TN: Bye to Bill

J

Jeff Grossman

Jeff Grossman
attendees: Bill, Jay, Jeff, Cindy, Mary, Ben

Let's see, there was Pierre Peters NV Champagne Rose (first US release) which was fresh and vivid and vigorously fizzy. I caught Jay more than once not with a straw in his glass, not blowing bubbles in it. That was preceded by a sweet Willi Schaefer 2011 Graacher Himmelreich Spatlese. It was not hard to tell because Jay had not filled the room humidifiers with a kabinett and there's only a little ambient difference.

Now here's the good part: There were two reds on offer with the lovely sous-vide chicken and fried rice. One was M. Gaunoux 1998 Pommard "Les Arvelets" and the other Ferrando 2004 Carema (Etichetta Bianca). If you did not concentrate, they tasted the same! Both are a bit floral, a bit rough, silky textured....

Jay refilled the riesling dispenser with Maximin Grunhauser 1998 Abstberg Riesling Auslese for the cheeses and dessert. It was not another Willi Schaefer wine. No. Not at all.

No armagnac was served so maybe the whole thing was some kind of dream. Or nightmare. I would have sworn that even the water tasted a little like strawberries. (Ooh, yes, we made a termometro lento using different size fruit bits and then speculating which way they'd go.)

Bye, Bill!
 
a few updates and corrections:

the Pommard was M. Gaunoux

the Graacher Himmelreich was a 2011

the Pierre Peters Rose was from the first US release, not the disappointing second. And it did not disappoint.

the final riesling was the 1998 Maximin Grunhauser Abstberg Auslese

there were no straws

why didn't anyone remind me to bring out Armagnac?
 
originally posted by .sasha:
how's SO2 in the abtsberg these days? TIA
Click to expand...

Fine, though this particular bottle seemed a bit older than 1998 IMO. I had the same wine from half a few months ago and it was much younger.
 
There are at least three Gaunouxs: Michel, François, and Jean-Michel. Michel is supposedly the best. Or so they say. Oak, black plum and spices. Scant pinosity. The troika of pronounced acidity, active tannins, closing bitterness was like the IMF, EC, and ECB ganging up on Greece, the willowy, wispy, wan fruit, already semi-retired on the laurels of its glorious past. At this point I engaged in a monologue with the inner self: "ahoy, matey, this is not that I seek in a Burg!" But, as so often in days of eeyore, the food (a pie made from a politically correct version of hearts of palm) saved the night like a swoop of blue shirts in a cowboy film, restoring dignity to the fruit and peace on earth to men and women of good will.
 
patients. take teh time. a 76 pommard grands epenots from gaunoux was in a very nice space last week. and yeah, 76 and 98 are miles apart, but they does has tannins; and notwithstanding the irrelevance of vintage comps, i suspect that far too few 98s will ever see their prime in the same way few 76s have.

thinking now about teh bottle of 76 puts me in mind of teh emerson quartet recording of the art of fugue: lovely, moved others i respect, and yet did not quite steal my chubby soul. but it is not something whose value i'd query.

fwiw.

fb.
 
The fruit didn't seem quite up to the task of handling the mighty structure, itself perfectly capable of lasting the extra 22 years. For the tango to invert, the fruit would have to make a hell of a comeback, as perhaps it did with the 76. Or the structure would soften to a point of greater balance.
 
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