Two Sundays ago I invited G, ACC and Baron McG round for lunch. We started with kir royales / bellinis made with Cremant de Bougogne from Dufouleur and Chambord or Creme de Peche (I have a feeling G and I rudely helped ourselves to most of the Chambord before the others arrived) served with some gougeres fresh from the oven. That recipe alone makes Michel Roux's Eggs book well worth the price of admission.
Next up was a bottle of Meursault 1er cru Charmes 2005 from Moret-Nomine. I'd only tasted his wines very young before at one of ACC's "try before you buy" tastings last year, so when I found this on the Wine Society list I couldn't resist, and had been looking out for an opportunity to crack it, as I thought it would be a special occasion kind of wine.
I wasn't disappointed. We decanted it for about half an hour, and it had a lovely golden colour. On the nose it was rich and big and on the palate it had an unctuous mouthfeel and was fat and buttery but with the acidity to balance it. My notes read "Wonderful!" but I didn't quite think it merited a 10, so it got a 9 in the end. It did go very well with the smoked sea trout we had as a starter.
To continue the Meursault theme, after that we had a bottle of the 2007 red Meursault 1er cru Les Cras from Domaine Latour-Labille, provided by G. This was decanted for 2 hours. It had a dark, plummy colour and the nose was wonderful - sweet, heady and with jammy berry fruit. On the palate I've made the articulate tasting note "this is the bollocks". Excellent and accomplished, as it was last time we had it which I blogged about here. We had this with cold beef from the Ginger Pig which I'd roasted the night before.
With the cheese course, we had this Beaune Clos du Roi 2002 from Lois Dufouleur, provided by the Baron. He told us that he bought this at the St Vincent festival and that it had been in his cellar for 3 years so we were privileged to get to drink it!
It had about an hour in the decanter. The colour was dark and serieux, and the nose had that classic beautiful Beaune perfume or "steamy farmyard" according to the Baron. On the palate it was lovely, perfectly balanced and, dare I say it, haunting. It was drinking perfectly now and went very well with the cheese. G said "the only criticism I have of this wine is" (dramatic pause) "that it's not in magnum".
And finally, with our rhubarb crumble we had this Coteaux du Layon 2003 from Domaine de Pierre Blanche, provided by ACC. It was a beautiful golden colour and was luscious, sweet and herbaceous. I wasn't making proper notes by this stage, as we were singing along to various Pet Shop Boys classics, mis-remembering lyrics and competing to see who could do the worst impression of Chris Lowe's monologue on Paninaro. After that we inflicted some Red Biddy on the Baron, but hopefully we're still on speaking terms!
No comments:
Post a Comment