Kevin & Margaret's Thanksgiving Dinner

Kevin & Margaret put on a gorgeous Thanksgiving turkey dinner for 14 of us on their rooftop terrace.

Drank over three light salads.

• 2005 Kistler Chardonnay Vine Hill Vineyard 91 Points

  USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley

  Golden lemon colour. Great nose. Fantastic balanced and precise mineral palate with refreshing high acidity.
  Slightly honeyed end. Some length. I love this.

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• 2005 Kistler Chardonnay Hudson Vineyard 88 Points

  USA, California, Napa / Sonoma, Carneros

  Lighter pale gold colour. Very subtle nose. Palate is very rich ripe banana and ripe Charantais melon. OK length. No resonance. Nothing as impressive as the Vine Hill 2005 drank alongside it. May have been too cold.

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• 2006 Castello della Sala (Antinori) Chardonnay Bramìto del Cervo 87 Points

  Italy, Umbria

  Lemony gold colour. Very wow nose of unsalted melted butter, white flowers and nettles. Palate is very fresh, lemony and mineraly with more sweetness than last time I tasted it. Very little oak and has a stainless steel fermentation crispness and freshness to it. However, the apparent growing sweetness as it ages is not to my taste. Time to contradict my previous tasting note and switch to younger vintages.

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Drank over a rich home-made tomato and basil soup.

• 1981 Château Palmer 91 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Margaux

  Top shoulder fill. Black saturated but intact cork. Totally transparent light amber colour. Lovely delicate lightly perfumed nose of raspberry fruit and rose hip tea and a lot of high notes. Palate is light and a little dilute but quite ethereal with old packing cases in dusty attics, Earl Grey tea, Chinese medicine, with quite a lot of acidic freshness and a dry tannic end (that Chinese medicine again). Some length and good light wispish resonance in the head. The shadow of fruit is still there in an elegant chiffon-esque way. Delightful..... but no-one else liked it as much as me, particularly on the palate....... heathens, if you ask me but it was my bottle.

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Drank with the Turkey

• 2000 Freycinet Vineyard Pinot Noir 85 Points

  Australia, Tasmania, Freycinet Coast

  Transparent but still blood red colour. Lovely dusty strawberries nose with some damp bracken. On the palate the acidity has become disjointed and is too predominant in this bottle. I think that now at this age it is starting to show considerable bottle variation because another bottle drank in the week was signicicantly better on the palate.

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• 2003 Yarra Yering Pinot Noir 88 Points

  Australia, Victoria, Port Phillip, Yarra Valley

  Dark dusky semi tanslucent rose red colour. Sweet rich fruity nose of sweaty strawberries. Very nice palate of sweet fruit but quickly faded. No length. Others liked this a lot more than me....and not just Runny.

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Drank over a selection of great cheeses.....erm, a a pear crumble with custard.

• 1995 Joseph Phelps Insignia 87 Points

  USA, California, Napa Valley

  Deep blood red semi-transparent colour. Pure nose of Pauillac that is very remniscennt of Pichon Lalande. Palate is a real disappointment because it's just acidity and milk chocolate and surprisingly linear and surprisingly hot and acidic on the finish. I suspect this must have suffered from poor storage at some stage but I note that a lot of other CTers have had the same experience so maybe something went wrong with the bottling that year because there seems to be two distinctly different Insignia 1995s out there.

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• 1995 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red 96 Points

  USA, California, Napa Valley

  I had double decanted this 8 hours beforehand. Red/purply semi-transparent colour. Nose jumps straight out at you even when first uncorked and still at cold cellar temperature. Nose is distinct pomegranites and fresh dates and Thai rambutans. Some boxwood and ripe black cherry fruit. Palate is mouthfilling, very textured and beautifully balanced with mellowing plum fruit, plumstones, refreshing and precise acidity, incense and the sensation of walking in old cathedrals. Very soft but structured tannins. Quite light but very powerful in an elegant manner with great exceptional length and soaring diaphonous resonance on the head at the finish that goes on and on. Very Bordeaux in style and seems fully mature but with years more life ahead of it. Exquisite.

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It was a really enjoyable evening, the only disappointment being the Insignia that Kevin had been so looking forward to opening.