Wine Notes: August 7, 2005

These really should have been posted along side the notes for the first Dinner in August, but pictures were a long time making it from camera to hard drive. As some of the bottles were older, my links for them are to notes on the varietal or region. The Kermit Lynch website doesn't do the eCommerce thing yet, so links for those wines point to their site where you can snag PDF versions of their newsletters.

Bottle 00: as we got started most people seemed to be drinking the Mas Champart Rosé from the St. Chinian region in France, which you can pick up at Kermit Lynch for 16.00 per bottle. I had frozen this one to the point of cork-seep a few days before, but folks didn't seem to mind at all.

Bottle 01: for the first course we went with a Corsican white — 2004 Domaine Leccia Patrimonia. Bright and dry enough for me, if more pricey than I like my white wine to be. 21.00 also from Kermit Lynch.

Bottle 02: Friends had brought a bottle of something called "trinch!", a 2003 Bourgueil. Very low in alcohol (11.5%) and lots of fruit. This was the last of the Kermit wines for the evening, not sure if it is still available.

Bottle 03: Everyone still seemed to have something in their glass as we worked our way through the tonnato. We eventually got to a 1978 Chateau la Lagune. which was still packing a lot of nose and some unexpected depth. A cork incident prompted decanting, which didn't seem to phase the wine at all. They have several older vintages from this producer available at K&L. I had a bottle of the 1997 two nights ago. Felt like a steal at 21.00.

Bottle 04-06: At this point the wine drinking gloves really came off. We had in rapid succession a 1999 "La Mannela" Brunello di Montalcino (earthy and layered plum flavor, a little cranky, i'd bought the last 9 bottles of this that K&L had earlier in the day), a 2002 Rafanelli Cabernet (only available at the winery or in some local restaurants - Chez Panisse comes to mind), and a 2000 Ridge York Creek Late Picked ZInfandel (the 2001 is available through the Ridge website).

Bottle 07: A friend brought a 1998 Moscato di Pantelleria to finish both us and the meal off. I don't remember much beyond liking it, and hauling out several bottles of whiskey when it was gone.