A small jeebus - Lee and Melissa Short, VLM, MarcD, and Les and I, had a rockin' good time at Le Pichet last night. The hanger steak was as good as ever.
MarcD brought along a couple of Jura wines from his recent France visit, and I can't for the life of me remember who they were from. The red was an 04 Trousseau, and was great with the variety meats. The white was very old school/oxidized, the most so I've experienced from the Jura. It actually worked great with the meats and even the nuts in the salad.
The other wines: a 96 Foreau sec, an 00 Rougeard base, and a 95 Rougeard Poyeaux. The Foreau was fantastic, and a little different than the one I posted on a month or two back. This one seemed slightly more advanced and honeyed, and as good as this one was I actually slightly preferred the last. But this was really top flight and seemed to be quite to everyone's liking. The 00 Rougeard was also different than the last I had, this one not quite on par with the last, or at least just different. It had a dill nose and autumnal shades. Marc I seem to recall found it dusty. I did like it though, quite a bit - sort of a Loire comfort wine. The 95 was great, open, and any oak had integrated. It had a structural back side that was more put together than the 00 - indeed it seemed like a younger wine than the 00.
All the wines were great.
It was a fun time - not only in terms of wine geekdom, but also Franco geekdom. We all got to live vicariously through each others' travels and plans, whether it was VLM dreaming of setting up a metayage type sharecropping deal with his favorite Loire producers, Lee and Melissa being early adopter attendees of the Ampuis wine fair, Marc marvelling at the mysteries of dark sauced coq au vin in Fleurie, or me walking the GR from Chinon to Saumur. Where else but here can we find our people?
MarcD brought along a couple of Jura wines from his recent France visit, and I can't for the life of me remember who they were from. The red was an 04 Trousseau, and was great with the variety meats. The white was very old school/oxidized, the most so I've experienced from the Jura. It actually worked great with the meats and even the nuts in the salad.
The other wines: a 96 Foreau sec, an 00 Rougeard base, and a 95 Rougeard Poyeaux. The Foreau was fantastic, and a little different than the one I posted on a month or two back. This one seemed slightly more advanced and honeyed, and as good as this one was I actually slightly preferred the last. But this was really top flight and seemed to be quite to everyone's liking. The 00 Rougeard was also different than the last I had, this one not quite on par with the last, or at least just different. It had a dill nose and autumnal shades. Marc I seem to recall found it dusty. I did like it though, quite a bit - sort of a Loire comfort wine. The 95 was great, open, and any oak had integrated. It had a structural back side that was more put together than the 00 - indeed it seemed like a younger wine than the 00.
All the wines were great.
It was a fun time - not only in terms of wine geekdom, but also Franco geekdom. We all got to live vicariously through each others' travels and plans, whether it was VLM dreaming of setting up a metayage type sharecropping deal with his favorite Loire producers, Lee and Melissa being early adopter attendees of the Ampuis wine fair, Marc marvelling at the mysteries of dark sauced coq au vin in Fleurie, or me walking the GR from Chinon to Saumur. Where else but here can we find our people?