I've been back for two weeks and am still catching up - and feeling completely overwhelmed by stuff. The piles of crap only seem to get taller, no matter how much I work on them. Just when I seem to get a handle on things, another project falls in my lap.
On top of the usual jet-lag issues, I got the cruds going around, and have been on-and-off feverish since two days after getting back. Yuck. I still have trouble breathing. One day will be good, the next I'll slide back two steps. I hate snot.
Last week was my regular monthly tasting group and I was so congested I could not smell a thing. I stopped even trying to take notes after the second wine, and contented myself with muddying the waters for everyone else: "No, I think this is definitely a Rioja ..." when sampling what was obviously a very oaky Zin (even that I was able to get correct ...). After a while the rest of the group got wise and ignored me.
Enough whining. Tuesday night I opened two wines - both real nice - at the CS Fine Arts Center for a fundraising event. If you have not yet been in to see the new building, get yer ass in gear and do so. It is lovely.
2006 Bruno Giacosa, Roero Arneis, Piedmont, Italy
Very bright and floral nose with peach, apple and hints of citrus and cirtus flowers. This has great structure and is still very lush without being at all fat on the tongue. This ends up being one of my favorite whites almost every year, and this vintage is no different - this is delicious. Lovely fruit on the finish. Perfect with shellfish or smoked slamon. No oak on this, thank goodness. Very nice. Drink now - early summer 2008. 4.0+nb
2005 Alvaro Palacios, Les Terasses, Priorato, Spain
Once again, a home run from one of Spain's most talented winemakers. That this wine delivers so much quality at about $32 a bottle is astounding (and much of the recent price increases are due to the sagging dollar, not profiteering by European winemakers). This bottle rivlals wines in the $75-100 range, and surpasses many of them. Loads of dark stone fruits annd vanilla from the liberal use of oak barrels gives this a heady, modern nose, and the palate delivers intense flavors of dark plums and berries, minerals, wood and coffee. IT is intense and needs a year or two to knit itself together, but even so this is delicious now. Drink 2008-2015. 4.0nb
Last Sunday, with H & T and CC:
1998 Maculan, "Fratta" IGT Veneto, Italy
This wine arrived in Colorado the last few weeks that my old restaurant, Primitivo, was open - and it was one of the few things I didn't send back to the wholesaler during that time. Fausto Maculan had apparently put my name on one of the few cases that had come over to the US after I'd expressed curiosity about this project during a long and wine-sodden meal near his hometown of Breganze. It has continued to evolve from the fruit-bomb of its youth into a beautifully elegant older wine - the fruit is still there, but with secondary and tertiary charachteristics of dried prune plums, rasins, cranberries and a full complement of earthy, mineral aspects to go with the now-subtle oak. This wine has knit together in a lovely and impressionistic way. The tannins have faded and the wine is soft and velety in the mouth. Drink now-2010.
4.0-nb
The image is of a statue of one of the Venetian Doges or some such muckety-muck, taken in Venice in the piazza next to the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo two weeks ago; I loved this light and the sky was gorgeous. I suppose I could have just taken a pic of the bottle of Fratta; instead, you have to settle for this.
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