On Aug 14, 4:01*pm, "Bill S." > wrote:
> Notes on a dinner with Fritz Hatton.
>
> We attended a small dinner at friends in Vancouver and Fritz Hatton
> was in attendance. He’d recently organized a large auction of the
> host, Rob Caine’s excess wines, mostly Burgundy and had many
> interesting stories to tell, and brought some wines from his own Napa
> winery, Arietta, which I had never tasted before.
>
> 2010 The White Keys – a blend of 80/20 sauv blanc/Semillon, this crisp
> clean white had only been bottled two weeks before, but seemed not to
> have suffered any trauma from that. The oak was very nicely
> calculated, something one (well this one, anyway) yearns for but
> seldom sees in Californian wines. There were some nice fruit notes in
> this that made it a great combination with some finger food served
> with it on the deck.
>
> The next wines were served blind, although given the source, there was
> little difficulty in ascertaining where they came from!
>
> 2005 Dom. Leflaive Puligny Montrachet ‘Clavoillon’ 1er Cru –
> developing some colour, an enticing nose of mellow fruit with a citrus
> edge that showed a nice spice with time in the glass, and in the mouth
> smooth and supple with good length.
>
> 2004 Dom. Leflaive Puligny Montrachet ‘Clavoillon’ 1er Cru– an
> interesting spicy vanilla nose, marred (for me, not for Rob or Sid
> Cross, the other guest, who seem to have much higher tolerance) by
> significant sulphur. Mellow and tasty with good acidity and length.
> I’d probably have preferred this one had it not smelled like a freshly
> struck match!
>
> 2005 Dom. Leflaive Batard Montrachet Grand Cru – excellent slightly
> sweet fruit driven nose, and a lovely elegant supple wine on palate,
> well balanced.
>
> 2004 *Dom. Leflaive Batard Montrachet Grand Cru – some good oak in
> this nose, and I got the definite impression that there was a little
> RS that softened the wine and made if doo friendly. Big mouth
> presence, memorable wine.
>
> 2002 Arietta H Block Hudson Valley Napa Red Wine - this wine is made
> from 60% cab franc and 40% merlot, grown in ‘H’ Block, a plot formerly
> utilized by Newton, but more recently by Arietta. I had zero
> preconceptions going in on this one as I did not know the wines and
> had intentionally not boned up on them with any specificity to avoid
> forming and ideas beforehand. This was a very dark wine with
> pronounced blackberry and cassis fruit, with some cocoa (the merlot?),
> smooth elegant tannins, great concentration of fruit in midpalate, and
> exceptional length. I am not often as impressed with a wine on first
> tasting as I was with this one, and I found it to be in the old Napa
> idiom of simply being an excellent well made balanced wine, thankfully
> NOT one of the all too common ‘stun them with fruit and they’ll ask no
> questions’ approach. *Well done, Fritz!
>
> I had been tasked with bringing a dessert wine, as Rob doesn’t cellar
> much of that type, and the prospect of bringing something for wine
> aficionados of this calibre was an imposing one. *I opted for a very
> unusual wine I had picked up in the early 1980s when I had been down
> racing vintage sports cars at Laguna Seca, and did winery visits on
> the way home.
>
> 1978 Joseph Phelps Selected Late Harvest Johannisberg Riesling – allow
> me to blow the horn of a wine I had brought – this was really amazing
> stuff! *Like many of this sort of wine (mostly not made any more) this
> was very high residual sugar – in this case, as high as I can ever
> recall, at 30% and was harvested at 48%! *It still managed to come in
> at 10% alcohol. *Like quite a few (including the old 1970s Ch. St.
> Jean TBAs) this wine was dark brown and people would laugh at you if
> you offered it to them as a white wine. *For whatever reason, the
> California wines of this style seem to darken much sooner than do
> German TBAs. *It was raisiny in the nose, unctuous and mouth filling
> and had amazing acidity, so avoided the cloying effect of some. *A bit
> surprisingly, it still showed some petrol varietal notes in the nose,
> something I have rarely seen with TBA style Gewurz even at a younger
> age. I suppose the aromatics that come from the Riesling are more
> persistent and do not break down as quickly. *A memorable wine I was
> happy to contribute (and my last bottle!).A

Arietta was originally a partnership between Fritz Hatton and John
Kongsgaard sourcing grapes from a former Newton property. John was
responsible for making the wine until 2005 when Fritz bought him out.