Christmas revelry includes ultra-premium wine flight
Christmas Day, we made the rounds to the kid’s homes to celebrate the holiday with their families in their own homes. We’re blessed that all four of our kids, and our eleven grandchildren are all here in the area.
The afternoon stop at son Ryan’s house found him preparing a beef tenderloin for their gala evening celebration dinner with the in-laws. It afforded us the chance to taste the flight of wines he opened and set aside for the occasion.
As part of the tasting opportunity/experience, we brought along from our cellar a premium Napa red from the same appellation, and a vintage desert wine.
- Rogue River Blue
- Farmhouse Truffle Gouda
- Chardonnay Infused Creamy Toscana
- Brie
The wines flight:
- Antica Terra Anequorin Willammette Chardonnay 2020
- Hall Wines Stags Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon 2015
- Odette Stag’s Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon 2019
- Shafer “Hillside Select” Stag’s Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon 2006
- Alois Kracher Scheurebe TBA #9 Zwischen den Seen 2001
- Giraud Sauterne 2013
Antica Terra “Anequorin” Willamette Valley Chardonnay 2020
Antica Terra is a boutique winery with an 11-acre vineyard located in the heart of Oregon’s Willamette Valley on a rocky hillside with steeply pitched grades and panoramic views of the surrounding land in the Eola-Amity Hills, founded by John Mavredakis, Scott Adelson and Michael Kramer.
Very unique and distinguishable - Greenish golden straw colored, medium bodied with tightly wound, intense brilliant focus, vivid bright vibrant razor-sharp acidity, complex textured ripe layers of fresh pear and orange citrus with notes of hazelnut, melon the producer refers to as Brioche and salted butter and oak notes on a long crisp tangy finish.
RM 93 points.
Hall Wines Stags Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon 2015
This is sourced from the Schweizer (75%) and Bench (25%) vineyards in the Stag’s Leap District AVA of Napa Valley The vineyards are bounded on the east by the warming Stags Leap Palisades, on the west by rolling hills and the Napa River, on the north by the Yountville Cross Road, and on the south by flatlands.
Legend has it that quick and nimble stags would escape the indigenous hunters of southern Napa Valley through the landmark palisades that sit just northeast of the current city of Napa. As a result, the area was given the name, Stags Leap.
This 2015 Hall Stags Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon was rated 97 points by Robert Parker, 95-97 by Jeb Dunnuck, and 93 points by Vinous.
@HALLWines
Odette Stag’s Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon 2019
Plumpjack Estate Napa Valley Cabernet for meatloaf dinner, and in previous posts, Plumpjack Founders Reserve Cabernet, and Spectacular dining experience at Entourage Restaurant Downers Grove.
Odette Estate Winery was established in 2012, sitting on 45 acres straddling the Silverado Trail in the Stag’s Leap District in southeast Napa Valley. It was founded with a guiding philosophy of environmental responsibility and a commitment to preserving their special spot in the Stags Leap District for generations to come.
They subscribe to and practice Organic farming and their winery construction and operation reflect these priorities in their LEED designed facilities that promote a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five critical areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.
The winemaker for Odette is Andrew Haugen who gained interest in wine with the movie Sideways during his time at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He set out to deepen his knowledge, with his fascination with relationship between ‘site and soul’ in wines. Andrew joined the Plumpjack/Odette team in 2015 as Cellar Master, honing his skills and ascending to Enologist, Assistant Winemaker, and now Head Winemaker for Odette and also sister winery estate, Adaptation.
Dark garnet colored, full bodied, round, complex, concentrated ripe blackberry, black currant and black raspberry fruits accented by crème de cassis, licorice with notes clove spice and anise with bright acidity and smooth polished fine grained tannins on the long persistent finish.
Shafer “Hillside Select” Stag’s Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon 2006
The highlight of our tasting, was this vintage release of the iconic flagship of legendary Napa producer Shafer Vineyards. I’ve written in these pages about our holding the predecessor to this label back with the Reserve release of Hillside vineyard back in 1982, which became Hillside Select in the follow year vintage release. That happened to be one of our birth-year vintage wine holdings for son Ryan which I featured in this blogpost - Birthyear Vintage Wine for Family Birthday Dinner, excerpted below.
Shafer Hillside Select is a classic Napa Valley premium label dating back to 1983. The prior year, 1982, was Ryan's birthyear, and for that vintage, Shafer produced this Hillside Vineyard Reserve Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon which thereafter from the following 1983 vintage would be known as Shafer Hillside Select.
Hillside Select is sourced from a collection of rugged, arid vineyard blocks that surround the winery in the Stags Leap District in Southeast Napa Valley.
Founder John Shafer was a native of Chicago, hailed from northern suburb Glencoe, and lived for a time in nearby Hinsdale, Illinois. He moved to Napa Valley in 1972 when the Shafer family purchased a 209-acre property including 30 acres of Scansi’s vineyards. In 1973-74 Shafer planted Cabernet Sauvignon, creating small hillside vineyard blocks such as Sunspot and John’s Upper Seven.
In 1978, John produced his first Shafer Vineyards wine, a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from fruit sourced from John’s Upper Seven vineyard, a precursor to Hillside Select.
Doug Shafer joined his father John as winemaker in 1983. When he tasted the 1982 lot from the Sunspot vineyard block he was so impressed he talked John into keeping it separate from the others. With the Sunspot lot, Doug created this label, Shafer’s one and only Reserve Cabernet. Starting with the 1983 vintage, in 1984, the Reserve was rebranded as the first release ofHillside Select.
That inaugural release of Hillside Select, and those since, are sourced from the collection of 14 small vineyard blocks planted within an eons-old amphitheater-like structure of rock and volcanic soil that surrounds the winery. With scant soil nutrients and moisture, yields at harvest are meager and the berries are small, producing lush Cabernet Sauvignon fruit with dark color and intense, classic flavor.
I wrote about Shafer Vineyards in a detail blogpost back in 2021 as part of my review of the book A Vineyard In Napa by Doug Shafer, that chronicles the founding and history of Shafer Vineyards in Napa Valley
It is about the life of John Shafer, a Chicago businessman, and his pursuit of a dream when he decided to pursue a second career by buying a plot of land that included a vineyard in Napa Valley back in the early seventies.
He moved his family from their comfortable suburban lifestyle in an adjacent suburb from here, to a remote mountainside farmstead in rural northern California, and set upon developing vineyards, and ultimately, building a winery, a business and a brand.
The book, narrated by Shafer’s son Doug, follows their dual careers as they lived the history of Napa Valley and the American California wine business. Through it they learned the challenges, travails, science, technology and handicraft of planting and growing grapes, crafting wines, and building a brand and wine business- the three legs of the stool, as they called it.
This release was awarded 96 points by Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, 95 points by Connoisseurs' Guide and James Suckling, 94 by Wine & Spirits, and 92 points by Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast which also coined it a “Cellar Selection“.
Winemaker notes for this release - “A newly opened bottle of 2006 announces itself with lifted, aromatic beauty. The lively, elegant nose is followed in the mouth with a core of juicy, black fruit, chocolate, black plums, cassis, black and red cherry, black tea, and vanilla and spice. Ripe, round, Stags Leap District tannins put together good structure for very long term aging.”
Dark garnet colored, full bodied, powerful, textured, rich, structured core of concentrated black berry and blackcurrant fruits framed by complex layers of bitter dark chocolate, licorice, cassis, cedary camphor, minty pine and lead pencil graphite with full round tannins on a long long lingering finish, well oaked, having been aged in 100% new French barrels.
RM 95 points.
https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=544877
Source of Austria’s finest botrytized sweet wines, the Burgenland covers a lofty portion of Austria's wine producing real estate consisting of the smaller sub-regions of Neusiedlersee, Neusiedlersee-Hügelland, Mittelburgenland and Südburgenland.
Neusiedlersee, named for the lake that it surrounds to the east, is home to a great diversity of grape varieties but the region’s most notable wines, however, are the botrytis-infected, sweet versions.
We hold more than a dozen labels and vintages spanning more than two decades of Kracher premium dessert wines. We enjoy serving them for special occasion dinners with fellow eoephiles that appreciate the label.
This means that the grapes have been left on the vine to ripen to the point that they gain a high sugar content, individually picked and are shrivelled with noble rot, often to the point of appearing like a raisin. They are therefore very sweet and have an intensely rich flavor, frequently with a lot of caramel and honey bouquet, stone fruit notes such as apricot, and distinctive aroma of the noble rot.
This release was rated 94 points by Wine Spectator and 91 points by Wine Enthusiast.
At 23 years of age, the label and foil, and most importantly the fill level and cork were in pristine condition. The color had evolved from straw to butter to gold to weak tea to tea colored.
