Recent BYO Wine Dinner

I love restaurants that allow me to bring my own wine.  My opinion of anyplace that will do that is automatically elevated by several notches.  And what's better than getting together with a group of fellow wine folk ("nerds", as I often call us) and all bringing some wines that we are excited about drinking?  For me, there isn't a whole lot that is better than that.  I recently had an opportunity to do just that, and it was a great time.

We went to Stelio's Family Restaurant in Billerica, MA.  This is a fairly ordinary place with fairly ordinary food, except for the ridiculous portion they give you when you order the king cut of prime rib.  The rest of the table got that mammoth slab of beef, while I went with a much more reasonably sized piece of swordfish in an attempt to order something that would go with at least some of the red wine that people brought to go with their meat (I don't eat any meat besides seafood).  I didn't like the fish with any of the reds (I asked for it grilled and it came out baked, seemingly in butter, but it was a nice piece of fish none the less), so once I was done with the whites (all of which went marvelously with the fish in very different ways), I went about shoveling in several bites in a row before eating some bread and baked potato in an effort to cleanse my palate for the wine.

Now, if you've made it this far despite my excessive parenthetical distractions, I will recount for you the shameless hedonism that followed in the form of our enjoyment of a lineup of many impressive wines.  I do love opening a really special bottle of wine and sharing the experience with 1-3 other people, but that doesn't afford me the opportunity to taste a whole bunch of really special bottles in one night the way this type of event does.  Seven people and ten bottles of wine adds up to a lot of fun, with plenty left over for people to enjoy later.

I don't score wines numerically, but I do generally put them into categories of quality on this scale: [poor/acceptable/good/very good/outstanding/classic].  I sometimes use pluses and minuses to show when I think a wine is near the top or bottom of its category.  I have only called a wine "classic" a few times ever.  Of course, these are my opinions, but I do try to be as objective as possible when making these designations.

Whites

2008 Schloss Gobelsburg Riesling Tradition -- This is a wine that is produced in a style of generations past.  The story is that after tasting some of the estates wines from the '50s and 60s, the proprietor was inspired to try to make wines today in such a characterful style.  So, no newfangled gadgets, no temperature control, no stainless steel (only large, old oak barrels here), and no fear of some contact with lees (yeast sediment) and oxygen.  He actually makes this wine in the estate's old cellar.  I have been extremely impressed by this bottling in the past, as well as the 2006 Grüner Veltliner Tradition, which I feel is the best Grüner Veltliner I have ever had.  Well, this evening the '08 Riesling wasn't quite as good as I remember it being before.  This happens with truly great wines; they evolve, change, and don't always show at their best.
Here's my note:
This was decanted something like an hour and a half before we got into it. I got aromas lemon meringue, paked pear, steely mineral, and a bit of a medicinal, lemon balm, almost vaseline kind of thing. There were also some fresh herbs here and a leesy component on the nose. The palate had nice, zippy acid, with baked apple and pear, and even some red apple. I found it very good buy lacking the complexity that I have seen in this wine before.


2007 FX Pichler Gruner Veltliner Smaragd Durnsteiner Kellerberg -- FX Pichler is widely seen as one of the best producers in Austria.  I find the wines to be an extreme in style, as outlined here.  This was certainly quite the contrast.  I think it displayed how far from each other these two Austrian producers are in terms of style, an element that might have been even more evident had the Riesling not been the Tradition bottling. This was big, round, waxy, also a little medicinal.  I got super ripe (overripe?) apple and pear notes, with peppery spice and some cumin/allspice sort of element.  A minerality does run throughout, but it was almost swallowed by the other components at times for my taste (not that I am saying that is a positive or negative thing, and I haven't always found Pichlers to be like that, so maybe it was just me that night).  Rich and bold palate, ripe feel, full body, very viscous, baking spice and dried herbs on palate with lots of peppery spice and more stony mineral than I was smelling at times.  I think this is very good now and needs some bottle age to really strut its stuff, but it was still a great pleasure to get to have some in its current state. As Pichler has before, it really made me think.  I'm not sure I completely "get it", but I like it.  As big and ripe as it seemed, there isn't a ton of fruit, and it was great with my swordfish.

2007 Aubert Lauren Vineyard Chardonnay --  This is a wine available only through the winery's mailing list, which has a waiting list several years long.  It's a style that is not for everyone, so it's interesting to see how a group reacts to it.  My note: Luscious, creamy nose, well-integrated, flashy vanilla oak, ripe pineapple, apple, hint of passionfruit, baking spice. Exotic, ripe, big, but not quite overblown. Hazelnut and starfruit as well. Very floral palate with white and yellow flowers, plenty of tropical fruit, spice, hazelnut again. I found great balance with plenty of acid supporting the fruit. Later I got a lot more grilled pineapple and other grilled fruits out of it. I think this is outstanding, but I can see why some people don't like the style. I should have seen if they had an ice bucket, though, as it didn't help the wine to get warm while it sat on the table.

Reds

2000 Chateau Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape Rouge -- Dark, brooding earth (not super dirty, but there was a little smoke and just a hint of barnyard, little enough that I thought it added to the wine's appeal), granite, soil, chocolate cake (Mourvedre always smells like chocolate cake to me). Elegant, rustic palate with red and dark berries (raspberry, black raspberry, blueberry), savory and baking spice, granite, soil, dust, a little smoke/barnyard (again, I was glad that it was there), some dusty/mulchy element. This was really layered, complex, and complete. It definitely kept evolving as I went back to it. I think it's in a great place right now and has many years ahead of it. Outstanding+!  This was my favorite wine of the night.

2006 Plan Pegau -- Another Chateauneuf du Pape, this is the second wine of Domaine du Pegau. Super fresh, bright raspberry, strawberry, rhubarb, as well as white pepper nose. Palate of black cherry, chubarb, peppery spice. It seemed pretty primary to me at this point, but I think it will evolve and improve with a few years' bottle age. very good.

1997 Fattoria Paradiso Saxa Calida Tosso Toscano -- Great Tuscan character here. I thought there was Sangiovese in it -- shows what I know!  It's a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.  Gorgeous leather, sour cherry, cinnamon, cedar, red apple, dark berry fruit as well.  I think it's just starting to mature and is really hitting its stride.  brilliant focus.   Great integration and balance, with plenty of acidity (medium+) and light, superfine, silky tannins. I loved the fruit/spice/leather/cedar mix as nothing seemed to overpower anything else. still young, outstanding.

2001 Antinori Tignanello -- This is one of the older "super-Tuscan" wines, a blend of 80% Sangiovese, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5% Cabernet Franc.  Sour and ripe cherry and raspberry. The Saxa Calida was young, but this is a baby. Palate of black currant, red currant, cinnamon, very ripe plum. Primary at this point, but outstanding already, and I think this will improve significantly over at least the next 10-15 years.

2001 Tenuta Sette Ponti Oreno Toscana -- This is a blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot.  autumn leaves, brambly black berry, black currant, black raspberry. Palate of more tart red fruit: raspberry, sour cherry, cinnamon, red apple, fresh and vibrant. I also thought that the nose and palate were quite different from each other, but I did find a level of interest there even though I think time will be kind to this and allow things to come together. Still, I thought it was worth drinking at this stage for that level of interest. outstanding.

2003 Beaulieu Georges de Latour Cabernet Sauvignon -- I got a lot of cooked/stewed fruit out of this, though there was something fresh in there as well.. Dark fruit with cedar/vanilla oak. The fruit was very sweet on the palate, which featured similar elements to the nose. To me, good, but not very good. It was probably unfair to taste it at this point in the lineup. My note was very brief, so I probably didn't give it a fair chance. The rest of the group seemed to enjoy it more.  good.

2001 Enrico Santini Montepergoli Bolgheri Rosso -- Bolgheri is a region along the Tuscan coast where French grape varieties are grown alongside the native Sangiovese.  This wine is Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, and a little Sangiovese.  Very dark - cigar, soil, tar, brambly black currant, olive, hint of woodsmoke. Palate showed a core of ripe, sweet fruit that was prominent on the attack, then mixed with more of the nonfruit stuff in the midpalate (but still fresh, ripe fruit quite evident), leading to a finish that was very rustic. I liked this a lot. outstanding.


Now, you might think I am a little "outstanding" happy, but if you are familiar with some of these wines, you probably realize that is not the case.  When I say it I mean it, and I rarely get to drink such wines, let alone a bunch of them in one night.  Most of what I drink on a daily basis is what I consider either "good" or "very good".  So, this was a great time, and it's the kind of event that I like to attend as much as possible.  If you have some friends and/or relatives who are also into wine, I urge you to get together and each bring a bottle or two.  You can choose a theme (you might notice some themes at this event), or just bring whatever you want.   Having a meal is nice but by no means necessary.  You could even make it a little more interesting by putting the wines in numbered paper bags and not unveiling them until the end of the tasting.

I hope you've enjoyed reading.  Please leave comments if there's anything that you would like to ask or say.  I will read all of them and respond if appropriate, so check back after a few days.  Thanks.

Wine Scores (the infamous 100-point scale)

I know, this is far from an original wine blog topic.  Still, I feel the need to express my views on this interesting, often confusing or contentious issue.  I'd like to start by saying that although the tasting of wine is obviously a very subjective act, I do believe it is possible to discuss a wine's level of quality, relative to other wines.  What I am getting at here is that the subjective nature of tasting anything only goes so far.  Yes, we all taste a bit differently from each other, but the vast majority of us taste at least somewhat similarly to each other.  Preference is something else entirely, but I think if you get a group of people together and have them all taste the same thing (let's say some food for the sake of simplicity), most of them will largely agree on what that thing tastes like.  Then, of course, there will be varying degrees of how much each of them likes or dislikes that thing due to individual preferences.  With wine itself, there is a system of characteristics that we can identify and sometimes quantify (relative to other wines, not numerically) that most people who are concerned with such things can agree are markers of quality.  I'm talking about things like complexity, concentration, ripeness, length of finish, and acidity, as well as things that might be a bit more subjective or abstract, such as the balance and harmony of some of those components.  I know this gets into some tricky territory, but I will briefly say that if you get a group of experienced tasters together, they will usually be able to arrive at a consensus on a specific wine's quality in general terms based on these ideas.

If this has seemed a bit technical, there is good reason.  I am trying to lay the groundwork for the idea that wine quality can be discussed and, indeed, quantified -- to an extent.  Even in my argument for this idea, a few points that can appear (and be?) imprecise have entered into the equation.  This is why it seems a bit outlandish to me that some people would have us believe that they can absolutely discern the difference between a 90 point wine and a 91 point wine.  Such precision makes the whole thing seem very scientific and black and white.  When I look at the words Robert Parker, Jr, the inventor of the 100-point scale (and a terrific taster), uses to describe the ranges of scores, those terms make a lot of sense to me.  He uses terms such as "above average to very good" and "outstanding".  I think these are general terms that can be agreed upon by a majority of experienced tasters as mentioned above (is this a very good wine or an outstanding wine?).  I don't think a group of the best, most experienced tasters would agree on a specific score, or that a great portion of that group would agree upon the same numerical score.  There is plenty of evidence that this is true, from panel tastings and huge disparities between scores of individual critics for the same wines.

It would be easy to stop here and to simply say I am in favor of using scores as rough guidelines rather than specific indicators of quality.  If I did that, I would be failing to take into account personal preference and genetic difference.  For one thing, in groups of tasters such as those mentioned above, there will inevitably be wildly outlying qualitative judgments.  There might be a number of causes, but those are not as important as pointing out that we have no way of knowing if a single critic might be someone with such an opinion on a specific wine.  1995 Chateau Musar Rouge is a wine cherished by many collectors, experienced and apt tasters (myself included, at least with the experienced part) who think of the wine as easily into an outstanding (90+ points) quality range, perhaps even classic (95+ points), yet a critic working for Wine Spectator scored the wine a lowly 82 points!  Demand has driven the price of this wine to well over $100/bottle in most areas, and I am very glad that I have had the wine on more than one occasion when the price was lower.  Also, quality aside, what you like might be very different from what they like.  As much as we try to train ourselves to taste objectively, I think there will always be just a touch of preference involved in evaluation.  For those who are not trying to train themselves to taste objectively (most wine drinkers), personal preference is the biggest factor in whether or not you like a wine!  If you hate bleu cheese, you are not going to like even the best bleu cheeses out there.  If you really love pizza, you might be able to enjoy even mediocre or subpar examples.  Someone may love or hate characteristics in certain wines that affect their enjoyment far more than the overall quality of those wines does.

You might call me a hypocrite now and say that I have used point scores in emails and elsewhere when trying to sell wine.  It is true that some consumers don't like to buy anything without seeing such a score attached to it, and that I will occasionally humor and honor that demand.  Anyone who has ever talked to me in person about the topic has probably heard some part of what I have written here.

What it comes down to for me is that people need to trust their own palates.  I know that people like to have some direction, and that such advice doesn't always get you far.  That's why it is nice to interact directly with people who sell wine and can learn your preferences, allowing them to suggest wines that they (we) think you will like.  At least with that method there is a much greater chance that you will enjoy what you take home.  There are plenty of us out there who would love to show you that unheralded wine without an impressive score that you might just love.

If you're still reading this, I am very happy that you've made it to the end of my first post here.  thanks.  Please leave comments if you have anything to say about what I have written.  I will read those comments and respond if appropriate.  It could be a great way to enter into a friendly debate, ask me any questions you might have, or simply have your say in the matter.