New Year’s eve

A brief look at some of the wines we “digested” yesterday evening, December 31. And if you put a bunch of winelovers together, you can imagine that some great wine asses will be kicked…

As an aperitif we of course popped a bottle of Champagne, one of the few good aperitifs. As a side note, please get rid of all these sweet stuff as aperitif! Just think acidity! Okay, having said that we thus started of with Charpentier, a great champagne from the Vallée de la Marne and composed of ship loads of pinot meunier (about 70%). And oow yes, I just love loads of red grapes in my champagne, just makes it fuller, rounder, heavier. Actually you maybe are getting more a wine than champagne. And also this Réserve of Charpentier did the trick. Just lovely my dear.

This was followed by a magnum bottle Soave Classico of Prà, a gift of Graziano Prà himself. More specifically this was the Monte Grande harvest 2002. Montegrande is a specific cru or vineyard from which only the best grapes are destined to end up in the Monte Grande wine. Composed of the grapes garganega (pronounce: gar-GA-ne-ga) and trebbiano di soave, this wine just injects you with honey blossoms complemented with some stony minerality (just do the Garry Vaneyrchuck thing and sock some rocks and you’ll now what I’m referring to). This bottle, well the wine in it, has just aged wonderfully well.

By now, it was time for some serious work. We dynamited our way through the meat dishes with a superb selection of reds, starting with one of my favorite grapes, pinot noir. But no, not a French example, neither an American, nor a New-Zealandian. None of these, we went for a German one, Jean Stodden and his Recher Herrenberg Spätburgunder and for all I can say an outstanding one. This is just a text book pinot noir, tons of red fruit infused with earthiness and a drop of truffle aroma. Yammy stuff.

Then it was time to take a plain to la bella Italia. And we landed in Tuscany where we went for the confrontation with the leading example of the so-called Super-Tuscans: Tignanello. Harvest 1999 and Piero Antinori together with Giacomo Tachis did an outstanding job. Ooh boy was this a nice wine. I just dig sangiovese (the wine is actually made of the following grapes: 80% sangiovese, 15% cabernet sauvignon, 5% cabernet franc). Think sour cherry cream topped with dried tea leaves and a slice of mushrooms. All this just keeps on lingering in your nose. And in the mouth, aaaaaah, what a balance, a balance between the stiff tannins, the juicy acidity and the sweet roundness.

Finally we headed to France, Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Our partner in crime was the Château La Nerthe 2003. Without any hesitation the best Château9 I drank last year! And the blend is just amazing, usual suspects such as syrah, grenache and mourvèdre are complemented with grapes that just sound outer space: cinsault, picpoul, counoise, etc.

And today, well today I just try to ignore my headache… :-)

A tremendous New Year and have some great wines in 2008 (starting today)!

If you enjoyed this post, make my day and buy me a glass of wine.

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January 1, 2008 | Filed Under Tasting wines 

Comments

3 Responses to “New Year’s eve”

  1. kaat on January 2nd, 2008 11:38 am

    this sounds like good intentions for 2008 :-)

    although,
    our boys did not like the garry vaynerchuck-idea…

    the only thing i could cope with january 1st was a little spanish white with a heartbreaking smile
    http://www.cristodelavega.es/

  2. Taster B on January 2nd, 2008 8:07 pm

    Wow! Impressive selection AND recall!

  3. Bart Van Hemelrijk on April 23rd, 2008 10:13 am

    I…like…big…wines and I can’t deny!

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