Craig Haserot's Malconsorts Themed Round Robin Dinner

Estate Restaurant, Sonoma, California
Tasted Saturday, June 5, 2010 by rjonwine@gmail.com with 1,615 views

Introduction

Mystery wine, anyone?
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When is too much of a good thing just too much? As it turns out, when it's one of the top Burgundy Premier Crus and 13 blinded bottles of it in a row (along with some attempts at California ringers), turn into a monochromatic blur over the course of a long meal. Sure there were some interesting differences between producers and vintages, but not enough diversity to keep one's total attention over the course of a 4+ hour dinner. I'm just sayin'. So I learned another good lesson from my wonderful fellow foodie and wine geek friends--be careful that a cool wine theme isn't repeated so many times at one sitting that it starts to feel like a death march. I think it would have kept my interest longer if the wines weren't blinded, or at least not after the first red flight, and we had a chance to compare the differences between vintages and producers with more of a sample in our glass. Still, much as I love Burgundy in general and Vosne in particular, even obsessive compulsive palates start to crave a little diversity after awhile.

A group of seven of us started this round of dinners two years ago where one person provided all the wines, and the rest of us showed up and paid for their dinner. The seventh, and last, of the first round of these dinners was Craig's, and he kept to our tradition of mainly mystery wines by blinding all but the last flight. Because not all of our original gang of seven was available that evening, Craig invited a few more welcome dining companions, including his partner in Sojourn, winemaker Erich Bradley; winemaker Thomas Brown (Rivers Marie, Schrader); winemaker Mike Smith (assistant winemaker to Thomas Brown); Sojourn assistant winemaker Randy Bennett; and locally famed white Burg collector Don Hart.

The setting for our dinner was Estate's spacious private room, but those of us who were available before dinner had a little "pre-game" gathering at Craig's place in Sonoma, where we caught up with each other and sampled a few wines that went very well with the warm and beautiful Spring weather. My favorite of our afternoon wines was the '03 Dönnhoff Oberhäuser Leistenberg Auslese.

Once we'd gathered at our private room at Estate, our furthest flung member, Jonathan Dinh (currently living in and around Singapore) popped a delicious '89 Grande Dame. After we'd placed our order, Craig passed around the foil wrapped bottles for our first blind flight. We were quickly guessing Chardonnay, probably French, and then a few of us guessed Chablis. We weren't getting anything as distinctive as Raveneau or Dauvissat, however. It was Thomas who finallly went out on a limb with "they're all Le Clos." He was absolutely right. Mark properly identified the couple of '04s, by the distinctive "green pea" note of that vintage. The other vintage in the flight, '05, was so much better than the '04s there was simply no contest.

Next was our first blind red flight. We were guess Pinot, probably Burgundy, with a few, it turned out, properly guessing what turned out to be the '83 Calera Jensen as Californian (and a couple guessed Calera). It was again Thomas, however, who knocked me out by guessing "Malconsorts," and who turned out to be right. Nice job!

Yes, our featured climat for the evening was Aux Malconsorts, a Vosne Romanee premier cru that lies on the border of Nuits-Saint-Georges. It is the next door neighbor to La Tache. It has a reputation for intensity and finesse, if a little lacking in structure compared to other Vosne Premier Crus. We got to try virtually all the major producers of wine from this 5.86 hectare vineyard: Clos Frantin, Hudelot-Noellat, Lamarche, Dominique Laurent, Thomas-Moillard, and Sylvain Cathiard. The strongest among these, for me, were the three Sylvain Cathiards. The '96 vintage proved to be disappointing, from a few producers. So one of my takeaways for the evening was that if I'm buying Malconsorts, avoid '96 and whatever you do, make it Cathiard.

A final, if controversial treat, thanks to Mischa, was a bottle of '93 Pajzos Tokaji Esszencia. Mischa's excellent synopses regarding the suspiciousness of the many bottles of this that suddenly came on the market last year, through many different retailers, is now forever lost to us, consigned to the Davy Jones locker that was once the Squires forum on eBob. If I may briefly summarize, however, Eszencias are supposed to be the product of only the free-run juice from botrytis affected Aszu grapes. Because there's just a small number of such grape clusters in any harvest, the quantity of free-run juice from them is fairly miniscule, and it's unfathomable that there could be so much that nearly a dozen different retailers would suddenly start hawking unlimited quantities of the same juice from the same producer all in the same week, for prices that were more than reasonable for such a rarity. But that's what happened last year, and Mischa bought some, just to check it out. I've only had a few bottles of eszencia so far in my life, so am in no position to opine on the authenticity of the sample we had at dinner. Nonetheless, it was a tasty sticky, with a good amount of balancing acidity, if a little less structure and delineation than one hopes for in a truly great sweet wine.

All in all, this was a fun gathering of some wonderful wine geeks, and the food was quite decent, and we had some excellent wines. Next time Craig provides all the wine for a dinner, however, I'm going to remind him of the need to mix it up a little. ;-)

Flight 1 - Pre-game wines at Craig's (4 Notes)

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Flight 2 - Champagne starter (1 Note)

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Craig, Thomas and Mike
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Flight 3 - Mystery Flight 1 - Chablis Les Clos (4 Notes)

Salt cod croquet with basil aioli and fried oysters
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Flight 4 - Mystery Flight 2 - Mid-80's Malconsorts (and friend) (3 Notes)

Estate's cured meats
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Craig and Sondra Bernstein, proprietor of Girl and the Fig and Estate
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Flight 5 - Mystery Flight 3 - Hudelot-Noellat Malconsorts (3 Notes)

house made burrata (photo by Mark Sutherland)
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Flight 6 - Mystery Flight 4 - '95 Malconsorts and friend (3 Notes)

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Flight 7 - Mystery Flight 5 - '96 Malconsorts and friend (3 Notes)

saffron risotto with scallops (photo by Mark Sutherland)
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Flight 8 - Old Champagne palate cleanser (1 Note)

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Flight 9 - Mystery Flight 6 - '99 Malconsorts (2 Notes)

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Thomas, "I'm guessing more Malconsorts"
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Randy, Don, Mischa and Erich
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Flight 10 - Mystery Flight 7 - Malconsorts and Cros Parantoux (4 Notes)

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Flight 11 - Sweet Flight (2 Notes)

RJ and Esszencia
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  • 1993 Château Pajzos Tokaji Esszencia 94 Points

    Hungary, Tokaji

    From 500 ml - light brown color with clear meniscus; cherry, berry, dried orange, lime ice, baked cherry nose; tasty, thick, rich and unctuous tart cherry, dried cherry, dried orange, apricot palate; long finish 94+ pts.

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  • 1971 Château Sigalas Rabaud 90 Points

    France, Bordeaux, Sauternais, Sauternes

    Light medium apricot color; apricot, vanilla nose; creme brulee, vanilla, baked apricot palate; medium-plus finish 90+ pts.

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Closing

"emergency doughnuts"
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