2017 Holiday Season Wine Tasting Party
Our house
Tasted December 2, 2017 - December 3, 2017 by jimyeni with 265 views
Introduction
Theme was Napa vs. Bordeaux although the first flight was a Napa Chardonnay vs. a Meursault. John, Es, Daniel, Quynh, Izzy, Emmy, and Albert, joined Yeni and I for this tasting.
For food we had prime rib, pasta, 3 types of manchego (different aging), Quynh's homemade bread, and kale salad.
Flight 1 - Warm up (2 notes)
Flight 2 - The old timers (2 notes)
Red
1995 Beringer Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Bancroft Ranch
USA, California, Napa Valley, Howell Mountain
Ready to drink and still tasting great - it's amazing how well this wine has held up. Tobacco, anise, cherry, flowers. Drinking in a flight with a 1996 Clerc Milon and the wines were neck and neck although the Clerc Milon clearly had more acidity.
Red
1996 Château Clerc Milon
France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac
This is in such a great spot - very complex, round and smooth, some really nice cherry as a foundation to a number of secondary and tertiary notes. Floral, lavender, smoke, spices.
Flight 3 - Classics in their prime (3 notes)
Red
2000 Les Pagodes de Cos
France, Bordeaux, Médoc, St. Estèphe
Good wine but stylistically didn't resonate with me, it's got a fair amount of pyrazine and the fruit has mostly subsided while still having a bit of a tannic back end.
Red
2000 Château Pontet-Canet
France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac
I shed a tear as this bottle was corked. Was so excited about tasting so it was a letdown.
Flight 4 - Bolder, richer expressions (2 notes)
Red
2000 Château Léoville Poyferré
France, Bordeaux, Médoc, St. Julien
In a word... silk. So silky smooth with a beautiful nose of lavender, cherry and slate. Beautiful but I would actually wait a bit in these
Closing
It was very educational to drink in a comparison way. Really helped drive clarity on the characteristic differences between the regions, especially sine we were able to drink through wines from the 90s, early 2000 and a Napa from 2005 to see the evolution. Even though we generally prefer Napa wines, tonight, the French wines as a whole shoed a bit better even though the WOTN was the Spottswoode. Nothing disappointed except for the corked Pontet Canet. Sometimes it seems funny to talk about preferring one wine over another when on any given day any one of these wines would be amazing.
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