Dinner at Edmund and Shuming's

We bought back some Thai food from E-Sarn for dinner with Edmund, Shuming, Rebecca and Vincent at the Ching's. Had a really good time of fellowship and conversation along with a couple of bottles of pretty nice wine. The Pinot was not a great pairing with the sweet and spicy Thai food, but the sweet Riesling went beautifully with dessert.

• 2006 Cornish Point Pinot Noir 90 Points

  New Zealand, South Island, Otago, Central Otago

  A Felton Road wine in disguise (more on that later), this was surprisingly Burgundian and rather good indeed. Just a little too volatile once the screw capped was opened, but it gave plenty of pleasure when it was on its game. Nose could have easily been mistaken for a ripe Vosne-Romanee at first pour, with sous bois, truffles, meat, bramble, wood spice and ripe dark cherries giving the wine a really nice aromatic character. Not too bright, not too sweet - all very attractive. Palate was a little more clearly new world. Meaty notes with ripe cherries where wrapped in a rich plushness with plenty of underlying sappiness laced with touches of alcohol. At 14% this was a big Pinot. Still thought, it was far from some, say, Californian or Oregon monsters. This still had a nice and clean feel, with a smooth, silky texture and really good balance - it was almost light for a wine of its size. Finish was nice and longish too, with notes of orange peel, ripe red fruits and bittersweet wood spice. With time the back palate opened into even more woody notes along with ripe red fruits - almost raspberry gummy like. No great complexity on this wine, and it fell apart too quickly for my taste, coming apart about an hour after pouring. Still - there a lot to like here. 90+
  
  Cornish Point vineyard has been a Pinot Noir experiment area for the last 10 years or so, where the Felton Road team tries out different clones and rootstocks to try to figure out what marries best with the terroir. Fermented with wild yeasts, aged in French Oak and unfined / unfiltered, the wines have been bottled seperately and sold slightly cheaper than Felton Road up to the 2006 vintage. Most likely due to the younger vines, I found this bottle to be more forward and a bit less complex than what one would expect from the other Felton Road "1er Cru" single Block labels. I understand some of the wine from Cornish Point has been bottled as a Felton Road single vineyard wine from the 2007 vintage onwards.

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• 2006 Hermann J. Wiemer Riesling Bunch Select Late Harvest 92 Points

  USA, New York, Finger Lakes, Seneca Lake

  My first Finger Lakes Riesling, and I must I was very impressed. This was probably somewhere between a Spatlese and Auslese in sweetness. It perhaps lacked some of the substance and complexity of the top German vineyards, but the vines are probably quite a bit younger - keeping that in mind, this was a really nice Riesling. Nose had a little grassy lilt to its honey and apricot fruits, along with lower notes of white button mushrooms, and some nice white flowers, honeysuckle, pomegranate and orange peel. Lots of attractive, interesting bits, but far from bursting out of the glass - this was actually rather restrained in a nice classy way. Palate was creamy textured and rather honeyed, with orange marmalade, more ripe pomegrante and some dried apricots, all held in great balance with fresh acidity. It just stopped at midpalate though, fizzling out rather abruptly. Pleasant I thought, but rather insubstantial. However, with some air and a little warming up in the glass, it opened up and put on a bit more grip, filling out at the back end with orange peel, sweet lemon candy, some lemon zest and little lingering note of musk and mineral. Very nice, and should get much better with more time in the bottle. This went gloriously with Rebecca's home-made Gula Melaka Tang Yuan (rice dumpling stuffed with brown palm sugar and boiled in sweet ginger-suop). The fresh sweetness of the late harvest Riesling working wonderfully with the sweet / savoury flavours of the palm sugar.

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