Friday Dinner with Friends

A great and relaxed get-together after a busy work week - just the 4 of us so we had a lot of time to contemplate all the wines.

Both wines, and particularly the Ch. Laville Haut-Brion, benefitted from the food.

• 2000 Olivier Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 95 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  Light straw-yellow colour. Beautiful and beguiling nose: rich, honeyed, with tones of hazelnut and oak....all harmonised and mellow. The palate is a goregous duet of high-noted aciditiy and a counterpoint of fresh-picked green hazelnuts. At some point with time in the glass a growing note of light, natural honeycomb joins in as a harmony. It has a huge long finish and reverberance inside the head....initially a whisper and then it becomes a thunderous explosion. Devastatingly good....all "power without weight". 95+

  Post a Comment / Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No

• 2005 Château Laville Haut-Brion Blanc 92 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Graves, Pessac-Léognan

  Light silver-green in colour and looking very youthful. Nose of white peaches, fresh apricots, Chinese pears and peach stone as a spine. Palate is really open and fresh acidity balanced by very evident youngish tannin and attractive white peaches and white Chinese pears. Enjoyable but needs a good few more years' evolution to achieve its full potential.

  Post a Comment / Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No

• 2000 Domaine Armand Rousseau Père et Fils Chambertin 95 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Chambertin Grand Cru

  Translucent jeweled ruby red in colour. Nose is subtly "oh my gosh".....lightly lifted musical notes of early summer strawberries against a backdrop of dew-laden late summer sous-bois....this is very special but also so will-o'-the -wisp.... like wafts of a beautiful Spanish water-based perfume smelt secretly on a beautiful woman's neck. The palate contains a superb tension between soft velvet fruits and a tannic mineral element remniscent of Iron-supplement pills. Gosh, this is absolutely fantastic.....lightness and the weightless power of several hundred angels hovering just above the tongue. Really something special. Could get even better but already this is a 95+ wine at a minimum.

  Post a Comment / Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No

• 1997 Dominio Pingus Ribera del Duero 95 Points

  Spain, Castilla y León, Ribera del Duero

  Decanted for 4 hours and then drank slowly over artisanal French cheeses and fresh baguettes. Deep ox-blood red colour with a translucency that surprised me for a Pingus of this age. Nose is sharp pinprick, pinpoint-precise black berry and black currants fruit.....raspberry and strawberries too.....lots of other stuff going on as well in a kaleidoscope that is hard to bring into focus.....all framed by sturdy but yielding oak remniscent of old oak-beamed bodegas in Seville....there is something Grand Cru Burgundy about its complexity and overall character. If the nose is Burgundy, the Palate is all 1st-growth Bordeaux (erm, or a top Barolo)....rich, inviting but very firm black cherry fruit with gorgeous mouth-watering acidity.....linear like a Lafite...so pure......a high piano notes intensity that transports you. I love Pingus and this is perhaps the best I have drank so far. This needed every minute of the prior 4-hour decant and the cut of the Epoisses cheese because this is still an extremely young wine.

  Post a Comment / Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No

The highlight of the night for me was my first time with a Rousseau, which had to be my WOTN. But I'm always blown away by the purity and sheer wine making class of Pingus....tonight's was probably the best I have drank but it's clear that even the earliest vintages (starting from 1995) need another 10-20 years to fully show their best and to reach the pantheon of the world's very finest wines....which I'm confident that they will.