TN The last dry weekend 27th - 29th Jan

Gosset with a couple of years in the cellar has softened nicely and is an understated pleasure.
The Weinbach Riesling is just slightly off-dry and quite petrolly. Delicious, integrated and complete.
Potel’s 2000 Bonnes Mares has been one of those 2000 Burgs that has reliably drunk splendidly well over many years. This was my last bottle of a case and it is still fabulous. Fully mature now, very savoury and the fruit resolved, but not over the hill at all - the palate is a huge hit of intensely meaty savouriness.
Dessert wine, a SA straw muscat from Villa Esposto, is as unctuous as you’d expect but balanced too. Lots to like here - I’d like to try this next to some other SA stickies (Vin de Constance, Mullineux) - I think it would show very well.
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Quite a mix last few days, but all did pretty well.

  • 2015 Breaky Bottom Cuvée David Pearson - United Kingdom, England, Sussex, West Sussex (29/01/2023)
    Pale lemon colour, with aromas of lemon, lime, apple, pear, toast, hazlenuts & honey. Strong acidity with more pear, lemon, lime, apple, toast, honey, brioche & nuts to taste. Touch savoury too on the good finish. Lovely balance with range of flavours, kept super fresh by acidity and strong citrus lime notes. Plenty of time in hand.
  • 2016 Château Caronne Ste. Gemme - France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Haut-Médoc (29/01/2023)
    Half. Mid ruby, aromas of blackcurrant, blackberry, black cherry, prune, stewed fruit, cedar, toast, vanilla, leather, tobacco & wet leaves. Decent acidity with grippy ripe tannins. On the palate blackcurrant, blackberry, cherry, toast, cedar, smoke, leather & meat. Good length. Very good. Nice balance and still time in hand. Good range of flavours & excellent value.
  • 2018 Château Sergant - France, Bordeaux, Libournais, Lalande de Pomerol (29/01/2023)
    Deep inky ruby. Nose of cherry, prune, red berries, cola, coffee, chocolate, dried herbs, cedar, smoke & vanilla. Full body with nice weight & decent acidity. Slightly chalky tannins and some heat from the alcohol. To taste prune, cherry, blackcurrant, redcurrant, blackberry, vanilla, smoke, cedar, chocolate & coffee. Good length. Very good. Still young, will not try again for another year.
  • 2020 Lyme Bay Pinot Noir - United Kingdom, England, Essex (29/01/2023)
    Medium ruby, with nose of cherry, strawberry, raspberry, redcurrant, cola, wet leaves, toast & smoke. High acidity, with fine ripe tannins. To taste there is cherry, cola, raspberry, strawberry, redcurrant, toast and touch forest floor. Decent length finish. Very good, with excellent balance. Very fruit forward currently, potential upside with a little time i believe.
  • 2012 Hamilton Russell Vineyards Chardonnay - South Africa, Cape South Coast, Walker Bay, Hemel-en-Aarde Valley (27/01/2023)
    Lovely mid gold colour, nose of peach, apricot, ripe pear, nectarine, honeysuckle, blossom, honey, vanilla, smoke, orange peel & orange zest. Good acidity, medium body. To taste more orange zest, orange peel, apricot, peach, grapefruit, ripe pear, blossom, toast, smoke, honey & nuts. Long finish. Lovely range of flavours and balance. Good intensity. Still plenty of time in hand. Excellent!
  • 2021 Mac Forbes Riesling RS5 - Australia, Victoria, Strathbogie Ranges (27/01/2023)
    Pale lemon with aromas of peach, apricot, lemon, lime and smoke jumping out the glass. Strong acidity, with more apple, pear, lemon, lime, peach, grapefruit & smoke to taste. Good length and flavours on the finish. Very good. Pretty young and plenty of time in hand.
  • NV Nyetimber Brut Réserve - United Kingdom, England, Sussex, West Sussex (27/01/2023)
    Pale lemon, with aromas of lemon, green apple, pear, biscuit & toast, Nice weight and creamy mousse. Strong acidity with lemon, lime, pear, green apple, red apple, peach, toast & brioche on the palate. Good length with nice freshness from the acidity. Very good. Lovely balance, fresh & zippy. Great bottle.
  • NV Thierry Fournier Champagne Cuvée de Réserve - France, Champagne (27/01/2023)
    Medium lemon with brioche, toast, yeast, nuts, honey, strawberry, apple & lemon on the nose. Nice mouthfeel and weight with decent acidity. To taste apple, pear, lemon, toast & smoke. Pithy flavours. Nice length to the finish. Good balance and nice range of flavours. Think would benefit from a little more time in bottle.
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I have been so focused on red burgundy that I had almost forgotten about the whites until now. Just trying Xavier Monnot Meursault Les Chevalieres - really nice Chardonnay with good balance of oak.

Talking of reds, after 50 years I won’t be watching the red side of Liverpool again. Not going to waste my time on watching that sh&*e again.
 
Brief impressions of some of the wines from a long awaited (as in a quiet January with mostly sh…y weather) social gathering with 7 friends on Saturday. Notes in random order, all wines tasted blind (and not in the order below except for the bubblies and the sweet stuff).

Bubblies: Telmont Bdb 2008; new producer to me, mature and quite attractive. Charlemagne Mesnillesine 2008; still tightly wound, not as immediately attractive as the Telmont but lots of potential. Needed an hour in the glass to show at its best, which was very fine.

Burgundies:

Pillot Les Vergers 2014, pretty minerally but still with some lush fruit and Chassage spicyness (of course all the traditional village markers in Burgundy are rather worthless), but still pretty typical and a tossup between the 2014 and 2017 vintage. Refreshing and fine.

Jadot Chambolles-Musigny Les Baudes 2010; rather stony and slightly tight with some fresh and attractive cherry fruit, the vintage was not difficult to place but I was in Morey for this. Young.

Mongeard-Mugneret Echezeaux 2002; very primary for a 2002, would have thought this quite a bit younger, and I found this very Volnay in style. Cherries, some spices and light tannins. Drunk after some heavier wines, so impressions might be influenced by that. Needs more time really.

Bordeaux:

L’Evangile 1989: I have had very little experience drinking Pomerol, but this was pretty traditional with some sweet and earthy fruit mixed up with some greenness. Good length and no hurry to drink up.

Mouton-Rothschild 1982; of course the big boy of the line-up and already one of the candidates for wine of the year. Immediately placed as a high level Pauillac from the 80ies, but the vintage eluded us. Too structured for an 82 at 40 years (I thought), and too fruity for the traditionally more tannic vintages of the decade. Anyhow, superb length and very complex. Drinking well but still with a long future.

Odds and ends:

Conterno Barolo Francia 98: sweet and seductive, light color and telltale salty liquorice, very attractive, at peak and not much structure left. Very attractive.

Jamet Cote-Rotie 2010: easily Syrah and the light, fragrant fruit put it in the right appellation rather easily. Drinking very (and surprisingly) well for a young Cote-Rotie, attractive floral fruit but still underlying structure, no need to hurry (though I have not tasted much northern Rhone for some years and am not updated on vintages).

Various sweet wines and a Vin Jaune (light and very gluggable) came up for cheeses and desserts. The Koehler-Ruprecht Eiswein and Huet demi-sec were both very well balanced and fresh.

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A nice lineup last night at Noize.

The DP 08 was good but then stepped up a gear after 45 mins to produce some classic DP notes. I think this should be more in the zone in 3-4 years based on this and another recent bottle.

We paired the Margaux and the Haut Brion together for a nice first flight. The Haut Brion stole something of a March with its elegance, finesse and power. Wowzers this is always such a good wine. The Margaux was at first subdued but slowly unfurled with beautiful poise and perfume and a very powerful core of fruit. But then the HB just steamed ahead, ratcheting up the pace with some serious knockout blows that seduced you all over again. What a wine.

The second 85 pair had a lot to live up to. The Cheval Blanc really strutted its stuff. Beautiful haunting exotic nose. Rich and seductive. This galloped out of the gate. Really rather fantastic and nose to nose with the Haut Brion in every way. The Lafite was rather muted, eliciting some charm on the palate yet remaining stubborn and shut for the evening. A shame as I was looking forward to trying this again.

The d’Yquem 89 was a darker colour and slightly suffered for it. Lots of rich barley sugar, exotic dried fruit and rich concentration. Good but not great.

As always food and service was perfect. A particularly fine dish of mallard was the perfect accompaniment to the second flight.

Note: all the reds were double decanted at 4pm.
 
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Last night we drunk the Rust en Vrede Estate 2013, a fine cabernet blend with a good slug of Shiraz. It certainly had a rich spicy edge, very good and enjoyed.

Today the Riverby Chardonnay 2020, still young and a vigorous shake helps bring out the fruit. Complex and dry. Classy, I wonder if my half case will last long enough to age a bit.

Tomorrow holidays in Gran Canaria, wonder what wine willimage.jpg be there?
 
Russ Sainty said:
Last night we drunk the Rust en Vrede Estate 2013, a fine cabernet blend with a good slug of Shiraz. It certainly had a rich spicy edge, very good and enjoyed.

Today the Riverby Chardonnay 2020, still young and a vigorous shake helps bring out the fruit. Complex and dry. Classy, I wonder if my half case will last long enough to age a bit.

Tomorrow holidays in Gran Canaria, wonder what wine willView attachment 29770 be there?
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That's great Russ. I haven't tried a 2020 for a while. I do think it is one of our best and was improving last time I had it. My importers told me a few weeks ago that they had just discovered another 5 cases of the 20. I'm not sure if they still have any. I think they did mention it to a few people who had purchased it previously.
 
Raymond Tilney said:
Colin,
Never mind about all that
How were the Enté and Rav?
And what glasses did you deploy?
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Five of us were drinking these, Ray, and opinions initially were divided. One was a self-confessed disliker of white burgundy (which I didn’t know when I made my selection). Of the other four, three of us preferred the Raveneau from the off; the other preferred the Ente until it started misbehaving.

The Raveneau was astonishingly fresh for a chardonnay a good 20 years old. A really excellent wine but (controversy alert) not really significantly (if at all) better than many other chablis producers’ output, albeit that you might have to drink them younger to enjoy them at their best. Undoubtedly very good, but special? Not really.

When first opened, the Ente was quite unusual, with a kind of waxy overtone. Not a typical meursault by any stretch of the imagination. But I really liked it, if not quite as much as the chablis. But after 15 minutes or so the wine began to change; alright, deteriorate, as it developed unmistakable oxidative notes. There was a discussion as to whether it was actually oxidised, or rather showing old-fashioned nutty flavours of mature white burgundy. Whatever, the wine became less pleasant to drink. It tells you all you need to know that there was half a bottle left at the end of the evening, by which time we’d also drunk three red burgundies (Geantet-Pansiot Gevrey Chambertin Les Poissenots 2013, Pousse d’Or Volnay Caillerets Soixante Ouvrees 1996 and Ponsot Clos de La Roche VV 1998), an Alsace vendange tardive gewurztraminer (Deiss 2001) and 50cl of Knoll Loibner Grüner Veltliner Beerenauslese 2000, with hardly anything left of those. But tonight I sampled the left-over Ente and I’m satisfied that it isn’t oxidised but does have the characteristic nuttiness of good, old fashioned white burgundy. That said, again it isn’t special.

We drank them out of BBR’s own-label burgundy glasses.

Of the three reds, most of us (including me) liked the Pousse d’Or best. The Geantet-Pansiot was good; it was the only one of which any (half a glass) remained which I’ve drunk and enjoyed tonight, as a result of which I think the wine needs another five years before I open another. I found the Ponsot disappointing. The Deiss gewurz was lovely: bright, fresh, restrained and elegant, only medium sweet. The Knoll was a bit past its best to my taste, again medium sweet at most.

Edit: sorry for the thread drift.
 
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