Kickoff Dinner to Roy Hersh's "Great Seattle Weekend of Port"
Sammamish, WA, USA
Tasted Thursday, May 1, 2003 by Eric with 1,622 views
Introduction
I had the good fortune to be invited by Roy Hersh to the kickoff dinner for his "Great Seattle Weekend of Port." I didn't attend the subsequent events, but given that the wines below were a casual warmup for the real events, that will give you some sort of idea that Roy is pretty darned serious when he organizes such a gathering. Folks arrived from all over the globe, and when I realized that Dirk van der Nieepoort himself was sitting to my left, that's when I started to have some inkling of what was actually going on!
First of all, a very quick note on the food. Rodney Muirhead (who you have probably seen posting on this board) and Elizabeth Montes made the trip up from Portland, OR to cook for this event. I don't have the words in my vocabulary to do justice to the lovely meal they put together, but suffice it to say that the food was elegant, delicious and spoke of local ingredients treated with respect and a deft hand.
THE FOOD
Appetizers included fresh oysters and a variety of delectable bites which have already escaped my memory. There was something with an edamame paste that was just amazing. The first seated course was Dungeness crab "pot pie" which in reality was luscious local crab in buttery puff pastry (served with the Landmark Chard below for the ultimate match). Then we moved to salmon tartare with baby greens and fresh Oregon Wasabi (real Wasabi, not from powder). To cleanse the palate we had pink grapefruit and a delectable rosemary sorbet. And as the heavy red wines hit we had rack of lamb which had been seared off beautifully along with potato gratin and some delicious morels. Heading to dessert, we enjoyed to buttermilk panna cotta with a sauternes gelee, cheese & fruit, and finally some of the most heavenly home made chocolates I have ever encountered. (Thank you, thank you, thank you to Elizabeth. That caramel was unreal!) And now finally to the wines.
Flight 1 - WHITE FLIGHT (3 Notes)
This first set of white wines accompanied the appetizers and early courses.
Flight 2 - PORTUGUESE DRY REDS (4 Notes)
This was the first time that I have ever had dry reds from Portugal, and frankly I think my low scores have a lot to do with me not really understanding the wines. As a rule, these were all fairly high in acid and better with food than on their own. I think that none of them held up terribly well against the lamb chops.
Flight 3 - AGED BORDEAUX (3 Notes)
Next up was a mini-flight of aged Bordeaux.
Flight 4 - BIG AUSSIE REDS (4 Notes)
Next up were some big Aussie reds with one South African wine snuck in for good measure.
Flight 5 - MADEIRA (3 Notes)
Finally we finished up with a flight of three incredible Madeira from the 19th century. Frankly, all three of these wines left me nearly speechless (as evidenced by an extremely scant page of tasting notes with SPEECHLESS!!!! written at the top of the page). Looking at these bottles of such age just makes one wonder how much the world has seen since the fruit was picked that ultimately made these elixirs...
Closing
Thank you Roy for an incredible experience!
2002 Cape Cellars Sauvignon Blanc 85 Points
South Africa, Coastal Region, Stellenbosch
Grass, lemon, clean, refreshing. Nice with oysters and appetizers.
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1998 Landmark Chardonnay Damaris Reserve 90 Points
USA, California, Sonoma County
35% Sonoma, 33% Santa Barbara, 32% Monterey. Deep gold. Hazelnut and caramel. Silky mouthfeel, really smooth, nice level of oak, balanced. Clean finish with nice acidity. I don't know if this is a 90 point wine on its own, but paired with crab-puff-pie it is *amazing*!
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NV Churchill/Graham Porto Branco Dry Apertif 87 Points
Portugal, Douro, Porto
Orange in color, very spirity on the nose, hot on the palate and finish. There were actually two bottles of this with fairly wide variation. One cloudy, one clear. The cloudy one is much better. The finish was punctuated with a slightly bitter note and somewhat was somewhat clipped. Still very nice!
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