43rd Annual Louis/Dressner Tasting and Benefit for Partners-in-Health

Remy Branger, Joseph Mosse? The facial hair quotient of this event is taking major hit this year. Great lineup, as usual. Wish I could make it.

Mark Lipton
 
Ah yes, with the start of Indian Wells I was just thinking that this tasting must be coming up.

The two events have been linked in my mind since 2011, the one and only time I was able to attend the event, when my friend and I were kicked out by Dressner for having the nerve to attempt to end a conversation before Dressner was ready.

My friend and I left and nursed our wounds over Mugnier Marechale while watching an even more upsetting event in the Indian Wells semifinals as Djokovic beat Federer in three sets.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Speaking of hyperbole...43rd Annual?

It's a CSW joke, though I can't recall the details of its genesis in the response I got when I asked them about it a few years ago.
 
It's a joke in the greatest of Dressnerian tradition. Let's not forget Joe frequently exaggerated annual events, such as his 50th birthday, where he covered up the vintages on the bottles and made them 1941. He did also dye his hair gray after his quadruple bypass so that folks would say, "Have you seen Dressner? He looks terrible!"
 
And prior to his health issues he would always tell people he was ten years older than his actual age so they would say "Wow, he looks so young!"

It was really funny, but also kind of nuts.
 
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
And prior to his health issues he would always tell people he was ten years older than his actual age so they would say "Wow, he looks so young!"

It was really funny, but also kind of nuts.

Hence the 1941 dates on the bottles at his 50th birthday in 2001!
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Yes. Fantastic! Writeup in the AM.

Did you get a chance to try the Montesecondo that is done in amphora? Called Tin or something like that I think. I had a glass recently at VIF and it was a really good wine.

Looking forward to your write up.
 
I've tasted it before—first time he showed it was in 2013, IIRC. For his lineup, I've always liked the simplest one best. But I didn't get to try any on Monday.

It was well-managed in that (as noted) it had been scheduled on a cold, rainy Monday afternoon. All right, the cold and rain were additional, unplanned atmospherics, but they helped. And David Lillie had kept the numbers down to good effect.

Down side was that several vignerons were en route and not there pouring. So we had a Josefa Concannon version of Evelyne de Jessey, an invisible Eric Texier, and the hacker collective Anonymous pouring for Silvio Messana and Elisabetta Foradori.

All others were present, though, so it was also a right good time. Francesca Padovani and her wines shone. Those are so good, so discreetly good.

François Pinon and I talked Vouvray and psychoanalysis (his wines: emphatic yes). Jean-Paul Brun's Côte de Brouilly was suave and perfect. Thierry Puzelat's were a bit shrill, esp. the cat-got-in-and-peed-here P'tit Blanc. (Though on a peeing note, I was able to tell Thierry that NYC has just decriminalized pissing in the street, to which he was indignant, having been arrested for same a couple of years ago, leaving Ten Bells at something like sunrise.)

Joseph Mosse was unbearded. They'd sequestered all the Italians in the back. What else did I note?

Oh, I had never had the wines of Cascina degli Ulivi before, and I found them (tasted two Gavi) bacterial.
 
I agree with Sharon, the tasting had a good number of people attending, not too busy.

François Pinon was very positive about 2015. He said his grapes had excellent acidity so that, despite the heat, sugar levels could be kept high enough for the wines not to taste hot, balanced by their acidity. I asked him what he liked to eat with his older sweet wines and he recommended blue cow's cheese (but not blue sheep's cheese). He generally likes to eat white meats with Les Trois Argiles and fish with the Silex Noir.

I asked the Beaujolais producers about recent vintages. All of them liked 2014. Louis-Benoît Desvignes thought 2015 was a great vintage for them; Jean-Paul Brun felt it was too hot; Georges Descombes was mixed. (His 2012 Brouilly VV was my favorite Beaujolais at the tasting. He told me to drink his Vieilles Vignes bottlings 5-7 years after the vintage.) Desvignes was positive about his 2013s - a vintage he thought was underrated - but said they needed time. He had recently drunk a 2011 Javernières and thought it was showing well.

Sasa Radikon said his Ribolla Gialla always takes longer to come round than his other wines. He thought the 2007 Ribolla Gialla was starting to drink well now. He doesn't like to decant his orange wines. Somehow I missed Fonterenza. I very much liked the 2013 Montesecondo Chianti Classico. A new Trebbiano from Montesecondo was also being poured.
 
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