Sad, Busy Week.... lots of news and wine...

I'll always admire your courage, your will, your fight. You're amazing and I'm better for having known you. I'll always remember the bottles we shared, my first day, the beach, the fun. Thank you...

So, there were 9 new Master Sommeliers!!! Congratulations to all!!! Enjoy...

This week was busy.... the busiest of the year... I'll do them somewhat in order. The 1990 Louis Latour Corton-Charlemagne was an unbelievable bottle. Certainly the best I've had since the first one several years ago. Pure honeysuckle, caramel, wet stones... an amazing and powerful wine with an exceptionally long finish. The 1989 Remoissenet Gevry-Chambertin 1er Cru "Les Cazetiers" is still one of my absolute favorite wines to drink right now. It's full of earth, nicely mature (but not overly mature). Still needs 1/2 hour to open up and show its beautiful underbrush, dried wild strawberries, black plum and spice box. Very long... The 2000 Guigal Cote-Rotie "La Mouline" is as it was a few weeks ago, but maybe this bottle was a bit more open? Lovely black olive, cold meat (had a steak last night that was the exact note in this wine), black pepper, cilantro (?!) and lots of black cherry, black plum, raspberry... like eating smoked rocks... Awesome finish. Needs time, though. The 1937 Quinta do Noval Colheita continues to be one of the great ports I've ever tried... I try this all the time and often overlook it... but it's incredible!!!! The caramel popcorn, butterscotch finish starts out nicely, with the alcohol taking over to start, then fades, then POW! all of the flavor comes back in wave after wave to an incredible finish. The 1995 Gaja Sori San Lorenzo (Barbaresco) was fabulous... so much tannin, though... lots of sotto bosco, black cherries, etc, but I wonder if it will be overwhelmed by the tannin in the years to come. The Krug Grand Cuvee is, well, Krug. Better than the Piper Heidsieck Cuvee Rare, though completely different animals... as we say, the Krug is great and the the Rare, well, it doesn't suck. Two bottles of 1988 Chateau Haut Brion were completely different. One, a bit tired, the other just coming into adulthood. The tired one was smokey earth with cedar and tobacco leaves... little fruit. The other was packed with black plums and exotic spices and full of the beautiful smokey-bacon fat covered gravel that is without question Haut Brion. The 1990 Chateau Prieure-Lichine (one corked, the other in good condition) is really beautiful and shows just how underrated this 4th Growth Margaux can be... Wonderful violet and silky plum nose with lots of cedar and cigar box. Mature, but will hold on for a long time. The 1990 Chateau Pavie-Decesse, a wine I've always been completely underwhelmed by, was a bit better than the other bottles I've had. Very stony and spicy with some black fruit and cedar notes. Ok... Next were two bottles of the ultimate garagiste wine, and a wine I've never been impressed with, the 1988 Chateau Le Pin. These two bottles were much better than I'd had before (and both showing nearly identical), but still underwhelming. Yes, the vintage was light, but these wine still showed beautiful typicity. Some anise gave way to a very exotic smoke on the palate and nose after about 30 minutes. The wine tried to mount an attack on the palate, but started dying off before it could gain any momentum... A long, silky finish though to a very rustic wine. The 2005 DuMOL Gary's Pinot Noir, Green Valley, RRV was awesome... made in a Kosta-Browne style, but not to that extreme, the wine is perfectly balanced with wild strawberry, ripe cherry and raspberry. Some Jolly-Rancher type fruit in here as well making it easy to drink now, but with sufficient acidity to lay down for a few years and develop some more nuances. The 2004 Vieux Telegraphe "La Crau" Chateauneuf-du-Pape rocks... spicy, raw, angular and powerful, this wine will (eventually) settle down... watch out! The 1982 Monsanto Chianti Classico Riserva was all underbrush, balsam wood, dried cherry and dried leaves. A nice, medium-length finish from the awesome vintage and one of the longest lived Chiantis around... The wine of the week though, and the best bottle of this I've ever had, was the 1990 Chateau Lafite Rothschild. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Lafite, but maybe not as much as Haut Brion or Latour. Except in this case. Rivaling the Chateau Margaux as the best 1990 on the block, this wine was pure Lafite - tons of cedary dried tobacco leaves in a Cigar Box... Chinese spices out the wazoo... a finish that goes on forever (I could literally still taste the cedar and tobacco 30 minutes after I tasted the wine). So elegant - all that is Lafite.