A French quartet

Trying new wines with a group of others can be a fun and educational experience. Will you all have the same reaction to the same wine? What flavor notes do you detect compared with what others are tasting?

Often the answer to these questions is both yes and no. A group of people can have a similar reaction to a wine in a broad sense, but different people will taste and smell different things according to their own character as well as their own biology. After all, one person may smell something in a wine that another person cannot simply because he  or she cannot detect that particular scent under any circumstances.

Recently I attended a wine tasting with a group of fellow members of the I Like Red Wine Meet Up group here in Chicago. Cities all across America have Meet Up groups and they're relatively easy to set up should you have a particular interest but cannot find a group already organized.

There were four French wines for the evening's tasting, all from the Boystown wine store The Gourmet Grape.

The first was a Bordeaux Blanc, the 2010 Château de Lestiac. As with virtually all French wines, this is a blend, and with virtually all Bordeaux Blanc, it was a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. It had a very bright flavor, strong mineral, almost slate-like. There was the signature citrus and herb of the Sauvignon Blanc, but there was softer fruit as well, more like pear, perhaps from the Semillon. I could not taste any oak, although others said they did. I could see this wine working well with swordfish, but surprisingly, I found a website that suggested this wine would do well with a variety of lamb dishes! I don't know about anyone else, but when I think of lamb, I think of earthy reads from the Southern Rhône.

The second wine was a Cotes du Rhône, the 2010 Jean-LucColombo Les Abeilles. Lots of character here built upon smooth tannin. Velvety fruit with black cherry and a hint of spice with white pepper. The blend here is 60 percent Grenache, 30 percent Syrah, and 10 percent Mourvèdre. Another wine that would go well with lamb, but the winemaker also recommends grilled pork, tuna steaks, cured meats and fresh cheese.

Next in line was the 2006 Château de Fontenille, an estate whose lineage goes back to the 13th century. This wine was rich with lots of black fruit with cassis playing the star role. This wine also went really well with a pungent cheese we had, although I can't remember the type of cheese. But it was one we all joked tasted a bit like locker room sox. Yet, when paired with this wine, it was quite good.

The final wine was a 2008 Château Jonqueyres Bordeaux Superior, which actually was a bit of a disappointment. This was all tits and no ass. It was a bit grapey and fruit forward, but lacked a finish. However, it did develop more character after it had been opened for a while, developing strong tannin and more nuanced fruit. But still no finish to speak of.

As the photo suggests, there was a fifth wine that was not on the original plan, a 2012 Beaujolais Nouveau that despite it already being February was quite tasty and fruitful.

So if you want to stir things up a bit, by some wines you've never had before and invite some friends over to taste them. Compare your notes and enjoy yourselves.

Team bonding always easier with wine

When one's wine cellar is a closet, the anxiety experienced prior to tasting something you've kept there for several years can vacillate between clinging fear and scintillating excitement. Such was my array of emotions whilst preparing a dinner party for my work colleagues - including my boss. I had several wines that I thought were ready for drinking, but there was always the risk that one or more of them might have turned.

By the way, I found this "scientific document" that explains what heat does to wine and what you can expect given the storage conditions you have. Closest thing I've found to having a mathematical method for determining when you ought to stop saving that bottle and drink it now.

On the menu was a boneless leg of lamb with spinach, goat cheese, and pine nuts. This was served with a beet salad made with horseradish and Champagne vinegar. The beet greens were cooked and reduced with bacon, cider vinegar, some sugar, and red pepper flakes. For 10 people I had plenty of beets, but barely enough greens for everyone to have a taste, and the greens were awesome. You can buy other greens at the market, but I have never seen beet greens sold separately from the root. Yet you often find just the whole beet without the greens. Where do they go?

The years 2005 and 2006 were both great vintages for the southern Rhône and I had a Châteauneuf-du-Pape for each year, the Les Sinards from Perrin & Fils, and a bottle of Domaine La Roquète respectively. The Les Sinards came out brick red as we decanted, which can be a problematic sign at times. The wine was good, no doubt, expressing that sturdy mineral quality and earthiness the region is famous for. But after we finished that bottle and poured the Domaine La Roquète, we had found the superior of the two wines. Still had that bright mineral quality, but there was noticeable fruit of light blackberry and a bit of cherry. It's bouquet was light with fruit as well, making it an all-around wonderful experience.

I still have one more bottle of the Les Sinards, and based on the one opened for this night, I suspect I need to drink it soon. But who knows? That other bottle may be just fine. And I have two more of the Donaine La Roquète, which I have to add was a tremendous bargain when I found it. I paid just $19 for each bottle, and after that find, I saw that other retailers were asking $42 per bottle for it. It does pay to shop for wine in World Market from time to time!

There was enough lamb left over that I shall be making stew soon. And I wonder what wine I will make that with?

I rate the Les Sinards with an 8.5 and the Domaine La Roquète a 9.5 using my scale at the left.

Boxing Day 2012

When you've been holding a wine for 30 years, you can expect some variation from bottle to bottle within the same vintage. That was our experience for this year's Boxing Day dinner at Philander Hall in Dixon, IL.

Oh please don't ask me where is Dixon. Suffice it to say that my friend Curt has a "cellar" there that still has a fine collection of Bordeaux from the 1980s. While my wine cellar is a closet - and I mean that literally - Curt's wine cellar is a crawl space at Philander Hall, his home/art center in Dixon. The temperature in his crawl space is a fairly consistent low 60s, so temperature fluctuations aren't an issue for him like they are with my closet. But he does face problems from time to time with humidity variances. That was evident when we opened the two 1982 St. Julien he brought out for dinner, as the corks fell apart in both bottles.

But I am getting ahead.

We enjoyed two classic wines on Boxing Day that I must say performed exceptionally well given some of the tasting notes I've reviewed on the web.

It was a fabulous dinner that began a sumptuous lobster pot pie served with a reduced cream and white wine sauce. This was paired with the 1993 Clos Windsbuhl Tokay Pinot Gris from Domaine Zind Humbrecht. It was a deliciously creamy wine that paired excellently with the lobster pot pie, and I think we might have been exceptionally lucky with it. Some tasting notes described this wine as being "over the hill" and "tired." Not ours, however; it was succulent with delicious and juicy fruit.

The next course was a salad of mixed greens with seared duck breast, Roquefort, and some pomegranate seeds.

Selected to go with the main course was the 1982 Chateâu Gruaud Larose, which was paired with quail stuffed with foie gras and morel mushrooms, with a side of polenta made with shaved black perigord truffles; all presented in a Madeira sauce. We had two bottles of the Chateâu Gruaud and while they were both 1982s, each was distinctly different.

The first bottle has a definite blackberry nose, but that was gone in minutes to be replaced with more earthy scents of leather and anise. Its color was a brick red, almost prune-ish. The wine had a light mineral quality and a finish that lingered on and on and on.

The second bottle had much more fruit and its nose more floral; it was altogether a different character with different color as well, a deep garnet, almost ruby red. Even with the more fruit, the second bottle still had that delicate essence of a wine cellared for 30 years. And the tasting notes on the web suggest this wine can still be held for another 20 years! However, I do think the first bottle was caught just in time.

I will score both of these wines with a 9 using my scale at the left.

Alamos 2011 Malbec

There's a plethora of very tasty and very inexpensive Argentine Malbec on store shelves right now. Seems like you can grab just about any bottle you see and you'll take home a winner! Another fairly inexpensive Malbec out there is the Alamos 2011, which you should be able to find for $12 or less.

This went really well with a roast pork I recently prepared with some butternut squash and green beans. A simple meal, but the wine brought a delicious elegance to the table with some sturdy tannins on the finish. Like many Malbecs, it was dark, inky; the nose a delicate mixture of floral and fruit scents with a racy flavor of blackberry. This is definitely a good find, but I think for the price and the taste I might lean more toward the Diseño I recently wrote about.

I rate this with an 8 using my scale at the left.

Diseño old vine Malbec

Oh the joy of finding a great value! The 2011 Diseño old vine Malbec is a wine crafted in the great tradition of Argentine Malbec that tastes much better than you would think for a $10 bottle. Malbec at this price point can be jammy with way too much fruit, but not this one!

It has the hefty structure and complexity of great Malbec and while the fruit is definitely there, it's balanced on a smooth beam of mineral and subtle notes of tobacco. When pouring you immediately see its dark inky color, a deep purple so dark it verges on black. The nose is subtle and floral rather than like a jar of Smuckers.

It's supremely drinkable and a great food match, doing well with anything from spicy tomato sauce pasta with spicy Italian sausage, to sauteéd boneless chicken thighs. I most recently had this with a spiced pork chop agrodolce accompanied with some lemon garlic Brussels sprouts and butternut squash; it was very good! The pork chop is very easy to prepare and you can find the recipe on my Pinterest page.

I rate this an 8.5 on my scale at the left.