On Jan 12, 12:38�am, Mark Lipton > wrote:
> The California leg of the trip began with a dinner celebrating my
> mother's 80th birthday (because of logistics, we celebrated a day early
> and then left Andrew with her on the B-day proper -- thanks, Mom!) at La
> Folie in SF. My mother had eaten there 20 years earlier when they were
> introducing architectural food presentations to SF (according to her).
> On this night, the chef was featuring black truffle on the menu and our
> waiter dutifully passed around a sample Tuber (probably 50 g) to entice
> us. It worked.
>
> As an aperitif, we had glasses of the 2004 Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc as
> the bottles of Champagne on the wine list were outrageously overpriced
> mediocrity. This bubbly was OK, if a bit simple in the apple/toast vein.
>
> With this wine, we consumed our two amuse bouches, the second of which
> was a softboiled egg with shaved truffle, a truly sublime experience
> whose taste lingered on my palate for 15 min or so.
>
> Moving on to the first courses, we ordered a half bottle of the 2005 V.
> Girardin Rully blanc Vieilles Vignes, which initially showed a lot of
> sulfur on the nose. The sommelier agreed to decant it, and 20 minutes
> later it was ready for prime time, with a strong mineral streak, lemons
> and no signs of new oak. Everyone at the table loved it, and it went
> very well with my goat cheese terrine on salad greens as well as Jean's
> trio of fish egg dishes that she proclaimed superb.
>
> We lingered over the Rully as our second courses arrived, in my case a
> Dungeness crab "napoleon" on slivers of baked pineapple (great dish) and
> in Jean's case an outstanding smoked duck consomm� with foie gras ravioli.
>
> With our main courses, almost all of which consisted of a quail and
> squab rot� with various savory additives in a truffle sauce (with shaved
> truffle on top), we got a bottle of the 2005 Cristom 'Mt. Jefferson
> Cuv�e' Pinot Noir, which had plenty of acidity, rounded red cherry fruit
> and smoke in a very balanced package. It went fabulously with our dishes
> and with my mother's venison. I don't expect that this wine will age
> much beyond 5 years, but it's very appealing now with a 30 minute
> decant. My goal in ordering the wines was to come as close as I could to
> $150, which is what my mother had proposed to spend on the wine (the
> only way we could get her assent to allowing us to buy her dinner), and
> we ended up spending $163 ($16/glass for the Schramsberg; $42 for the
> Rully and $57 for the Cristom). The wine list was only so interesting
> and quite highly priced, with the Cristom being one of the few decently
> priced choices I had. The cooking, on the other hand, was memorable.
>
> The next day we set out for 24 hours in Napa. Our first stop was on Mt.
> Veeder at Lagier Meredith. Fortunately for us, the rains of the previous
> few days had stopped, permitting us to navigate the drive up their steep
> driveway. We were greeted by Steve and Carole and spent the next hour
> and a half chatting with them and tasting their one offering, the Lagier
> Meredith 2004 Syrah Mt. Veeder, while tasting her home-cured olives and
> some almonds. The wine was phenomenal, a lean, minerally, stylish,
> restrained Syrah with plenty of depth and focus and a long life ahead of
> it. They told us of the recent anointment by Monkton of their '05
> (which, interestingly, they weren't pouring), which came as a surprise
> and an incentive to get on their mailing list NOW. Both proved to be
> very fun and interesting people, too, and Steve managed to figure out
> that we knew several people in common -- the guy who had the adjoining
> dorm room my freshman year of college is now the head winemaker at
> Gallo! Steve mentioned that they will soon be producing several new
> wines in the upcoming vintage, including a ros� of Syrah and a Mondeuse
> (!!) We also lucked out with the weather, as we had a sparkling clear
> day that permitted us to see all the way to the oil refineries of
> Hercules to the S and most of the Napa Valley to the NE. Their setting
> is gorgeous, with the vineyards directly outside their house on rolling
> ridgetop locations. It reminded of nothing so much as some of the Tuscan
> wine country that I've seen.
>
> Our next stop was at Corison on Hwy 29 in St. Helena. I usually do my
> damnedest to avoid 29, and this visit confirmed why that is: 5-10
> minutes waiting to make a left out of the winery back onto 29. Anyway,
> the visit started with a pour of the 2004 Corison Gewurztraminer
> Anderson Valley, which is sourced from the same fruit that Navarro uses.
> The wine showed a bit of varietal character on the nose, along with some
> alcohol, but the wine was strangely muted on the palate, showing very
> little character of any sort. The man pouring the wines said that they
> were trying for a richer version of the grape compared to what Navarro
> does, but this wine didn't do much for us. The next wine was the 2004
> "Helios" Syrah, also made from purchased grapes. It was a juicy, grapey
> Syrah with good acidity and some mineral character. It had the
> unenviable position of following the stunning Lagier Meredith Syrah, but
> was a decent wine in its own right, if certainly fleshier and less
> ageworthy. The stars of the show, however, were the Cabernets here. The
> 2004 Napa Cabernet was a nostalgic wine, showing classic pencil lead,
> cocoa and cassis in a restrained, structured package. The old
> observation that smell is closely linked to memory held true he I was
> transported back to the early '80s, when I first started tasting top
> flight California Cabnernets. This wine reminded me of those
> late-'70s/early-'80s Caymus Napa cabs, back when old Charlie Wagner
> still made the wine. That was followed by the 2003 Kronos Vineyard
> Cabernet, an entirely different bit of memory, with an herbal nose of
> dark fruits, rich mouthfeel, good structure and balance. This wine could
> have been a young Phelps Insignia. Both wines were outstanding examples
> of California Cabernet, and I eat everything I said to FL Jim about them
> (thankfully now vanished with the archive).
>
> Our last stop was at Schweiger on Spring Mountain. This was the least
> impressive of our visits, but still very enjoyable. Our tasting started
> outside, with the 2006 Schweiger Sauvignon Blanc, a Kiwi lookalike with
> grapefruit, tropical fruit and acidity -- but why buy a NZ SB in Napa at
> 150% of the price? The 2006 Chardonnay was more interesting, with good
> minerality, only a hint of oak, no ML, but a round, citrussy character.
> Then, we moved inside for the 2003 Merlot, with a nose of plums and
> pencil lead, good acidity and some chocolate character. I haven't drunk
> many CA Merlots in a few decades, so I can't really say much about how
> it stacks up vis-a-vis the local competition, but it's a very credible
> wine. Their Bordelaise blend is the 2004 Dedication (48% CS/44%
> Merlot/3% PV/5% Malbec) The guy pouring the wine, who'd only been on the
> job for 4 weeks, couldn't tell me what the winemaker felt that the Petit
> Verdot and Malbec added to the blend, so we were left guessing. On the
> nose, it was a bit lactic with some chocolate and plums, and was creamy
> and soft on the palate, with decent structure. However, we both
> preferred the 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon, which showed pencil lead and
> herbs in the nose, with good structure and berry fruit. The tasting
> concluded with the Port VI, a "Port" that consisted of fortified late
> harvest Cabernet and was marred by a good whack of ethyl acetate in the
> nose and proved to be sweet and simple with a bizarre honeyed note
> thrown in.
>
> That night, we dined at the Martini House in St. Helena, where we were
> graced with one of the most over-the-top waiters I've had in a long time
> in California. Nonethless, we had a very good meal starting with their
> excellent cream of mushroom soup and continuing (for me) with a
> marvelous roasted loin of venison from some chi-chi farm in NY state.
> With our meal, got a bottle of the 2004 Luddite Sonoma Coast Syrah , a
> friendly puppy of a wine that didn't try to do too much, but still had
> plenty of Syrah character and a good deal of N. Rhone funk/Brett. Jean's
> duck was a bit overwhelmed by it, but my bambi went fabulously with it.
> A whopping 720 cases of it were produced, according to the label.
>
> Back in the Bay Area, I concluded my trip with a visit to Steve Edmunds
> in Berkeley. He had graciously invited me to his house to taste his
> current releases. Steve proved to be just as nice and as interesting as
> I expected and I had a great time chatting with him and tasting his
> wines, even though I had to leave quickly to (futilely, as it happened)
> pick up some Dungeness crabs for dinner. He first opened his 2006
> Edmunds St. John Bone-Jolly Ros� which proved to every bit of fresh,
> fruity and dry as prior reports have indicated. He then opened a
> just-bottled blend of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre from several
> different vineyards including the Fenaughty Vineyard in the Sierra
> foothills. It's name is the "Old <Something>" but I've forgotten it.
> Steve proclaimed it shut down since bottling, but it was still an
> impressive wine, showing mostly the Syrah berry character with some
> surprisingly soft tannins. I expect that it will change a lot by the
> time of its release, but I was ready to buy some on the spot if he'd
> been selling.
>
> Mark Lipton
>
> --
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Nice notes (both sets). Look forward to the new ESJ.