Christmas Eve, I have 10 guests for dinner. C & C show up with their two sons A & R before dinner for a drink (pic). For dinner, good friends all: H & T From next door, C & MB with their four sons, M and K - We start off with Aubry's Brut Champagne "Ivoire et Ebene" - sweetly delicious. After the first course, the three younger boys retire to watch a movie - we continue full-throttle with a Roast leg of Lamb, with polenta, seared kale and mushrooms. 
By the end of the meal, we're all howling with laughter, and decide that the best way to celebrate the season is to watch the original South Park short - the infamous "Jesus vs. Santa Claus" project. I love the sweet colorforms kids with serious pottymouth.
The next day, I sleep though my alarm (insomnia again) and wake 10 minutes before the doorbell rings - C & MB have invited me to join them downtown to help serve at the "Miracle on Tejon Street" event for the homeless. Kudos to Dave and Terry Lux and the Concept Restaurants for hosting this - we serve about 450 people from 10-2. I'm on stuffing duty in the serving line. This is a great event and I had a blast - everyone is really friendly, and the whole event is touching and makes me a bit sad in a deeply positive way - it's always good to be reminded of how much I have. Back home, I finish cleaning the kitchen - it kinda looked like the inside of a food processor. (Really. I was finding bits of things in the darndest places - a fleck of polenta on top of the fridge, a sprig of very wilted rosemary in a cabinet (???) - so everything gets a good wipedown.) At 6 I head east to D & T's home for dinner.
It's a pleasure to sit with them and their two kids in the kitchen, catching up. The four dogs run underfoot - though it's hard to conceive of a 200-lb Irish Wolfhound named Hagrid as "underfoot." Too bad "overfoot" isn't a word. T has baked a brie to start, we accompany this with Billiot's Cuvée Latetia Champagne. D has deep-fried a turkey for the occasion, with beans, mashers, stuffing and an excellent brown gravy made with, appropriately enough, Wild Turkey. We end up sipping brandy and grappa in front of a fire after dinner. D&T and I were all in college and graduated together in 1986. Though we see a lot of each other, it's fun to catch up and laugh over the past.
Christmas Eve:
2000 Aubry, Brut Champagne "Ivoire e Ebene"
Surprising and delicious. Some new oak on the nose and palate, but nicely wrapped around the fruit and white spice core. This is sexy in a way that reminds me of Billiot's Cuvée Julie - modern, yes, but super-delicious. (4.0-nb)
1995 Pertimali di Livio Sassetti, Brunello di Montalcino, magnum
Livio Sassetti is one of my favorite people in Montalcino - he took me around his winery three years ago, reciting verse in the local dialect while initiating me into the mysteries of Brunello. I'd loved the wines from Montalcino for years, but had never gotten the 400-level master class that I got that day - eyeopening. With his Brunello, Sassetti is a staunch traditionalist - no new wood (his "Fili di Seta" bottling is a lovely example of a modern wine aged in new oak) and the viticulture is determined by moon phases, very pagan and all that. The wines are magnificent - he showed me his single remaining bottle of 1913, which has the color of a 10-12 year old wine. 1995 was not the greatest vintage in Montalcino, but Sassetti fashioned a wine that reflects the vintage well - it is dark fruits and earth in the nose, with licorice and spice, and the palate is austere without being shrill. The elements have balanced very nicely, and this wine should be drunk up. This magnum was still showing good fruit, but I suspect that all but the best-stored 750s may be starting to fade. Lovely long finish. (4.0+nb)
1997 Poggio Antico, Brunello di Montalcino, magnum
Hints of green stewed vegetables on the nose, with red fruits and cedar wood. Given the excellent 1997 vintage, this should have been better, I think. Poggio Antico is not on my list of top producers but i have found them to be reliably competent over the years. (if you go, the restaurant at the winery is excellent.) On the palate, I found this a bit thin, but the fruit was still present as was the annoying greenness. Eh. (2.0nb)
Christmas Day:
nv Henri Billiot, Brut Champagne "Cuvée Laetitia"
The importer Terry Theise describes this best, so I'll just quote him from his latest catalogue:
"It tells you something when you consider that a 3,750-case estate produces two Têtes de Cuvée; says there’s a wine-freak at the helm who never had a marketing-thought in his life. Though it has always been majority-Chardonnay, Billiot has increased the proportions lately. Old bottlings of Laetitia (which I dearly wish I’d kept, damn it) were fathomless and sometimes inscrutable. Leviathans of vinosity, but you had to tuck in
and live with a bottle for an hour or so. Not any more. What I tasted was entirely open and forthright, with clear intensity and more Chardonnay hawthorne. It’s nowhere near “modern” but it is more up-to-date; there’s more greengage and spiciness, more scallop and saffron, and less of the funky temperament we knew (and yes, loved). This stacks up against any Champagne you’ll ever find; a true Tête de Cuvée.
"In principle this is an ongoing solera freshened whenever there’s wine of sufficient quality; this one goes back to `83 (though last year he said `85; things are a little fungible with our hero sometimes) but in any event it is a tremendousshowing for this lovely wine; focus, power and complexity, wonderfully direct with ultra-fine diction; nervy and incisive, long and intense. Is there a better value anywhere in Champagne?"
I loved the wine, as usual: lovely pear and apple and peach, minerals, an appealing orange peel element. Long and sinewy in the mouth, long and velvety on the finish. (4.5-nb)
1990 Guigal, Côte-Rôtie "La Mouline"
A legend. La Mouline contains the highest percentage of Viognier of the three single-vineyard Guigal offering, and the aromatics on this are fantastic. It is all bacon fat and cassis, with mineral and oak. On the palate, the flavors have matured beautifully - this is an intensely flavored and hugely structured wine - but it has no sharp edges. Wow. The finish goes on and on - all silky fruit and velvety mature tannins. (4.5nb)
1997 Antinori, Brunello di Montalcino, "Pian delle Vigne"
A fruit-forward, very sexy offering, completely different from the last wine (duh.), but delicious nonetheless. Loads of black cherries, cedar and dark chocolate, sweet and voluptuous in the mouth, nicely round and appealing. The finish is nice, but cuts off a bit abruptly for my taste. (3.0-nb)
Jacopo Poli, Brandy "Prugna"
Poli explained to us that he'd made this bottling for the US market but was having a bear of a time getting it past the FDA. Too bad, because this is delicious - a brandy made from prune plums with almond extract. It's like the best marzipan dessert you've ever had in your life. I'm not a big fan of sweet liqueurs, but this knocks my socks off every time I have it. (4.5nb)
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