Special occasion dinner with 06` Taittinger Comtes and 95` Williams Selyem Hirsch Pinot Noir

My sweetie and I celebrated our 24th anniversary {2 days prior} and her birthday {the next day} by doing dinner at our beloved, go to special occasion or for any occasion like it’s Wednesday, restaurant, the Stonehouse located on the property of the luxury resort, San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito.

As per our MO, we took a top champagne and a Burt Williams made Pinot Noir from the days our dear friend made his stellar Williams Selyem wines through the 1997 vintage.

While being seated at one of favorite 2 tops on the outdoor, upper deck patio and being served some of our favorite delectable dishes by one of our favorite servers, we enjoyed:

2006 TAITTINGER COMTES de CHAMPAGNE BLANC de BLANC- my rough estimate is this is my 65th bottle {including magnums} of this wondrous bubbly, 50+ from my cellar; and it had been a few months since the last bottle, so I was looking forward to seeing how this one would show as all have been stellar with one exception and that one was good, but more like the mild, light weight and still elegant 2005; our bottle was maybe the best one to date; it had everything from the nose through the tail; it was in perfect balance showcasing the toasty brioche notes that embellish the wondrous citrus fruit that is made up of lemon, lime and grapefruit along with accents of chalk, saline and spice; it had so much charm and finesse, yet so much body and depth and the most amazing thing was it was just as stupendous with the last taste as it was with the first and all the way through; we kept marveling how special it was and were thankful for all of the gifts this gave so generously; so appropriate on Thanksgiving eve.

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1995 WILLIAMS SELYEM HIRSCH VINEYARD SONOMA COAST PINOT NOIR- the fill was an encouraging high neck, as Burt always tended to top all bottles to the cork; so was the color which was a dark red; the unexpected aroma of wet cardboard almost brought tears to my eyes and a thought of not having a backup, but it’s been so rare to have any flawed Burt made WS wines, I’ve never done that; I’m swirling and swirling and hoping for it to blow off and it did to a decent extent, OK, this bottle was corked, but the taste profile had enough to actually allow us to move past the nose and enjoy some cinnamon and spice laced red raspberry and red cherry which actually sustained over the course of an hour; I had to change my routine of swirling, nosing, tasting and hanging out with the wine at the back of the palate for the after taste in favor of swelling, not nosing and continuing on; at the end of the evening, we had an 1/6 of the bottle remaining which might epitomize making lemonade out of cardboard.

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It was an extra special night and one we are thankful on this day, Thanksgiving.

Cheers,
Blake
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Lovely notes and a lovely photo to finish.

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Appreciate it Dan - thanks