Steak and big reds with the guys

Seattle, WA, USA
Tasted Friday, October 8, 2004 by Eric with 2,628 views

Introduction

My wife was out of town all week, so on Friday I decided to have some friends over to open up a few big reds and enjoy a slow, relaxed evening. Jason Goldberger, Karl Vennes and Jeff Fisher all showed up between 6:30 and 7:30pm, and with the help of a babysitter I got my two year old to sleep.

Flight 1 (2 Notes)

While prepping dinner and nibbling on some cheese we enjoyed a couple of white wines.

  • 2001 Dr. Hermann Erdener Treppchen Riesling Auslese **

    Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer

    AP# 2 603 145 9 02. Hmm, $15 for a ** Auslese?? Jason picked this up to give it a try. This is nice wine but more like a Spatlese than Auslese. Pretty green apple, crisp acid, but not much palate weight or intensity. A nice quaffer.

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  • 1999 Château Laville Haut-Brion Blanc

    France, Bordeaux, Graves, Pessac-Léognan

    Delicious with copious toast on the nose. The palate is rich with voluptuous mouthfeel, smoky depth, and a hint of banana in the background. This was a very enjoyable wine with an assortment of cheese.

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Flight 2 (4 Notes)

Dinner was grilled rib-steak, pan seared matsutake mushrooms (oh my, these are remarkable!), sauteed rainbow chard, and roasted fingerling potatoes. Karl is a professional chef, and he had excellent advice on every aspect of prep for these simple ingredients.

Then we slowly enjoyed the food, wine and conversation for about three hours. Big food for big reds, awesome!

  • 1989 Château Clerc Milon Flawed

    France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac

    Karl purchased this on release at CostCo. Sadly, it was badly corked!

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  • 1990 Château Montrose 98 Points

    France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Saint-Estèphe

    OMFG! I took a tiny sip after the initial decant, and this is one of the most dense and powerful wines I have ever tasted. What a remarkable bruiser! We let this air for about two hours and then dipped in. The nose was dense with cranberry, iron, horse (far from overbearing), leather, soy sauce, and loads of black fruit. The palate was massive, enveloping and monolithic with huge layers of black fruit, dense, endlessly deep, and freakishly powerful. This is just so intense, ripe, and layered with waves of sweet fruit covering gravel and gorgeous minerality. The finish is beyond belief, 60 seconds of complexity dance on your palate, and then the mouthfeel and structure continue for about 3 minutes. The closest benchmark I can think of is the 1986 Mouton, and this wine makes that seem puny. I am rating at 98, as this is just so unbelievably primary right now. It is packed with so much, but it could be a decade or more before this even begins to gain focus. Lots of upward potential here.

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  • 1990 Château Sociando-Mallet 93 Points

    France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Haut-Médoc

    Lead pencil, tobacco, graphite and cedar dance on the nose of this beautiful claret. The palate is a delicate balance of charcoal, gravel and waves of sweet fruit. This is very lush, although in comparison to the the 1990 Montrose and 1994 Quilceda is came off as delicate and understated. Still, this is so very pretty, ripe, and balanced with beautiful minerality, an utterly gorgeous and enjoyable wine!

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  • 1994 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon 96 Points

    USA, Washington

    This is classic Quilceda with an explosive, bright, soaring nose of raspberry and violet, pure and beautiful on the palate with a tight and focused core of fruit. Hiding beneath this fruit is some impressive minerality and savory flavors hinting at soy (although this was subtle as compared to the dominant note of soy in the Montrose) and eventually some cocoa. This wine continues to show amazing structure, and at first the tannins were rather coarse, drying and chalky by comparison to the surreal Montrose. However, the initially clipped, tannic finish finally relented after four hours and showed the silky, lush finish I would expect. This wine is a baby, and Alex Golitzen might be right in criticizing it as being overly tannic. However, it is a gorgeous wine if you don't mind a little kick in the teeth, and with steak and time to unwind it is hard to think of anything more enjoyable from Washington. Clearly I have a soft spot for Quilceda.

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Flight 3 (1 Note)

We finished up with some pear coffee cake (yes, a strange dessert but nice with the wine) along with a gorgeous BA.

  • 1989 Dr. Fischer Ockfener Bockstein Riesling Beerenauslese

    Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer

    From 375ml. AP# 3542013-12-90. Gorgeous, smoky, honeyed diesel. You just can't find anything else in a bottle of wine that smells like this. Thick with botrystis yet still lively and well defined, this was an utterly fantastic bottle to end with. Yummy!

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