Juice

1998 Jones Family

When you combine premium Napa Valley Cabernet vines with David Abreu, and then add Heidi Peterson Barrett you should get a fantastic bottle of cabernet.  (At a $75 bottle release price you might also wrongly expect the same)  Jones Family delivers on these expectations and in a difficult vintage to boot.    1997 Jones is one of my favorites.  This is the first 1998 out of my stash.

1998 was a rather difficult vintage for Napa.  El Nino weather patterns caused a cool and uneven spring.  The result was a delayed bloom.  Eratic extremes during the summer prevented grapes from ripening in a consistent way.  There were reports during July and August that temperatures rose so high that the grapes temporarily stalled, that is, they stopped photosynthesizing in order to prevent dehydration.  The Harvest date was listed as October 11.  This would make it the latest harvest in all 9 of Jones Family harvests.  Mid September is more normal.

At seven years this wine was drinking well.  Still fairly dark colored.  Sweet but not very powerful nose.  the wine tends toward forward but still elegant and richly textured.  Some of the flavors go beyond blackberry into the casis side of the spectrum.  Very very well put together fruit and oak dynamic. 

I enjoyed this bottle with Kelly, her parents, and my parents as we awaited an onslaught on summer rain.

1996 Panther Creek "Shea Vineyard" Pinot Noir

Kelly's mom and pop and left this bottle at our house as a gift a few weeks back.  I have had Panther Creek pinots numerous times in the past but didn't know what to expect from this one.  I figured being a 1996 it was probably in the twilight of its life at best.  The 1996s were being made by winemaker Mark Vlossak.  Mark produces some of Oregon's most consistent and fine wines.  These days Mark is the winemaker/proprietor at St. Innocent which deserves kudos not only for their great wines but the commitment to keeping them affordable.

According to the Panther Creek website:

Shea Vineyard was first planted with wine grapes in the late 1980s. Today Shea Vineyard is a 200-acre property with 140 planted acres. 135 acres are planted with Pinot noir vines. The balance is planted with Chardonnay, and Pinot Gris. Roughly 15% of the Pinot noir fruit is used each year by Shea Wine Cellars for its releases. The balance of the Pinot noir fruit is sold to wineries as close as the adjoining properties on both sides of the vineyard and as far away as Ojai, California. The vineyard sits on sedimentary soil over fractured sandstone. Shea was one of the early vineyards in this area of Yamhill County and on this soil type.

Having done no research before drinking it, I was curious. The wine was absolutely superb.  There was still a pretty amazing core of fruit.  The wine was ambering throughout the glass  Blueberry preserves, hints of spice, a bit of creaminess, a velvety texture, and a little vibrancy on the end.  This wine is mature and sexy.

This morning I decided to check what Pierre Rovani had written about it.  There was no rating but a fairly detailed account of the wine.  Seems it was a bit beguiling to him at the time.  Amazing what can happen to a wine in 9 years.  From erobertparker.com, Rovani's review (Oct 1998):

Panther Creek's 1996 Shea Vineyard is very reduced. At the winery it offered aromas of rubber and gamey meats that slowly transformed into stewed plums, cherries, and strawberries following aeration. It displayed excellent concentration, intensity, and a flavor profile dominated by reduced flavors (rubber, raw beef, and game) as well as spicy oak. Kaplan informed me that he and his team (including winemaker Mark Vlossak) had been confounded by this wine since fermentation. I have tasted it twice since. The first time it displayed spicy cherry yogurt aromas, as well as a creamy, complex, cinnamon-tinged, and sweet cherry-filled character. It was absolutely delicious. However, at a subsequent showing, it appeared more reduced than ever. Readers willing to cellar this wine for 5-6 years, or those who are willing to decant it for a number of hours, will be impressed by the wine's fruit (putting a few pennies in the wine will hasten the dissipation of the reductive notes). However, since I cannot expect readers to have loose change on hand at all times, I am reserving judgement.

Domaine de la Bongran 2001

Jean Thevenet consistently crafts some of the most ambitious wines in the Maconnais.  His wines are anything but ordinary and express the ultimate commitment and passion he invests in each one.  The Maconnais is a region south of Beaune, about half way to Lyon.  It exists in the shadow of the more popular prestigious White Burgundy regions to the north.  For the most part this lower status is deserved as it is dominated by large cooperatives and growers that generally under-perform.  However there have been a number of well know White Burgundy producers such as Verget becoming very active in the region.  The soils here tend to be very chalky and almost all of the white grapes are Chardonnay.

Domaine de la Bongran's wines range from fairly dry, the Cuvée Tradition, to boytrised late harvest wines with almost 15% residual sugar like the Cuvée Botrytisée.  Thevenet makes his distinctive wines through very traditional methods including hand harvesting, using only natural yeasts, and harvests only ultra-ripe grapes.  He uses no chemicals on his vines.

Thevenet's wine is labeled with the very generic Macon Villages designation.  Although he is the most famous vigneron in the more prestigious Viré-Clessé appellation he is not permitted to use that designation because his wines lack the typicity of the region as defined by the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine (INAO).  Per-Henrik Mansson of Wine Spectator wrote a pretty good article you can see here. 

The 2001 is a shocking example of Chardonnay.  I have tasted previous vintages of the Cuvée Tradition but this one broke the mold.  I have never tasted anything like this wine!!  It completely debased my wine senses.   If points be given for individuality, I give this 100+.  It is very intense, almost syrupy, with a bundle of butterscotch, very ripe pineapple extract, ripe pears, honey.  This is all underlined by a sweet minerality and acidity that integrates well.  No overwhelming new oak here.  After two hours I still wasn't sure what to make of the wine.  I may buy a case just to see what happens to this thing over the next 10-15 years.  It will definitely last that long.

This defies a point score.

About $28 at BrownDerby.com

1996 Luois Jadot Beaune Theurons

Alex Gambal wrote in his year-end newsletter ,

If Jacques Lardiere is not the true Master of the Burgundy Universe he is close. I have been fortunate to taste some older Jadots recently and they were terrific. Young his wines are often not flattering. No micro oxygenation here. He lets the wines make themselves. If you ever see any old Jadot's for sale on close out or at an auction and you have a vague idea that they have been well stored they are great values and the real deal."

Upon reading that I looked at BrownDerby.com for some older Jadot's.  I found a 1996 Beaune theurons for about $30.  It came out with a beautiful nose if a bit high pitched.  Mushrooms reduced cranberry nose.  Very vibrant medium ruby in color.  Not much rust.  Maybe a slight bit at the rim.  Very precise flavors of semi tart, candied cherries.  A pretty decent mouthful in the mid-palette.  After about two hours decanted it had really fleshed out and become longer.  For a village wine of 8 years it was remarkably fresh.

From Robert Parker:

"Wine lovers have come to expect first rate Beaunes from the Gagey-Lardiere team at Maison Jadot, and that's exactly what they delivered in 1996. The bright sunny days of September allowed the vines on these hillside vineyards to attain full physiological ripeness, which is not an annual occurrence in these cool sites.

"I am in love with this vintage's purity and its touch of tension," said Pierre-Henri Gagey, Maison Louis Jadot's director. Jacques Lardiere, this negociant house's talented winemaker, shares Gagey's enthusiasm for the 1996s, feeling they beautifully reflect their respective terroirs. Lardiere bled (a technique of removing the watery juice of a light pressing to increase concentration) many of the 1996s, "but never more than 10%," and performed a 28 to 35 day cuvaison in order to extract a maximum amount of flavor, color, and aromas while softening the tannins. These wines will neither be fined nor filtered prior to bottling."

 

Drank with wonderful egg, mushroom, and country ham tart.  The tart was prepared wonderfully by my sister Katy via the Queer Eye for the straight guy recipe.

1994 Chateau Montrose

Drinking very well at 10 years of age the 1994 Montrose was the 100th bottle opened with the great wood handled waiters wine tool.  I have been counting each bottle diligently since it was given to me last year. 

Parker wrote,"Readers must realize that Montrose, often referred to as the poor person's Latour, has been at the top of the Bordeaux heap since the 1989 vintage." 

1994 was supposedly an "ok" vintage for Bordeaux.  The Montrose was sexy, very well balanced, gorgeously textured.  The aromas were fairly intense with some violet, spice, a little tobacco.  Still had great fruit that had shed some of its youth.  Still quite a bit left.  Medium bodied  Red currents, casis, plums.   Elegant.

$60 at Brown Derby