Wines for New Year's Day

Dinner at a friend's home.

2010 Anne Gros et Jean-Paul Tollot Minervois Les Carrétals - minty, peppery, potpourri, a little smoky.  Not too tannic but still pretty young, obviously.

2009 Torbreck Juveniles - very ripe and sweet, with leather and animal notes. Very sweet on the palate with noticeable tannins.  Not as classic Rhône as this wine was a decade ago.

2007 Merricks Estate Pinot Noir - sweet nose with cherries.

1995 Guigal Côte-Rôtie Brune et Blonde - nose of grilled meats, animal, a little stinky, but there's definitely the fragrance from the Viognier.

Lynch-Bages dinner in Shanghai

Dinner at Allure, organized by the Commanderie du Bordeaux.  Sylvie Cazes was in attendance.

The pre-dinner tasting consisted of the lower-end wines made by the Cazes family, such as Villa Bel-Air in Graves and L'Ostal Cazes in Minervois. Interesting to taste but not exactly the reason why we were there.

The wines served for dinner were the 2005 Blanc de Lynch-Bages (always an excellent dry white), the 2004 Cordeillan-Bages (glad to have finally drunk this wine), the 2003 Ormes de Pez (not a bad effort), and finally the 2001 Lynch-Bages and the 1996 Lynch-Bages. The 2001 was still a bit tight, but the 1996 was just beautiful to drink now and is a classic Pauillac.

Full post on dinner is here.