Another Dinner with Greg & Sayo

An impromptu get-together on a quiet Saturday night that was a very chilled, as always.

This was a great combination.....we drank an initial glass of the wine as an aperitif then finished the bottle over the Scallops dish....which really brought out the richness of the wine.

• 2003 Kistler Chardonnay Vine Hill Vineyard 92 Points

  USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley

  Bright and shiny medium yellow gold colour. Nose is heavy oak-laden power, oven-roasted whole lemons, balsam oil. If the nose is rather more oaky than you'd expect for a Vine Hill, the palate is absolutely gorgeous: unctuous, oily, hazelnutty and citrussy, with an attractively and unusual grassy and low-acidity, fresh-peeled hazelnuts back end. It leads to an interesting counterpoint of a heady, resonant and very reverberant back end with lots of minerals and crushed rock on the after-palate. With extended time and as it warmed up towards cool room temperature it became increasingly lemon-oiled and nutty on the palate with a gorgeous smoky element emerging on the nose. Really lovely but somewhat heavier in style than you normally associate with the Vine Hill plot. As mentioned in my previous note, I think it is time to drink these up and move on to the 2004/2005s.

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We decided that the Ch. Haut Brion 1996 might not work well with this.....so we hastily opened a new bottle of white wine that we thought might fit with the fish. It worked......!

• 2007 Oremus Furmint Tokaji Dry Mandolás 88 Points

  Hungary, Tokaji

  Oily white gold colour. Nose is oily, diesel, very heavy honeysuckle but not sweet and with an unusually heavy amount of oak. Palate is refreshingly bright medium acidity and not as oily as the nose suggested. The finish is dry honeycomb and quite mouth-drying on the finish. Quite heady...well balanced.....interesting.....develops a lot of flint and cut steel sharpness with extended time in the glass. Gosh, this continued to improve and cut across both quite spicy Thai Prawn Salad and very simple, bland but succulent Pan-Fried Salmon steak. This got better and better.... as Paul S has noted, it is a great food wine.

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This was the obvious highlight of the evening....... where I brought a slow-decanted classic Cali Bordeaux blend to joust against Greg's promised 1996 Haut Brion. The result was always going to be in the character of the defeat rather than in the result itself.......actually, it ended up being closer-scored than I had expected. Anyway, great fun to drink two such super wines alongside each other.

• 1996 Château Haut-Brion 93 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Graves, Pessac-Léognan

  Deep and opaque beef-blood red colour turning to purple-red near the edges and with just the slightest watery transparency at the meniscus. Nose is lovely, precise fresh red and black plums with black Chinese mushrooms, then white fresh-sawn plank wood, some black ink.....complex but not yet integrated. Palate is considerably more advanced than the nose but is still austere graphite, pencil lead and coal-black tannin....dark 100% cocoa chocolate, mouth-puckering tannin...sharp, angular and young...a work in progress....a powerful but totally unfurled finish but needs 5-7 years to harmonise. That said, it already has a linear sophistication that I can only describe as "angular charm". It definitely out-sophisticated the still lovely Pahlmeyer 1996 that we drank alongside it.

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• 1996 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red 91 Points

  USA, California, Napa Valley

  Heavy sediment deposited in the bottle which was decanted 3-4 hours beforehand. Cork looks brand new. Clean black-red but totally coal-black opaque colour. Initial Bordeaux barnyard funk that quickly blows off to reveal a ripe open nose of rich ripe red raspberry and red currant and berry fruits, sun-warmed barrel oak, cream soda and crushed vanilla pod that didn't evolve much even after the extended decanting and time in the glass. On opening, the palate is silky but quite sharp red fruited and bright acidic bite on the back end... fresh vanilla pod....fresh dates. However, with extended decanting and time in the glass it has evolved to an explosion of red and black sweet fruits with a big rolling resonance and rich, fruity, belly-filling blueberries gorgeousness that only New World wines can deliver. Dry finish....needs more time. Lost out to the linear sophistication of the Ch. Haut Brion 1996 we drank alongside it. Two wines that both need 5-7 years' more time in their very different ways.

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Thanks guys!