Wine Society's Vin d'Alsace 2005 (Hugel)
Clear, pale lemon with a wide watery rim. Quite intense with floral notes (rose?), citrus, green apple and grape. Some smoky mineral notes too. On the palate, this is medium to full bodied with lots of acid. Quite intense citrus, peach and some nutty flavours. Quite long. This is well balanced and developing well. A good wine, ready to drink now
Cote du Puy, Jean Foillard, Morgon 2007
A real surprise this one. Knowing my general dislike of Beaujolais, Adam went to the Sampler and challenged them to find him a good one. I tasted this one blind and, to my astonishment, it was actually pretty decent!
Quite pale ruby with relatively restrained nose. Smoky, woody notes are the most dominant aromas. The fruit character is mainly black cherries. Low tannins, high acid. More red fruit on the palate. Raspberry jam? Light body, medium length. Quite refreshing. This was good to very good. Lacks the tannin to go with food but as an aperitif it's very pleasant. What a surprise!
Villa Cafaggio, Chianti Classico 2006
We'd cooked an awesome pork-shoulder ragu (recipe in next post) from the Tuscan section of the superb Vino Italiano Book so it seemed appropriate to have this with a Tuscan wine. The colour was deep red - a real contrast to the Morgan we'd just had. Pretty intense nose with smoky, tar, dried black fruit. Some oak and some floral notes. Lots of complexity on the nose - every time we tasted it there were new aromas coming to the fore. Quite high tannin and acid, in balance with one another. Intense flavours on the palate. Tart black fruit, cedar, wood.
Developing nicely. Well balanced all the way to the finish with good length. Very good. Can drink this now but will improve over time as the wine softens and balances, but very good with food now.
Les Hauts de Pontet-Canet 2000
Quite deep ruby colour, surprising lack of brown on the rim. Nose is dominated by wood and cigar box. Some red fruit underneath, quite plummy. On the palate, too much wood also. There's a reasonable amount of good stuff in there but it's dominated by the wood. This probably will not get better with time. Probably was better in the past when the fruit would have been more dominant. A bit of a disappointment considering this is a 2000.
Chateau Fayau 1999
This is from Cadillac. Just done a bit of google and it turns out that Cadillac the wine region is related to Cadillac the car. Who knew? Apparently Detroit city was founded by Sir Lamothe-Cadillac. The region is very close to Sauternes and makes sweet wines in the same style. Lower quality, but significantly lower cost too.
The colour was moderately deep amber. The nose is quite surprising. As well as the expected notes of toffee, apricot jam there was a definite acetone aroma. People mentioned nail polish remover. However, the good stuff was intense enough that this was not a show-stopper. Some definite marzipan, frangelico and quince jelly notes.
On the palate, the nutty notes continued with marzipan and almonds being the most prominent. Pronounced fruity notes (apricot jam). very long with orange flavour on the finish. High alcohol
This was a good wine - very good considering the cost. It's managed to age 10 years nicely. I'd be worried about keeping it any longer in case the acetone got out of hand. As sweet wines go it's far from being amazing, but appropriate quality for the late stage of the evening.
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