Ming's Birthday

A prodigous night in the making that didnt disappoint. Ming generously brought most of the wines with the highest rated burg I ever had.

paired with a flight of starters - fried silver fish with pepper salt, shredded pig stomach sichuan style, drunken white chicken

• 1999 Moët & Chandon Champagne Cuvée Dom Pérignon 88 Points

  France, Champagne

  (8/26/2010)

  Extremely tight and too young to taste. Clean lemons, crisp, mineral but all still very muted and all just clustered into one monolithic expression. Very high acidity and chalky with limestone slate. Very hard to taste through now and needs at least another 10 years to mellow but quality is high no doubt.

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Paired with scallops in egg white truffle and winter melon soup.

• 2006 Château Talbot Caillou Blanc 87 Points

  France, Bordeaux

  (8/26/2010)

  Some clean oak comes thru with vanillin but dissipates quickly to reveal beautiful white florals, SB purity and cleanliness. Fresh and just gets better with every sip. Really well made wine.

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• 2001 Kongsgaard Chardonnay 87 Points

  USA, California, Napa Valley

  (8/26/2010)

  White elderflowers, beeswax, oaky vanillin , honeysuckly, cauliflower , corn syrup and medicated peppermint green tea. Very new world and american . A bit mineral but mostly rich american oakiness and viognier like lift. With time, this did become more balanced but still a really modern chard.

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• 1985 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay Napa Valley 85 Points

  USA, California, Napa Valley

  (8/26/2010)

  Deep yellow amber. Reductive soy sauce notes , aged honeyed notes, chrysanthamum tea with kumquat finish. Over the best of its years but still does hold on to minerality and some acidity. This would have been smashing 10 years back. However, this does pair nicely with the truffle egg white.

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Paired with Wagyu Beef cheek in Brown Sauce, Peking Duck, Lamb with Scallions , Duck in cabbage and Braised Duck Beehoon

• 1961 Pio Cesare Barolo 88 Points

  Italy, Piedmont, Langhe, Barolo

  (8/27/2010)

  Extremely aged as can be told from the diluted blood colour with browning at the rims. As old as it was, the nose was wonderfully expressive with aged cherries, mahogany and expensive leather. Musky with pinot like earthiness. The palate still has some sour cherries going for it but it is over the best of its years. Would have been a whopping wine 10 years ago.

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• 1981 Giuseppe Toti Schioppettino Vino da Tavola 91 Points

  Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Vino da Tavola

  (8/27/2010)

  Still richly coloured. Beautiful expressive aromas of leather , tar, aged tobacco leaves , blood and rust rounded off by gamey rawness, smokiness and cracked black peppercorn. Dry fowl feathers, dried leather with cigarette smoke atop a bit of dried provencal herbs and a backing of brooding black cherries. This was really a suprise. Coming ithrough as very much a good higher classed pauillac but retaining a very rustic , soulful terroir of its italian roots. This is a classical iconic wine . This has won me over to fruili and how well it ages. Probably drinking at its peak but probably will last another few years at least too. Excellento!

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• 1981 Château Léoville Las Cases 84 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Saint-Julien

  (8/27/2010)

  Good nose of green capsicums and lots of floral notes. Unmistakably bordeaux and very much St Julien or Margaux. Weak vintage shows as most of the fruit has been lost with a thinner mouthfeel. I do like the leaner slightly green veggie characteristic though.

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• 1957 Remoissenet Père et Fils Richebourg 95 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Richebourg Grand Cru

  (8/27/2010)

  This is magical and epiphanical kinda wine that really opens one's eyes to the magic of burgundy! For its quality, this was fresh fresh fresh! with excellent sumptuous and gorgeous fruits displaying vigour, beauty and power. Beautifully floral with violets, baby's breath and lilacs floating amidst an iron fist of leather and the rarest of furs. The epitomy of an iron fist in a velvet glove with structure and softness. The really shocking thing was the vintage, which all of us couldn't fathom. At most , everyone guessed it was a 90s wine but shockingly it was a 57! We are checking with the producer to check bottle authenticity but for what it is worth, this is a really really top wine of class and nobility.

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A last minute finisher but a favourite of mine.

• NV The Berry Farm Port No.7 92 Points

  Australia, Western Australia, South West Australia, Margaret River

  (8/27/2010)

  I still love this fruit port. Heard they were discontinuing it, a pity i think. I think its one of its kind in the world and no one makes anything like it. It smells perfumy and wonderfully inviting. Melons and rock melons galore with apricots and sauternes like richness on the palate but not cloying though.

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A night too good to be true...