Thanksgiving holdovers

I guess I kind of dropped the ball with my posts about all the wine we drank for Thanksgiving. I managed to get the post written about the Gruet sparkler we had, but there was a lot of wine that day that I have written about.

Two wines we had were both quite good, although perhaps we drank them in the wrong order.

The first of the two was a Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir, the 2007 Estancia Reserve. A very nice drink; full-bodied with a hint of spice that often comes with good Pinot Noir. Definite dried cherry, and my brother-in-law Jack added he thought there was a bit of tobacco too. All in all I nice wine that probably would have done well paired with the turkey.

What we did have with the turkey was a Moulin-à-Vent, the 2009 Domaine Diochon, a nice Beaujolais with good mineral and a light, racy flavor. Perhaps too light, however, to go with the turkey. Jack suggested we probably should have drank the Beaujolais first and followed up with the Pinot Noir with the turkey.

Either way, they were both good wines. The Beaujolais had a rating of 90, while the Estancia was scored an 88. I give both of them an 8.5 using the rating scale at the left.

A red Burgundy like Mary

Similar to what I said in a previous post about white Burgundy, red Burgundy can also be very pricey and not always worth that cost. And even when the region has an outstanding year as it did in 2005, you can still find yourself paying a premium for a disappointment. Nonetheless, 2005 was a grand year for red Burgundy, with wines produced from that vintage showing superb class and finesse virtually across the board. And it’s quite possible that my previous “dud” was more related to how I was storing it rather than the wine itself. After all, my wine cellar is a closet.

Pinot Noir is the primary grape for red Burgundy, hence its ephemeral nature. It takes great skill to craft a wine from this delicate grape, and Bouchard Père & Fils does it again with the 2005 Gevrey-Chambertin, which I was able to find for just under $40. It’s been “cellaring” for a little more than 2 years in my closet, and last night became its moment.

My guests – Curt, Steven and Nathan – and I all agreed that while this wine was truly splendid, we didn’t want to mire ourselves with the same old tired descriptors. And as we discussed this wine’s subtle beauty, we gradually arrived at this wine’s character.

“This wine reminds me of Mary in ‘Gosford Park,’ in that the character Mary was very restrained, she was very reserved, but she was very astute, she knew what was going on,” I explained to my guests. “And this wine has a reserved character of intensity as well as, what? Tell me!”

Well, the discussion degenerated a bit into a puerile comparison, but alas we were saved by Curt.

“Think of a Scottish banker,” Curt said to our confused silences. “It just means she keeps it all to herself, that she is very reserved and conservative. She doesn’t share much with anybody, but when she does, she’s really generous. And that describes this wine.”

That was beginning to capture the experience, because despite the restraint, you could taste the bursting fruit and mineral tones while enjoying a delicate and beguiling boquete.

“The bouquet says she’s a coy little whore,” Stephen suggests. “She’s not going to tell you a whole lot about her trade, but you know what’s going on.”

“I don’t think that’s so,” Curt counters. “I think she’s an ingénue.”

“OK, so this is not Marilyn Monroe,” I say, running with the analogy, “this is Bridgette Bardot?”

“No, that’s all flash in the pan, and that’s not what this is about,” Curt retorts. This was beauty, he said, but an enduring and wholesome beauty, much like Mary in “Gosford Park,” Curt continued to say.

And then Nathan put it all into place: “It’s not trying hard to be what it is, because what it is is amazing.”

This beauty of a wine was served with an herb roasted chicken seasoned with fresh thyme, Rosemary, and lavender buds; beet greens prepared with bacon, onion, garlic, carrot, some sugar and apple cider vinegar; roasted potatoes; and a new beet preparation with sliced onion and a vinaigrette prepared with horseradish and champagne vinegar. When roasting the chicken, I basted using equal parts chicken broth and an inexpensive Pinot Noir from Smoking Loon.

It was an exceptional meal with a delicious wine that I shall rate with a 10 using my scale at the left.

A wine bar weekend

On Saturday a new friend of mine and I went to a wine bar in Lincoln Park and sampled two of their flights, one white and the other red. My friend, Andrew, wanted to learn more about wine and the wine bar was a perfect solution.

D.O.C. Wine Bar has many locations throughout Chicagoland, and like many wine bars, offers you the opportunity to sample flights of similar wines so you can get an idea of what a region offers or what a varietal offers. It’s a great way for neophytes to learn about varietals and regions, as well as learn the techniques to discern flavor differences and test your pallet. For more experienced wine drinkers, these wine bars can present opportunities with their various flights to sample new wines you may be unaware of, as well as give you opportunities to sample varietals that you might normally not purchase.

The abbreviation D.O.C. in Italian is for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, and is the equivalent to France’s Appelation D’Origine Contrôlee. It reflects a wine region’s denomination designation, and for the DOC, this is defined by the geographic area of production and specifies the varietals that may be used for wine making in order to earn that designation. This board also controls the minimum alcohol content in the wine, the maximum allowable yield with the grapes, and specifications for aging.

For our tastings, Andrew and I started off with three wines in the “Euro trash” flight, a curiously named trio of varietals that I am aware of, but haven’t much experience drinking. I tapped my notes into my iPhone as we drank, and below is what I chronicled.

Strele 2009 Soave, Vento, Italy: Light nose, orchard fruit, apple, peach, a very light flavor, not too sweet, very fresh and crisp, juicy.

Reventos 2009 Muscat/Macabeo, Penedes, Spain: Nose more rustic, longer finish, more herbal, fruit gradually exposed, a curious, almost medicinal flavor, not unpleasant.

Chateau Moncontour 2009, Chenin Blanc, Vouvray, Loire Valley, France: Light, fresh nose, juicy, spicy apple, light finish, best of the three.

Andrew and I both agreed we thought it interesting how the three wines were ordered. The Soave presented juicy and delicious orchard fruit followed next by the Muscat, which was decidedly more herbal and even a bit suppressed. Andrew didn’t care much for it, but I thought it good, though very different from the first. And then the Chablis placed itself right in the middle, having both the light juiciness of the orchard fruit, but still presenting complexity and mineral qualities.

We thought, then, that the ordering was deliberate, so when we ordered a Pinot Noir flight next, we anticipated a similar progression. Before tasting, I explained to Andrew why Pinot Noir can be so beguiling, how difficult it is to grow and how delicate it is to craft into good wine. Nebbiolo is also like this, which is why red Burgundy and Barolos can be such huge disappointments at times: both tend to be expensive, and both varietals are very similar in character. So when Burgundy or Barolo is made well, these wines are extraordinary. But when made poorly, they can be enormous duds.

Nieto 2010 Pinot Noir, Mendoza, Argentina: Can’t peg the nose, the smell is familiar, but can’t name it. A very young wine, thin, watery, no finish. Color a beautiful transparent ruby.

Block Nine 2009, Pinot Noir, California: Light berry nose, bit of spice, tannin noticeable, longer finish, a hint of cinnamon. Tasty, but nothing special.

Vincent Sauvestre 2008, Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France: Nothing on the nose, literally sans smell, bright fruit, but again diluted.

With this flight, we experienced the ephemeral quality that is Pinot Noir. All three wines were generally disappointments in my book, although I must say it was curious to see a Pinot Noir from the Mendoza region of Argentina. If I hadn’t of done this, I wouldn’t have known about the fact there are growers dabbling with Pinot Noir in Argentina.

Repeat visits to wine bars like this are a good idea because the tasting flights do change periodically, so there will be something of interest. And the bottle selection can be relatively deep, although rather expensive, particularly for the higher end wines. For example, D.O.C. has a Chassagne-Montrachet that goes for $116 a bottle, and a Chateuneuf-du-Pape that goes for more than $300.

All in all a delightful experience and one that shall be repeated.

Are there similar wine bars in your area? Tell me about them and your experiences by leaving a comment. What new wine have you discovered through similar tasting flights?

One that should have been decanted

Last night I prepared a dinner to go with a wine that should have blown me and my guest away. But instead, it was vaguely unsatisfactory. The wine was a 2005 Gevrey-Chambertin; the year was stellar for red Burgundy, but this wine was not stellar. Coming from Domaine Drouhin-Laroze, it had plenty of potential, but never seemed to push through.

I served it with roast chicken presented with an herb jus I prepared with some leftover Barbera d’Alba. Even the chicken was not as savory as I had hoped. This should have been a fantastic pairing, and it had been in the past, but for this time, it was most emphatically mediocre.

Decanting this wine might have helped, because at the very end of the bottle, the delicious fruit of the wine was finally showing through the strident minerals that dominated the wine for most of the night. I’ve had much better Gevery-Chambertin in the past, particularly for 2005.

I will rate this with a 4.5 based on my scale at the left. For $40, this was definitely a disappointment, but even at half the price, this wine just failed to show up.