A consistently good Chardonnay, this one from Alexander Valley, makes a frequent appearance on my brother-in-law Jake’s table. Beautiful golden hued color, ripe fruit and slight/tight oak makes it a great refresher before the start of any meal…
Joseph Phelp’s secondary label (remind me to quit my membership as no one asked for a case of this!) Fogdog produces a drinkable but all together too light Pinot Noir. We had it before dinner to just ready our palate for the big stuff to come.
Saved for the perfectly brined turkey, cheesy mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and the best homemade cranberry sauce you can dream of…this 100 WS point 2002 Merlot should have been drunk a few Thanksgivings ago. An extremely floral bounty on the nose, and still quite tannic on the taste and finish; the wine was past it’s prime with too much dust and must. I remember tasting it up at the winery and did recall that it wasn’t indicative of most Merlots and wondered then, as I do today, if the blind judges were blindsided by the bigness of such a Merlot…and just how much “Merlot” is in it.
I can’t find it on the Internet but I believe that Dolce is produced by Far Niente…even if I were to judge from the bottle’s artwork alone. It received a whopping 92 points from Wine Spectator. I give the pumpkin pie, handmade by my sister-in-law Ann, a 100. Thinking this over-sweet thin dessert wine would’ve been closer to an 80-85 with some Stilton Blue cheese, but alas, last I checked, no one in their right mind would serve that on Thanksgiving!
So, it would appear, that barring the Chard (and the barred blue cheese) the food took center stage for this wine 101er yesterday. But no fear…it only makes today that much more of a challenge to seek out new frontiers and to go where no woman….in her right mind would go…lunch in an hour with three fellow writers. And you can bet, if there isn’t some really good wine there will be some really good blogging about it!
Dolce is Far Niente and we bought some when we were there this summer! It's great stuff.
Thanks for clearing up that mystery Mo! What did you pair yours with that made it into the "great stuff" category? I'm betting tasting it at the winery, sans anything, was the ticket for us both!