March 2011 Archives
Here’s To Good Friends-Part Three
by Phil Anderson
Part One was all about the oldest vintage wine we tasted on this very special night with our group, including Shelley, Laureen, Katie, Diana and myself. Part Two was all about the year 1984, tasting three wines from that vintage. Part Three we bring in some pretty heavy hitters:
Here is evidence of what is about to come--empty, but ready, glasses and decantors. The proverbial quiet before the storm.
1996 Chateau St. Jean Cinq Cepages, Sonoma County
1999 Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
2002 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, Carneros
*Bonus tasting-keep reading…
After tasting the first four wines while standing around the island in the kitchen we decided to adjourn to the dining room to finish the night tasting while seated. The next wine up was the 1996 Chateau St. Jean Cinq Cepages from Sonoma County. This wine was ranked #1 by Wine Spectator in 1999. It sold for around $30 then but now fetches around $200 a bottle. The first vintage of this wine was 1990 and the 1990-1995 vintages are no longer available meaning this was the oldest available vintage of this wine. Although a blend, Cinq Cepages always has 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, and this vintage used Merlot as the predominent blending varietal.
This was the only wine that we did not decant during the evening. We only had four decanters to work with, although, I DID find another one around the house AFTER the night was over. I poured everyone a small glass and we did a swirl and smell. Now THIS is what I’m looking for in a big red wine. Although this wine was 15 years old (if you did the math by years, but probably a bit less in reality), it was VERY balanced and smooth. I didn’t notice any color change and the taste held up wonderfully. It is probably prudent to mention that, although I had PLANNED on spitting during the course of the evening (7 bottles of wine to taste with five people equals Phil drinking WAY TOO MUCH RED WINE IN ONE NIGHT and I had to wake up at 6:30 the next morning to play piano on our worship team at church), I didn’t spit more than 2-3 times during the course of the evening. With that said, I was starting to feel the alcohol a bit and so my notes began to fade. It’s just so hard to justify spitting such quality juice!
SOME of the wine made it to our vinegar pot but not much.
The next one to open was the 1999 Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon which was unfiltered. I did decant this after I poured a beginning pour for everyone. It was even better than the last one! I will confess, this was my very favorite wine of the entire evening and I kept coming back to this one over and over again. Suffice it to say, this wine and I became well acquainted with one another. This wine had marvelous mouthfeel and was quite complex. It had very good structure and was big and bold. This wine originally sold for around $125.
Lastly, we tried the 2002 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon from Carneros. Originally this wine sold for about $60 and it’s hard to say anything bad about this wine. Also very big and more fruity than the ’99. It was interesting that most of the people at the table enjoyed this more than the other two later vintage wines. We did a “somewhat” blind tasting with Laureen as I poured both the ’99 and the ’02 and had her guess which was which to see if she really DID like the 2002 better. She nailed it!
These two wines were very comparable, however. It’s not as if I liked the ’99 a LOT more than the ’02 but I kept tasting all three over and over, with chocolate, with dip, with chocolate, with cheese and also with some chocolate….did I mention I tried these three with chocolate? Ok, good. They all three were really very, very good wines, in my opinion. It was just hard for me to NOT put the 1999 on top.
We had started this night of wine tasting by opening the first bottle, a 1979 Beaulieu Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon, at 7:15 PM and the last bottle, the 2002 Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon at 9:45 PM. It was near Midnight when people started to clear out. We tasted through 23 years of California Cabernet Sauvignon in just under five hours. Before anyone was allowed to leave each had to sign and date a cork from the evening and then toss it into the cork catcher.
It was a magical night, to be sure.
The aftermath of what was an epic night of wine tasting is evident by the debris on the table.
I told you about a bonus. Well here it is. While down in Walla Walla last year for the Wine Bloggers Conference I came back with a bottle of Sherry. I had never been a Sherry fan but man-o-man I became a fan really quickly after tasting this particular Sherry. I broke it out for Laureen and Katie after Diana had left, just so they could try it. They got the last two sips of this bottle! They absolutely loved it. This Sherry is so nutty and smooth but the thing that amazes me time after time is that after the initial taste and swallow, you count to five and then there is a powerful flavor explosion in your mouth! SO interesting! Now I have to find a new bottle of that same, exact Sherry!
I remember back in the day of my grandparents and, perhaps, even in my parents’ generation, neighbors would knock on one anothers door if they needed cream or sugar or salt or what-not, if they ran out. I don’t think that happens nearly as often, anymore, if at all, which is sad. I think we have just come up with a replacement to that old tradition, as Laureen completely outdid herself in sharing some of her wonderful wine with us. I think we will just head over to her house the next time we need “some” wine! The Mondavi family was very lucky to have employees the likes of Laureen and Katie working for them during the trailblazing days of Napa Valley wine. “Mister” may not be around anymore but his spirit lives in his wines from yesterday and we became well acquainted with it.
“Whatever you do, pour yourself into it.”
-Robert Mondavi
Thank you, again, for reading. Be sure to catch me on Twitter and Facebook. Until next time, bottoms up!
Here’s To Good Friends-Part Two
by Phil Anderson
In the year, ’84, ’84…….’84….
Well, that’s not exactly how the song goes but it certainly is how the wine flows, at least for this particular night of wine tasting with our friends, Laureen and Katie. Part one was all about the oldest vintage we tasted, the 1979 BV Cabernet Sauvignon. Today I’m concentrating on three other wines we tried, all from the same vintage, one from Sonoma and the other two from Napa.
As in George Orwell’s novel, 1984, where the individual is always subordinated to the state, we, as a group, were subordinated to the wine. We tasted three Cabernet Sauvignon’s, a proverbial hat trick, from the 1984 vintage from three different producers:
William Wheeler Vineyards, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County
Robert Keenan Winery, Napa Valley
Far Niente Winery, Estate Bottled, Napa Valley
The William Wheeler Cabernet Sauvignon was the first one we tasted and was our least favorite, as a group (though their was a stinky one in the future that would push this thought). I noticed a little licorice on the nose but all in all, it was aromatically challenged. After tasting it I noticed it tasted more like a Merlot than a California Cab. After the initial light pour to taste it right after it was opened I decanted it. After 55 minutes (we realized we should not decant as long after we messed up with the ’79) we gave it another go and I felt it recovered and opened up nicely. Finally it had a nose! Adding to the licorice note was a bit of black pepper, which I am always fond of. The others didn’t see this as I did, however, as they were still unimpressed.
Here's to good friends! L-R Laureen, Katie, Diana and Shelley raise their glass of 1984 Robert Keenan Cabernet Sauvignon.
The second wine we tasted from this vintage was from Robert Keenan. This was interesting because Shelley and I had opened a 2001 Robert Keenan Merlot to go with pork chops two weeks prior. Now we had a chance to go back even further with this producer. After the first pour it was much smoother than the William Wheeler. This wine also still had some tannins which suggested it could go a little longer before being awaken from it’s slumber, which is probably why I had such a hard time getting the cork to come out. It was a battle for, what seemed like forever, but was more like about five minutes. In the end, I won as I got all of the cork out without any staying behind in the bottle. Needless to say, THIS cork didn’t make it to the cork catcher! I didn’t notice much of a difference when we went back to it after about 45 minutes.
The last of the 1984 trifecta was one the entire group highly anticiapted, the Far Niente. Before I go any further, I must confess, I didn’t know the pedigree of this producer. I would go as far as saying I MAY have heard of the winery. I didn’t let on to this fact on this night, however. Immediately upon opening and the first pour there was an air of disappointment. VERY stinky! Stinky stink stink. I wasn’t sure if this was because it had gone bad or if it was a European style but it certainly was barnyard. Fortunately, it tasted better than it smelled, but not a lot better, to be sure. After 40 minutes of decanting it became even more of a pronounced barnyard smell with about the same taste. Not much to it, sadly, and I would say this particular ’84 was, in the collected minds of the group, a flop.
All in all, I liked the Robert Keenan the best, even better than the ’79 BV Cabernet Sauvignon. The group, however, all seemed to have a fondness for the ’79. With that said, nothing was blowing our socks off, other than the fact the ’79 had help up all these years very well. Before I give you a preview of Part Three, and last part, of our epic night of tasting, I must confess that I went into this tasting with a very open mind, pretty much convinced I wasn’t going to “hate” any of them. When a wine is as old as these wines were, I think back to the people who were involved in producing that wine: The people who tended the vineyards, who were involved in the harvest, the crush, sampling and bottleing. How many of those people are no longer with us on earth? How could I judge these wines with an arrogance?
I told the group before we started I inteded on liking all of the wines we tasted, especially the older ones, whether they were spectacular or not. We were lucky; I don’t think any of these wines had gone bad. Were some of them over the hill? Probably. The William Wheeler and the Far Niente for sure. But it was SUCH a pleasure to carefully, and respectfully, taste through each bottle with these special people.
<pause for a moment for dramatic effect>
When I write next I will tell you about some of the younger vintages we tried and what we thought of those. I will even add a bonus so be sure to keep an eye out for that! Until then, thank you so much for reading and bottoms up!
Here’s To Good Friends-Part One
by Phil Anderson
Remember that Budweiser commercial that stated, “Here’s to good friends, tonight is kinda special….”? We had one of those nights recently that involved good friends, new and not so new (I try to avoid the word, “old” when talking about people and friendships as they MIGHT think I’m calling THEM old!).
Now before I get started on recounting the evening I will say there has been a lot of time that has passed since my last post. Green Bay DID, in fact, win the Super Bowl, which I also predicted. The score was 31-25 and I predicted 20-16. Not too shabby. Valentines Day has come and gone. I made veal for Shelley and we paired a lovely Pinot Noir with it. Also, Open That Bottle Night came and went. I was playing at an event called, “MarriedLife Live” at church that night so, not only did we not have any fun wine, I personally didn’t even have a GLASS that night! I have no excuses why I haven’t written but this post will hopefully be worth the wait.
So, back to good friends and that kinda special evening.
A neighbor of ours, Laureen, used to work at Robert Mondavi Winery. She knew Mr. Mondavi quite well and always called him, “Mister”. A friend of hers that also worked there, Katie, was visiting Laureen here in North Idaho and they got to going through some of Laureen’s wine collection. She has quite a collection! They picked out seven wines to open and try but, much to our happiness, wanted to share these wines with a couple of other people she thought might appreciate them. Twist our arms! Now THIS is true March Madness!
There is so much to write about this night that I’ve broken it down into three parts. Part One will really only be about one wine, although, throughout the evening we were treated to vintages in 1979,1984, 1996, 1999 and 2002, all from California and mostly from Napa. I will tell about all but one of those in a later post. This column is about one bottle of wine and one vintage.
Here the bottle of 1979 Beaulieu Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon sits in front of the the decantor that holds its juice.
I graduated from West Seattle High School in 1979 and it was during that summer of ’79 that the grapes from the first wine we tried were being baked by the Napa sun. They were harvested later that year with some of those grapes making the juice that went into this first bottle of wine we tried, a 1979 Beaulieu Vineyard Estate Bottled Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve. This was 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. It was so old the label didn’t even have the website of the winery on it! In fact, I had visited this vineyard only three years earlier with my family. How interesting to try this particular wine on this night.
There were five of us tasting these wines and I carefully, but eagerly, opened this bottle. I poured a small amount in everyone’s glass and immediately noticed the brown color of the wine, not the deep purple you might get from a new vintage of Cabernet Sauvignon. This is natural in an older vintage.
We all toasted to what the night was about to become. As I raised the glass to my nose, after a fair bit of swirling, I noticed notes of raisins and nuts. It certainly smelled like it had held up all of these years and the taste was not bad either! You tend to worry about a vintage this old that it may have seen better days but this one was still delivering with a very long fig finish.
After we all had our initial giddy response to such an old jewel I carefully decanted the rest of the bottle to try a “little” bit later. Well, that “little” bit later was actually about 65 minutes and, by then, it had fell off the cliff. It was a mistake, on my part, that resulted in most of us being disappointed.
All in all, the 1979 BV Cabernet Sauvignon was a great way to start the evening and it produced the first of many ooooooze and aaaaaaaahs this night was to bring. But this bottle found a soft spot in all of our hearts because of it’s age and how it really tried to show how it had attempted to hold together all these years. For me, it brought me back to that summer of ’79 when I finally felt like I could do whatever I wanted after having just graduated from High School.
I feel so blessed that Laureen asked if Shelley and I would participate in this casual tasting of these wines. I looked forward to it for days and it was even more than I expected. I’ll tell you even MORE about the evening in Part Two of, “Here’s To Good Friends”, as we visit the year, 1984. Until then, thank you so much for reading and remember, bottoms up!
