Notes from a dinner tasting of older American wines:

1995 Belvedere Chardonnay Alexander Valley - this one wasn't oxidized, but it
had taken on a lot of colour and was simply not very interesting. Pity, as the
last bottle I had a few years ago was very good. We tossed it and instead
opened:

1995 Merryvale Starmont Chardonnay - decent nose and a medium weight fruit
driven wine with less oak than on expects. The acidity was still good (it must
have been even more so in youth) and it went well with salmon and crab cakes.

1975 Freemark Abbey York Creek Petite Sirah - I bought this as library release
when I was down at Laguna Seca racing in 1980 or so, and the wine was
absolutely impenetrable - you could see no light at all through it even holding
it up to the sun, until about 10 years ago. It still has excellent deep colour,
and a nose like an Amarone with dried dates. It still has considerable tannin,
now softened, and as it sat i n the glass, the nose became progressively more
raisiny. Some of these old wines are amazing.

1979 Kenwood Jack London Cabernet - still with the old label, this wine was
quite a contrast to the other - lighter colour (but then pretty much anything
would be), a sweet cassis nose that picked up a pleasant mushroom element,
sweet in the mouth, and now long and elegant. I've worked my way through a half
case of this and it was a tannin monster when young. Both went well with
truffled broiled Portobello mushrooms with garlic and parmesan.

1982 Niebaum-Coppola Rubicon - the nose was initially rubbery, but that blew
off leaving some earthy cassis. While not as elegant as the Kenwood has become,
it is a complex wine with some remaining soft tannins and a good structure.

1984 La Jota Howell Mountain Cabernet - dark wine with a sweet nose. It has
loads of sweet fruit and a very long finish to start, but it narrowed down at
the end fairly quickly in the glass and became much less attractive than it had
been at the beginning. I give the nod to the Rubicon in this pairing. Served
with a grilled quail salad.

The main event was a simple dish, butterflied leg of lamb marinated in North
African spices and grilled, served rare.

1987 Girard Napa Cabernet - dark, good fruit and vanilla in the nose, a bit
tight in the middle, but with excellent flavour concentration, and good length.
This has stood up much better than we had anticipated.

1987 Togni Napa Cabernet - big beautiful sweet nose, but marred by a touch of
sharp dill pickle. The wine was still young and vital and was smooth and long
on palate. Aside from that one flaw, which bothered different people to varying
degrees, it showed the class one expects from Togni. Perhaps this was an odd
bottle, or the dill may go away with more air than we gave it.

With cheese:

2000 Biale Zinfandel Black Chicken Ranch - at 'only' 15.9% alcohol, the nose
was understandably at least a touch warm. It was also quite ripe, though I am
not sure the producer calls this a late harvest style of wine. Sweet entry,
smooth and long with a ripe finish as well, it went quite well with cheese.

On their own as dessert:

1987 Mirassou Monterey Johannisberg Riesling Select Late Harvest - this wine
was finished at 15.2% residual sugar. Pale brown (why is it that American
white dessert wines seem able to do this without exhibiting the oxidation you'd
otherwise expect?) and an obvious Riesling nose - certainly not a given, as
high RS and age tend to conceal varietal characteristics. Good flavour
intensity and length.

1982 Ch. St. Jean Special Select Late Harvest Gewurztraminer Robert Young
Vineyard - the SSLH designation was what Dick Arrowood was using in place of
the Beerenauslese designator that international convention denied him. He used
another one for Trockenbeerenauslese - "Individually Dried Bunch Selected Late
Harvest" or IDBSLH, which isn't much better than the unwieldy German original
(although TBA makes a nice contraction). I have a dwindling stash of the latter
- the 1979 Belle Terre 'TBA' which finished at 28.2% RS (and was $25 US a half
bottle back when I bought it in 1980 - the days when 'Motel 6' really referred
to the price of the room. In any case, this wine (the 1982) had a wonderful
nose of botrycised oranges and apricots, and was very sweet but retains
sufficient acidity to balance it. A stage beyond the Mirassou in complexity.
Very dark amber now, almost brown. Sure wish I'd bought more of this nectar!