KYBO, Cabs and City Café

KYBO returned to “Big D” this weekend to do some work for a client in the area. So what was his first thought? “Let me know if you can round up a few folks (or not) and let’s see if we can pop a few corks.” Duh! The Dallas Area Winos rose to the challenge.

The offline was held at City Café in Dallas (Lovers Lane and the Tollway) with a 7PM start time. THE291 and MIKEB, being the tough negotiators they are, got us into City Café as a BYOB Wine Spectator Tasting Group (please, nobody tell Marv Shanken). Our negotiated Prix Fixe menu designed specifically for the “Wine Spectator Offline” consisted of:

Appetizers
Fried Calamari and Stewed Mussels

1st Course Selections
City Café Fresh Tomato Soup
Chopped Caesar Salad
Warm Cabbage Salad
Arugula Salad

Entrée Selections
Stuffed Pork Tenderloin
Filet Mignon Bernaise

Dessert Platter
Turtle Cheesecake
Bubba Cake
Chocolate Bombe
Coffee Service

Everything turned out well, service was good and the price per person was very reasonable. Probably the best of all was the corkage. City Café was very generous to us and not only allowed us to BYOB but also charged us a measly $10.00 corkage fee. Read that quite literally folks; we opened 11 bottles of wine and they charged us $10.00 total. Short of free you can’t do any better than that. Thank you to City Café for hosting us and do stop by if you are ever in the area. They have a respectable wine list of their own ready for the picking. In addition, special thanks to THE291 and MIKEB for making the arrangements with the restaurant.

On to the show…

With KYBO in our midst what was our first thought? “Cabernet Sauvignon”. So we threw together a quick tasting:

“Cabernet Sauvignons & Meritages: Old World versus New World”

The wines were organized into two flights and generally running in "smooth and silky" to "muscular and beefy" order. Wines for the night included:

Palate Primer
2002 Verget 1er Cru “Les Forets” Chablis

Flight 1 – Old World Wines
1997 Haut Brion
1995 Smith Haut Lafitte
1995 Clos de Marquis
1988 Lynch Bages
2000 Siaurac Lalande

Flight 2 – New World Wines
1998 Leonetti Cabernet Sauvignon
1997 Jordon Cabernet Sauvignon
1993 Jarvis Cabernet Sauvignon
1995 Chateau Montelena Estate CS
1996 Fischer Coach Insignia CS
1997 Pride Cabernet Sauvignon (CORKED!)

First and second place votes for each flight were taken from the group of eight. The Old World Wines was a runaway. The 1988 Lynch Bages garnered 5 first place votes, easily outpacing the rest of the flight. The New World Wines was a tie, with the 1995 Chateau Montelena and 1998 Leonetti each racking in 3 first place votes. Most voters flipped these two wines as their seconds. However, the 1996 Fischer and 1997 Jordon came in strong on secondary voting as well. So our winners for the night were:

Flight 1 – Old World Wines
1988 Lynch Bages

Flight 2 – New World Wines
1998 Leonetti CS (tie)
1995 Chateau Montelena Estate CS (tie)

But in the end, the true winners of the evening were THE291, MIKEB, BIGRED_SEEKER, MR & MRS PREFERRED, WIML, PURPLE and of course KYBO. Another great evening of friends and wine has thus come to a close. Thank you to one and all for sharing your wine, your time and your life.



P.S. I’ll post my tasting notes shortly.