When did St.Veran start coming from the Beaujolais region?
"Mark Lipton" > wrote in message
...
> For her birthday, Jean wanted to take a week's vacation in a rented
> house on the Eastern Shore of Lake Michigan, a three hour trip from our
> house. Since we cooked all but one night, we took along a few wines
> from home. What follows is a compendium of notes on those wines:
>
> 1997 Storybook Mountain "Eastern Exposures" Zinfandel (14.3% ABV)
> nose: pencil lead, raspberry
> palate: restrained, structured, deep raspberry fruit, clean finish
>
> What a refreshing Zin! This wine had no shortage of fruit, yet was never
> heavy or over the top. The alcohol level also reflects that restraint.
> The 5-10% Viognier isn't at all apparent, but might add something to
> the nose. Storybook Mtn is one of the 3-4 producers of Zin I think most
> highly of. It was a great choice to accompany a hastily broiled rack of
> lamb for our first dinner.
>
> 1999 Saintsbury Reserve Pinot Noir (Carneros)
> nose: pure, red fruit, smoke, minerals
> palate: velvety smooth, plush, solidly fruity, medium body, good acidity
>
> Again, a solid winner from a favorite producer. This was classic Pinot
> Noir in every respect. It had plenty of depth without any danger of
> being overextracted. I didn't get the alcohol level, but I'd guess that
> it was 13-14%. Just lovely, and a great match with the mesquite-smoked
> chicken made on their gas grill.
>
> 1999 Ravenswood Barricia Zinfandel
> nose: tart berry fruit, briery, pepper
> palate: jammy berry fruit, a bit soft, pepper and tar
>
> Although this was classic Zin in its flavors, it was just outclassed by
> the Storybook Mtn. Still, it was a great paean to the Ravenwood Zins of
> old, and a decent accompaniment to the hickory-smoked, spice rubbed
> "Western" ribs, again made experimentally on their gas grill
> (digression: we have a smoker at home that uses charcoal or wood, so
> adjusting to a high tech gas grill took some doing -- could I get
> indirect heat by not igniting the back burner? What temperature setting
> corresponds to slow smoking? Amazingly, what I did worked fairly well)
>
> 2003 "The Crossings" Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough
> nose: initally, a bit of iodine/seaweed, followed by tropical fruit and
> gooseberry
> palate: good acidity, citrus fruit, a hint of oxidation, tropical fruit
>
> This wine was from a screwcapped bottle, and purchased recently at our
> local fine wine exporium as I was curious about its aging, and I
> recalled Dale's positive reviews on it. As a an experiment, I wanted to
> see how well it had aged under screwcap, and the answer was "pretty damn
> well." Even Jean, who really hates oxidative notes in white wine, liked
> this one and it went very well with the pan-fried walleye (pike perch
> IIRC for the Euro crowd) we had for dinner.
>
> 2006 Babich Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc
> nose: floral, tropical fruit, minerals, grapefruit
> palate: pretty close to the nose, more emphasis on the grapefruit
>
> Yes, I've written about this before. It's still yummy. It's just got
> more going on in the nose than 90% of the Marlborough SBs that I taste.
> Really nice and very good QPR at $12-13.
>
> 2006 Drylands Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc
> nose: grapefruit and minerals
> palate: simple, grapefruit, good acidity
>
> After the Babich, this was a bit of a letdown. Perfectly adequate, but
> unexeciting. It went well enough with the shrimp cocktail that began
> Jean's birthday dinner. (Second digression: you'd think that since we
> were staying on the shore of one of the Great Lakes that there'd be a
> fair supply of fish in the local stores -- wrongo! In an otherwise
> decent supermarket, all the fish was frozen seafood, most of it breaded
> and fried. We had to drive 20 miles to get the walleye and the shrimp,
> purchased locally, were frozen pre-cooked shrimp from Thailand)
>
> 1989 Ch. Montrose St. Estephe
> nose: dark plummy fruit, pencil lead, slightly herbal
> palate: medium-full body, modest acidity, quite primary, dark fruit,
> fine grained tannins
>
> Jean served this wine blind to me and I was asked to guess year, grape,
> region. My guess was a California Cabernet from '94-'95. Not too
> close, but in retrospect not a bad characterization of this wine. It
> didn't show much that really screamed "Bordeaux" and even after several
> hours open it was still mostly about fruit with little secondary
> development. Quite nice, but not what I look for in Bordeaux as a rule.
>
> 2005 Joseph Drouhin St. Veran
> nose: minerals, pineapple, a hint of oak
> palate: medium body, crisp, pineapple, good acidity
>
> I bought this to see what a good producer like Drouhin could do in a
> good year like '05 in a region like St. Veran. This is Chardonnay from
> the Beaujolais region, and as such is a cheap and potentially good white
> Burgundy. In this case, I was quite pleased. It had some of the
> character I look for in Chablis, without the lemony fruit that I usually
> find there. It was a bit rounder than Chablis but that might reflect
> year as much as region. Very nice for $13 and a decent match to my
> thrown-together linguine with white clam sauce for our final dinner.
>
> All in all, a good bunch of wines (4 red, 4 white, 4 from the cellar, 4
> from the store) and a fun week. Of the lot, my two favorites were
> probably the Storybook Mountain Zin and the Drouhin St. Veran, but all
> the wines were a pleasure to drink.
>
> Mark Lipton
>
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