aromas of grilled bread, caramel, crème brulee, nectarine, orange peel and mace spices. It’s not all that botrytis-laden or luscious, just wonderfully fleshy-sweet and toasty. In the mouth, it demonstrates great control, refinement and understated unctuosity while delivering delicious flavors of caramel, hard candy, crème brulee topping and airy botrytis spices underpinned by very good acidic tang. This is quite nice even at this young age.
-Michael