Now, before you wonder what the heck I was up to this evening drinking four bottles of wine, let me tell you that most of this stuff was tasted and dumped - there are some rummies out there cursing my very name. A buddy came over last night sporting a few bottles of his own wine, which we tasted (I can't divulge the wines because he is still working on them). Then it was time for me to show what I had of interest in the cellar: I came up with 2 bottles of white and 2 bottles of red.
Kicking off the tasting was a bottle of Jackson-Triggs 2006 Sauvignon Blanc ... now I was under no illusions that this wine was still going to be the
wonderful, fruity job it once was, the colour was golden yellow, which usually means age or oxidation in a white. The acidity was more or less still there but for the most part it was flat and flavourless - it was also sealed with a plastic cork, which is also not a good sign of ageability.
Next up, a bottle of Creekside 2008 Undercurrent Gewurztraminer, this one started off slowly, probably because it was way too cold, but as it warmed up the fruit and the floral began to emerge, there was some nice zip and zing to this wine once it warmed up and aerated a little. A pleasant little sipper to say the least.
As we waited for the Gewurzt to come to a temperature we could enjoy I brought out two reds, a Henry Bourgeois 1998 "Les Baronnes", a Pinot Noir from the Loire Valley in France. The smell was mushroomy and earthy while the flavours were thin on the palate, there was some fruit in there but it was not of the fresh variety and disappeared quickly replaced by barnyard (more like 'merde' as the French would say) aromas and flavours - this was a very short lived wine, if it was alive at all.
Finally, there was a bottle of Marques de Riscal Baron de Chirel 1988 Reserva from the Rioja in Spain. This wine started off very slowly and seemed like it was going to be in the same vein as the Bourgeois, meaning dead on arrival. It started out with lots of tannins and the flavours were old, dried and wet leaves; there was dried black fruit in there and it was fighting to come to the surface, but it was a long hard struggle, surprisingly it did make it near the end. At first it was not horrible, but not exactly wonderful. We let it sit as we looked back at the Gewurzt for a few minutes, we gave it (the Gewurzt) a few sips and agreed it was coming along nicely. Back to the Rioja and it too had opened considerably, there was now spice in the wine and barrel notes of vanilla mixed with some spice that was holding the wine together nicely. The longer this wine stayed open the better it became. We then thought of pairing it with a little food and found a Sundried Tomato Harvati that paired very well, the wine actually accentuated the tomatoes in the cheese, very impressive ... I do believe we did finish this bottle as there was nothing left in the bottle when we headed out for dinner.
