What better way to ring in the holiday season than with our second annual BAWE “high-end” tasting, and what an event this year’s was! 18 wine lovers descended yesterday on GATC’s beautiful home to share some incredible wine, fantastic food, and of course abundant and engaging conversation.

To kick things off SKWID was kind enough to provide two bottles of1985 Krug Champagne

The formal tasting began with a flight of 2002 German Rieslings, courtesy of the ever generous GATC. Here follow the wines, along with 1st and 2nd place votes (1st/2nd), with the top two wine noted in bold italics. This flight was tasted double blind:

2002 Carl Loewen Riesling Spatlese Thornicher Ritsch (2/3)
2002 Carl Loewen Riesling Spatlese Detzemer Maximiner (6/7)
2002 Leitz Riesling Spatlese Trocken Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg (0/3)
2002 Christoffel Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling Spatlese (2/3)
2002 Leitz Riesling Spatlese Rudesheimer Berg Roseneck (7/1)
2002 Dr. Deinhard Deidesheimer Kalkofen Riesling Spatlese (3/3)

I still find my skills at evaluating (especially young) Rieslings to be spotty at best, so hopefully others with palates more in tune with these wines will offer their notes as well. Here is my attempt:

2002 Carl Loewen Riesling Spatlese Thornicher Ritsch

2002 Carl Loewen Riesling Spatlese Detzemer Maximiner

2002 Leitz Riesling Spatlese Trocken Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg

2002 Christoffel Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling Spatlese

2002 Leitz Riesling Spatlese Rudesheimer Berg Roseneck

2002 Dr. Deinhard Deidesheimer Kalkofen Riesling Spatlese

Moving into flight #2 and into red wines. Since we had no theme, this flight was sort of thrown together from those wines deemed in need of about 1 hour decanting. This flight was double blind for me and most everyone, though those that assembled the flight must have been tasting single blind. Again, the wines and votes:

2000 Herb Lamb HL Vineyard Cabernet (6/9)
1992 Dominus (0/0)
1990 Pegau Reservee (0/3)
1999 Karl Lawrence Cabernet (7/2)
1991 A. Rafanelli Cabernet (0/0) (corked!)
1998 T-Vine Red Wine (7/6)

And on to my tasting notes:

2000 Herb Lamb HL Vineyard Cabernet

1992 Dominus

1990 Pegau Reservee

1999 Karl Lawrence Cabernet

1991 A. Rafanelli Cabernet
Very sad, the only corked bottle of the tasting

1998 T-Vine Red Wine

I think it is fair to say that of the formal tasting, flight #3 really stole the show with the following lineup (for this outstanding flight we decided to vote for the top 3 wines):

1989 Palmer (1/2/4)
1986 Pichon Longueville Lalande (3/1/2)
1995 Rubicon (4/3/4)
1998 Pegau Cuvee Laurence (5/5/1)
2001 Viader Cabernet (3/2/2)
2000 Dalle Valle (4/7/6)

1989 Palmer

1986 Pichon Longueville Lalande

1995 Rubicon

1998 Pegau Cuvee Laurence

2001 Viader Cabernet

2000 Dalle Valle

Following the third flight we abandoned the formal tasting format and threw the doors wide to taste the rest of the wines at will. As such my note taking suffered, but I still managed to jot a few things down.

1996 Kistler Somoma Coast Pinot
Soft, elegant, and refined, with excellent structure and balance. Lovely strawberry notes, a very fine Pinot and a real treat.

1997 Flowers (Camp Meeting Ridge?)
Excellent nose of cherries, strawberries, and earth. Surprising still very tannic and could use some time yet.

1985 Aldo Conterno Bussia Soprano Barolo (from Magnum)
Wow, this was excellent! Nose of roses and smoke, very fine textured tannins, deep rich palate, simply terrific!

1986 Domain Tempier Bandol
Quick! Grab the goat cheese! This stuff is STINKY! Yea, ok, so Mourvedre is supposed to be stinky, but WOW this stinks. Drinking with a nice slice of goat cheese made all the difference and raised the score of this wine by at least 10 points.

2000 Chrysalis Norton Reserve (from VA)

1970 Mouton Rothschild
What a very special treat this was. Amazingly perfumed and complex nose, while the palate is soft, elegant, and complex. Amazing, and holding quite well indeed.

1974 Spring Mountain Cabernet

1970 BV Cabernet
Tasted, found it unexceptional, but didn’t make notes.

1995 Oremus Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos
Concentrated tropical/summer fruits, with a compelling mineral/slate component. Very nice.

NV Chambers Muscat
Excellent, as always.

2000 Pedro Ximenez Montilla Moriles
Concentrated apricots, thick, sweet, and awfully tasty.

Eric,

Thank you for the great notes as always. Sounds like it was a fun event.

Wow Eric. I love reading your tasting notes. Almost makes me feel like I was there.
Thanks again and again and...

I knew I would regret not being able to attend!!!

Thanks for taking the great notes. The 70 BV was the regular bottling, not the GDL. I would have served the GDL if I had any left. Did anyone take any notes on the 70 Leoville Las Cases? I still have 4-5 bottles left and I thought that it was pretty good, althought it was overshadowed by the 70 Mouton and the 74 Spring Mountain.

Thanks for the clarification GATC, I have edited to reflect that. At least that means someone reads these posts all the way through

I tasted the LLC, but didn't make a single note darn it! I remember I liked it very much, and SFwine and I were having an interesting discussion of this compared to the 70 Mouton - they were of similar quality, and it was interesting to ponder the fact that Mouton was elevated to a 1st growth in 73 (right about when this vintage would have been released) while LLC was not. Was the Mouton that much better? How could you taste those two wines, so young, and decide that the Mouton is more deserving?

Man it's interesting tasting back through history. Thanks again GATC!!

Interesting observation here ,Eric-

Dominus '92 -0/0 at the BAWE

appears on face of it at significant odds with The NJ/NY crew's feelings, where a conservative assessment as WOTN by 7 people and an average score of 94-95 pts

Style preference East VS West or off bottle?

Had to have been an off bottle, either flawed from the winery or poor provenance. The three we had in NYC were all outstanding.

See the detailed notes Dr. T - provenance is highly suspect here. The person who brought this purchased it at auction, and had tasted another bottle from another source just months prior and commented on how fantastic the other bottle had shown.

Whoops! Forgot one:

1994 Stonestreet Cabernet
Holding up quite well indeed, this was dark, rich, good tannic structure, and drinking very well!

What a line-up of wines. Holy Moley! Nice TNs as always, EW.

Thanks for the great notes, Eric.

Great notes Eric! A killer line-up.

Looking through this lineup there were no dry white wines. Only a flight of 2002 Rieslings provided by our most generous host GATC and the Champagne. The reds were heavily slanted to Cabernet Sauvignon based wines with only three red wines (two CdP's and a Barolo) not of this type. I find it a bit interesting that there were no Syrah or Zinfandel based wines. However during the tasting the two CdP's stuck out like sore thumbs in the tasting since they were lined up against nothing but cabs. At first we didn't know wether the CdP's were off wines or just something different as we were not told what wines were put in front of us. This can make things very difficult to judge if a wine is "correct" or something is wrong.