The return of the Lebanese red
Feb. 25th, 2007 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustYesterday was J & A's retaliation for the wine tasting lunch we organised a year and a half ago: long-promised, and worth the wait. A splendid day of good food, good drink, great company and a beautiful setting - two tables put together down the length of the seventeenth century dining room, with the huge open fireplace at one end and a view through the windows across the garden to the fields beyond.
As before, each person brought a bottle wrapped to conceal its identity, and a suggestion about where it would fit in the sequence of wines; and as before, there wasn't a single wine I didn't enjoy, from the champagne with which we launched the party to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
synedrian's Tokay at the end, with desperance's Barolo somewhere in between. I can't reconstruct the full list this time, but three bottles stood out for me:
I've drunk a number of impressive clarets in that house, but was still impressed to be served Château Mouton Rothschild 2003 (with the 150th birthday label) - a gift from a generous admirer, whose health we drank with gratitude. It was a bigger wine than I would have expected, its firm structure balanced by plenty of fruit, and despite its comparative youth not overwhelmingly tannic. I'm not a claret enthusiast, but if I drank clarets of this quality more often, I could become one.
We used to drink - no, I was going to say that we used to drink a lot of Château Musar, but we never drank as much of it as we would have liked. It used, however, to be our celebration wine of choice. Then something went wrong: we had a bottle that didn't taste right, all boiled fruit and a hint of vinegar. A bad bottle can happen to anyone, but the next time it was the same. We went to a wine tasting (admittedly, one where the organisers didn't seem too sure what they were doing) and were served the same thing. So I didn't recognise this glass of smooth red, rich without being brashly fruity: might it be a well aged Burgundy? The wrapping was removed with a flourish of triumph: it was Château Musar 1999! Welcome back, old friend.
I took a bottle of dessert wine we'd picked up at the Wine Society before Christmas: Espelt Garnatxa Jove, from the Spanish (or possibly Catalan: the text on the back label had a high proprtion of Xs, as in that spelling of "garnacha") region of Emporda. The Wine Society's list (previous list, alas - it seems not to be on the current one) says "Tawny colour, appetising nose of candied orange peel, demerara sugar and mocha, rich but fresh palate. Ideal with trifle." I thought it was pretty well ideal without the triftle, too...
Eventually, our taxi arrived and we had to tear ourselves away: but when we got home, David was waiting for us at the kitchen table, struggling with the day's sudoku, and waiting for us to arrive and open the bottle of Château Musar he had brought us.
As before, each person brought a bottle wrapped to conceal its identity, and a suggestion about where it would fit in the sequence of wines; and as before, there wasn't a single wine I didn't enjoy, from the champagne with which we launched the party to
synedrian's Tokay at the end, with desperance's Barolo somewhere in between. I can't reconstruct the full list this time, but three bottles stood out for me:I've drunk a number of impressive clarets in that house, but was still impressed to be served Château Mouton Rothschild 2003 (with the 150th birthday label) - a gift from a generous admirer, whose health we drank with gratitude. It was a bigger wine than I would have expected, its firm structure balanced by plenty of fruit, and despite its comparative youth not overwhelmingly tannic. I'm not a claret enthusiast, but if I drank clarets of this quality more often, I could become one.
We used to drink - no, I was going to say that we used to drink a lot of Château Musar, but we never drank as much of it as we would have liked. It used, however, to be our celebration wine of choice. Then something went wrong: we had a bottle that didn't taste right, all boiled fruit and a hint of vinegar. A bad bottle can happen to anyone, but the next time it was the same. We went to a wine tasting (admittedly, one where the organisers didn't seem too sure what they were doing) and were served the same thing. So I didn't recognise this glass of smooth red, rich without being brashly fruity: might it be a well aged Burgundy? The wrapping was removed with a flourish of triumph: it was Château Musar 1999! Welcome back, old friend.
I took a bottle of dessert wine we'd picked up at the Wine Society before Christmas: Espelt Garnatxa Jove, from the Spanish (or possibly Catalan: the text on the back label had a high proprtion of Xs, as in that spelling of "garnacha") region of Emporda. The Wine Society's list (previous list, alas - it seems not to be on the current one) says "Tawny colour, appetising nose of candied orange peel, demerara sugar and mocha, rich but fresh palate. Ideal with trifle." I thought it was pretty well ideal without the triftle, too...
Eventually, our taxi arrived and we had to tear ourselves away: but when we got home, David was waiting for us at the kitchen table, struggling with the day's sudoku, and waiting for us to arrive and open the bottle of Château Musar he had brought us.
