Toronto Wine Cru - Feb 11 - Wine List Planning

Thank you for hosting Julian. Your organization paid off in spades, a very organized event.

I got a bit sloppy there at the end, I use to be able to hold my liqour better . It it was all good fun. I did end up finding my Visa card, right where I left it at home

Great wines, great company, great time.

I think I've finally recovered....

WOTN for me was the 2001 L'evangile with the 2002 Spottswoode and '94 LMHB a close tie for second place.

I had a great time as well (I think everyone did!). There were some great wines. My clear WOTN was the 2001 L'Evangile, to some extent just on the nose alone. I could have crawled into that bottle… The LMHB just kept getting better with air, and I think if we had drunk it with an extra hour or so of decanting it would have surpassed the L'Evangile. Then again, if we added another hour, the Spottswoode might have surpassed the LMHB so I’ll stick with the L'Evangile as WOTN.

White WOTN is a toss up between the 2004 Mt. Eden Chardonnay and the Merry Edwards. Both continued to develop through the night and were luscious.

The La Jota was my surprise wine of the night. Blind you would have sworn it was Bordeaux. You don’t get many feminine cabs like that in California. A close second for surprise wine of the night was the Chardonnay mistakenly labelled as a Sauvignon Blanc. That Merry Edwards really was great.

The only negative to the night was that I wished the wines had more time to breathe. We decanted some, but outside of the Batailley and the Pavie everything needed more air.

The after-party was great as well. You know when you’re breaking out Champagne at 1am in the quest from something “refreshing and palate cleansing” to drink, you’re going to have a hang-over the next day… (If you do get into that situation though, a 2003 Roederer Rose does seem to hit the spot…). Theweb, I would love to remember what the 100% Grenache CDP that you broke out was. It was juicy and great.

quote:

Originally posted by Rob_Sutherland:
Theweb, I would love to remember what the 100% Grenache CDP that you broke out was. It was juicy and great.

Was I there for the Champagne?

It was the '07 Domaine Ferrando Chateauneuf du Pape Colombis

Hi Rob


I would have loved to attend the after party, but my wife and her friend had other plans.

And yes, it would have been great to give the wines a chance to air. I was busy just getting the flights in order and was not paying attention to decanting. I should have asked for some help there. Let's remember to focus more on that next time.

Another option would be to decante and then rebottle the wines. This us easier to do if the event is on a Saturday night (ie decant and rebottle Sarturday afternoon, using a vacuvin or nitrogen or argon to prevent further airation. This does not work so well on a Friday, as most folks are at work.

In glass aeration doesn't work, given the limited amount of time available, even if we cut the number of wines in half.

So I think that a combo of pre-decanting and event decanting, with a Saturday event date, might work best.

Any thoughts on this, folks?

Julian