First up, a Monday evening dinner at the Hawksmoor Air Street with T, D and G. We were led for what felt like several miles through the restaurant and eventually arrived at a booth, which was very nice and made it easier to hear each other. Deafening noise is one of the major reasons why I prefer to dine at home these days, along with escalating wine prices. But corkage at the Hawksmoor is just £5 on a Monday, compared with £25 on all other days, and this price applies to bottles of every size, so it was a great opportunity to drink some magnums.
We started with 2008 Chablis 1er cru Fourchaume-Vaulorent 2008 from Domaine Nathalie & Gilles Fevre, which went down very nicely with some historic scallops. Apologies for lack of detail but I wasn't taking notes.
After that we moved on to steak, accompanied by a magnum of Beaune 1er cru Greves 2005 from Yves Darviot, which I believe belonged to me but had been sitting in G's Rutland cellar for a very long time and I had forgotten all about it. In my opinion, there is still no rush on it - these 2005 reds seem to be built to last. Am now wondering if I have any more stashed away?
With dessert, we drank this 1969 5 puttonyos Tokaji Aszu provided by D, which went particularly well with sticky toffee sauces/puddings. Afterwards we repaired to the bar for a quick post-prandial Calvados kindly supplied by T. Thanks all for a great evening.
Then, last Sunday, D came round to my place for lunch. We kicked off with a bottle of white Corton 2008 from Domaine Parent which recently came out of storage and has been providing much pleasure. It was big and rich with great acidity and a certain honeyed quality. D noted some viscosity, and the finish went on for ages. It has beens even better than the 2007 and went very nicely with our smoked salmon.
Then the main event: two Inglenook 1969s. The one on the left was the main release, whereas the one on the right was from a particular cask. Fortunately I am the proud possessor of multiple Riedel claret glasses so we were able to try them side by side, which proved to be a fascinating comparison.
The estate-bottled wine was very cabernet sauvignon, with mint leaf on the nose, and tasted very pure to me, while the cask wine had greater intensity and an extraordinary finish. At one point I glazed over for a few minutes and was unable to join in the conversation because it needed all my attention.
Both Inglenooks seemed to have a lot of menthol going on and would be great to drink if you had a cold! I was thinking about what made them different from claret and the answer seemed to be that they were lacking the woody, cedar notes that you often find in claret. This train of thought led to a suggestion... get some claret out to compare.
Fortunately I had a bottle of my old favourite, Chateau Montrose 1970, sitting on the wine rack (cue story of the Montrose Moment in Southwold on my 22nd birthday), so this was clearly the bottle to go for.
According to G, the Montrose had some merlot in it. I've just checked, and according to the chateau's website, the 1970 vintage was 65% cab sauv, 25% merlot and 10% cabernet franc. It was certainly much woodier, and held its own against the Inglenooks for the first half hour or so - at that point we thought it ranked in between the two - but then completely fell off a cliff and faded, whereas the Inglenooks kept going and didn't change much over time. It was really interesting to try the three together and thanks to D for the wonderful opportunity to drink old Californian wines which we never see in the UK.
We finished off with a glass of Apostoles, which is a 30 year old palo cortado from Gonzalez Byass, bought from Waitrose during one of their intermittent 25% off deals. This wine also has a spot of Pedro Ximenez in it which makes it slightly sweeter than, say, the Dos Cortados 20 year old palo cortado from Williams & Humbert which is super-dry and definitely an aperitif.
It was a really great lunch, and there were no hangovers the next day, which just goes to show the old stuff is the best!
