Sunday evening at mine

On Sunday night, G and I were joined for dinner by P making a rare guest appearance. Being his usual incorrigible self, he had disregarded instructions to bring one bottle maximum, and arrived with two which he got at a recent auction. Oh well, what can one do...

We began proceedings with a glass of Pol Roger Pure, the low dosage version, which made an excellent aperitif alongside some Roka Cheese Crispies.

Then it was on to the main event, this Pommard which I am reliably informed was from the 1970 vintage. The label refers to Geisweiler & Fils, negotiants in Nuits St Georges, who I suspect are no longer going. The wine had been bottled in the UK and not moved basically for 45 years, and the level was impressive for such an old wine.

We thought it was very Pommard, smooth, powerful and rich, with considerable heft. A herbaceous, minty note was detected along with liquorice and a hint of the sugar bag. It was amazing that it had survived so well and we thought it must have been a total monster in its youth. It went down very easily and accompanied our roast chicken perfectly.

With our cheese course, we cracked on with this bonus bottle which was a 1967 St Estephe bottled by the same people in the UK. Again, the level was excellent. It refers to "Grand Vin de Bordeaux" on the label which according to G meant that it was own-labelled wine from one of the big estates. This was splendid old school claret, still drinking well, with lovely woody notes. Having drunk the 1970 Montrose a couple of weeks earlier, we thought there was a very real possibility that this wine came from the same chateau.

It's always really interesting to try these old wines, and I was delighted that they had survived so well. They also have the advantage of not carrying any hangover-inducing particles. Many thanks to P for sharing these treasures with us!

Two recent dinners

And the blog is back, by popular demand! Well, one person said he was missing it, so after a hiatus over the summer it feels like time to get back to it.

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!

A quartet of old clarets

Over the past few weeks G and I have been drinking the occasional bottle of claret to make a change.

Of the four, this Chateau Talbot 1978 was my least favourite. I found it quite hard work. On the nose, I got soil, while it had a very bitter finish. "Interesting" say my notes, euphemistically. There was some fruit underneath the soil and before the bitterness, and it was better with food, but I wouldn't be unduly bothered if I never got to drink it again.

This Chateau de Malescot St-Exupery 1978 was more like it. It didn't look old, but glossy, and had clearly been very well kept as it wasn't remotely over the hill. It had big, manly flavours including coffee, cocoa, charcoal, tobacco, earth and black cherry. It improved after an hour in the decanter, and was definitely not a "lunchtime claret". We thought it would probably have been undrinkable when it was young, but it was definitely drinkable now.

This 1978 Chateau Gruaud Larose was fabulous. We gave it 15 minutes in the decanter before we started drinking it. It was very cabernet sauvignon, with enticing blackcurrant and mint on the nose, and was very correct, smooth and poised on the palate. I wrote that it was still going strong after 90 minutes and showing no sign of age; shortly after I'd written that, inevitably, it faded.

Finally, there was this 1967 Chateau Montrose, my favourite of the four.

I suspect everyone who is into wine can remember the first, special wine that introduced them to this world where the angel choirs sing etc.etc. In 1995, G and I stayed for a weekend at the Crown in Southwold, and one evening at dinner he spotted a 1970 Montrose on their bin-end list for £40. That was a lot of money for us poor students back in those days but was nevertheless a steal. We ordered it and after one sniff, my eyes lit up, and the rest is history. It was the day I turned 22, and I've had a sentimental attachment to Montrose ever since.

From all accounts the 1967 shouldn't have been any good so I didn't have particularly high expectations. In fact it didn't seem old or in any way over the hill. It was glossy and dark in colour, and on the nose G got mint and pencilbox while I found baked fruit. The texture was lovely and silky-smooth, medium weight, and the finish was great. All in all, it was excellent old claret.

Most wine writers appear to have written off these old clarets, but our experience has been that they do have remarkable longevity and if they have been kept well, can still give great pleasure. That's a big if, though. Buying at auction is risky but G is very careful to look out for bottles with good levels, as that seems to be the best indicator that the wine is still ok. Thanks G for sharing these with me!

Two vintages of Cos

Continuing the claret theme (normal Burgundy service will be resumed shortly), over the Christmas / New Year period we also indulged in a bottle of 1976 a bottle of 1978 Chateau Cos d'Estournel. I got both of these at auction for the princely sum of £33 each. I've had a look to see what market price is, but couldn't find any listings for the 1976, and only a double magnum for the 1976 which is apparently £380 and VAT probably needs to be added to that, giving a bottle equivalent price of £114 - ha!

Cos is on my list of clarets that I know I like, so I was really looking forward to trying these, and it was also great to have them within days of each other and compare characteristics. It's a deuxième cru in the Medoc classification of 1855, and is a St.-Estèphe. I gather it usually consists of 60% cabernet sauvignon, 38% merlot and 2% cabernet franc, which means there is a relatively high proportion of merlot but according to BBR, don't be fooled as "these are full-bodied, dark, brooding tannic wines when young which develop a complexity and intensity that can rival many top growths from Pauillac."

The 1976 was glossy-looking and on the nose it had baked fruits which isn't altogether surprising as it was a very hot summer that year. I was only a nipper at the time but our local reservoir dried up, rather like it has been doing recently. So it wasn't quite the cedary nose that I love. On the palate, it was big, heady and chewy with dried berries and cooked blackcurrants. It was well-integrated and very smooth - G described it as "noble". However, it took 30 minutes to get going after we'd decanted it, and then began to fade after 1 hour 20 minutes, so had a short drinking window. Next time (because I got two bottles, hurrah), we will open it, wait for 30 minutes and then drink it within 45 minutes. We gave it 8/10.

We drank the 1978 the evening after the Latour 1964 (oh, the suffering!), so it had a lot to live up to. The bottle had an excellent level, into the neck. Again it was a nice dark glossy colour and on the nose it was more classic with the cedary thing going on. So far, so good. On the palate it didn't have the baked characteristics of the 1976 and had sweet fruit and smooth, integrated tannins. It was full, elegant and well-structured, really lovely mature claret with an excellent finish, and drinking very well now. It didn't fade over time in the way the 1976 did, and we thought it still had another 5 years or so life in it. We gave this 9/10.