I took my wife out for dinner a little while back for a celebration, and we opened a few very nice bottles to enjoy with the tremendous meal that was prepared for us.
1996 Pol Roger Champagne Brut Vintage. There’s a little bit of bronzing to the color here, and a fine but faint bead. It offers up a classy bouquet of dark-toasted bread, apple peel, chopped nut, pear flesh and flinty smoke. It’s showing a bit more age than the last time I tried a bottle, but it’s beautifully contemplative, layered and complex. In the mouth, it delivers powerful but refined flavors of nut, caramel, browned apple, mineral, pear and toasted bread that have excellent push and acidic brightness to go along with solid density and airy top-notes. It feels focused, vibrant and serious, yet welcoming and full—a very fine combination.
2007 Peter Michael Chardonnay La Carrière Knights Valley. This is a rather exotically-styled Peter Michael Chardonnay on the nose, showing off lovely and outgoing aromas of soft oak, vanilla, crushed gravel stones, cantaloupe, butterscotch, lemon oil and mace spice notes. Although the nose is wide-open, the wine on the palate is more tensile, coiled and loaded with crystalline mineral accents all the way through. It feels fresh, lifted and lively, with great drive, a solid spine and a clean mineral-laden finish. As it takes on air throughout the evening, the pear, butterscotch and oak-tinged flavors come forward a bit more, just adding to the overall profile. It’s a real crowd-pleaser and should deliver for a number of years yet to come.
1988 Château Beychevelle St. Julien. There’s tremendous layering and old-world complexity to be found on the nose of this lovely wine, which is gloriously old-fashioned and savory-smelling just now—with fine scents of tomato vine, green pepper, caked dirt, tobacco, iron ore and pen ink combining perfectly with warmer aromas of cedar, mulling spices, persimmon fruit, dark cherries and dried cranberries that seem quintessentially aged claret in tone to me. In the mouth, it’s medium-weighted, tangy and dry, with fine bursts of red currant, cranberry and raspberry fruit flavors accented by notes of leather, tobacco and menthol. The fruit is still quite healthy, the acidity perfectly supportive, and the tannins fairly well-tamed throughout. It’s delivering quite well just now, and there was not one bit of drop-off over the 4 hours it was open. I think it’s a good time to be opening this.
-Michael