Salil in Cambridge

R

Rahsaan

Rahsaan
Salil was in the Boston area so that meant we found ourselves having dinner at my place. He was happy and ready to open the 2007 AJ Adam Dhron Hofberg Riesling that he had been praising and it showed very well. It started out as quite the curious beast that was juicy and succulent but also restrained, sort of in-between the drier and off-dry riesling styles that are more common. With air it firmed up nicely showing a very confident and almost stern profile but with the florals and flavors that reminded me of ripe fun Mosel. Interesting and tasty.

The 2002 Alzinger Steinertal Grner Veltliner Smaragd did not hold the same interest as it started out with the waxy and golden notes I remembered from a previous bottle but then the finish started tasting oxidized and slightly damaged. What a shame. The previous bottle was fun fun fun.

But we were not lacking wine and with the main course mushroom pizza we moved to the 1995 Bernard Baudry Chinon Cuve Signature which was my last bottle and remained true to what I have expected over the years from the wine. Dark fruit, crisp cool vegetal edges, and still a good amount of structure. This seemed to be perfect drinking for me and I have no idea where it is going from here but I will need someone elses bottles to find out.

Salil was eager for more riesling so we opened a bottle of his haul-of-the-day which was the 2004 Diel Dorsheimer Burgberg Riesling Sptlese. It started off (plenty) sweet and slightly simple but with air it firmed up and was a very pleasant and easy-drinking wine. Apparently Salil purchased it on sale, marked down from $40 to $20. I think we both agreed that at $40 it would be bad value but for $20 it was fun to open and enjoy. And that we did.
 
Rahsaan,
Thanks for having me over for dinner. Was a pleasure catching up again and the food was excellent (particularly enjoyed the mushroom pizza; I need to find some of those mushrooms myself - had a really different texture/taste to any other mushroom I've encountered).

On the wines - I loved the Adam, certainly a very different style of Riesling than the more standard sweet wines from the Mosel but really well balanced, complex and interesting to follow over a couple of hours. I'm looking forward to trying his 08s once they arrive. :D
The Baudry was lovely (wasn't that a 95 though?) - the last time I'd had that wine was when I was distracted by that Jadot Amoureuses and the FX Kellerbergs, so it was great to revisit it and give it some more attention. Really refreshing and tasty, and I need to start exploring Chinon a bit more for more wines like that.
Shame about the Alzinger which had some nice fruit and spice suggesting a pristine bottle would be lovely, but the oxidation eventually overshadowed the more pleasurable elements. And the 98 Gouges - ouch!

I enjoyed the Diel although found it much closer to a big Auslese than Sptlese in its fruit profile - very ripe, sweet and tasty with some nice minerally elements emerging later. Certainly very happy with that buy (as I enjoy Diel's wines, but generally can't bring myself to buy them at their usual sticker prices).
 
I found that Adam at a whole foods in birmingham earlier this month when my cousins and I made a wine run in the middle of saturday afternoon (a bat mitzvah weekend) and we drank it while watching "the hangover" on pay per view. I wasn't wild about it, I admit - almost bitter to me. I appreciate it wasn't an optimal wine appreciation situation but with so much riesling out there, it didn't make me want to put any effort into trying it again.
 
Maureen - certainly sounds quite different from my experience with it - opened another bottle of this a couple of weeks ago at a dinner with a Keller von der Fels and that 98 Donnhoff Hermannshohle I got from you (which was amazing!), and I really enjoyed it - not bitter at all, and very much along the lines of the one I opened with Rahsaan. Although out of curiosity, have you tried any of his sweeter wines?

Arjun - 12 g/l RS, although it feels/tastes a lot sweeter than most wines in that rs range I've had. The style's closer to a Grosses Gewachs (unfortunately the bottle's also an oversized pain to fit in a rack or styro shipper), and this particular bottling doesn't have any pradikat (much like some of the Van Volxems).
 
originally posted by maureen: I wasn't wild about it, I admit - almost bitter to me. I appreciate it wasn't an optimal wine appreciation situation but with so much riesling out there, it didn't make me want to put any effort into trying it again.
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This bottle showed a lot of sides but bitter was not one of them. I think you would have liked our bottle. That said, there is a lot of riesling out there so we are really spoiled for choice/personal preferences.
 
I'm pretty sure I had the kabinett - pretty simple label, you've got to hunt to find out exactly where it's from???

maybe it just doesn't show well in alabama.

on the bright side, it means I'm not hunting it down to buy (on the down side, I've already bought some of the '08).
 
originally posted by maureen:
I'm pretty sure I had the kabinett - pretty simple label, you've got to hunt to find out exactly where it's from???
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The wine we had was not kabinett. It was just riesling.
 
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