Monthly Archives: September 2012

Chardonnay with chicken one night, Riesling with chicken the next!

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Last night we had some magnificent Chicken Pot Pies for dinner.  My lovely bride has posted the recipe in her blog DAZ in the Kitchen.  Make sure you enjoy these tummy warmers before spring gets truly on top of us (here in Australia – in the US you are now moving into Chicken Pot Pie season!).  These pot pies are easy to make and simply delicious!  Don’t just throw a Swanson frozen pie in the microwave if you are in the US either!  Follow the recipe and provide yourself a real treat!  (And serve Chardonnay with it!)

From my post yesterday, you understand that we choose a beautiful Chardonnay, the 2006 Penfolds Bin 144 Yatarnna to go with the Chicken Pot Pies.  Tonight we are having Orange Chicken for dinner, yet having a Riesling instead of Chardonnay as it will match with the food better.

So, why not just do Chardonnay again?  Yesterday, the food was tasty but mild, had a creamy sauce and a light pastry crust on top.  Not wanting to have either the wine or the food outshine the other, we choose a mellow Chardonnay to go match equally with the food in terms of taste and texture.  However, tonight’s meal is Orange Chicken, which uses a tangy-er orange concentrate, some balsamic vinegar and a few other ingredients.  Therefore, we needed an edgier, sharper wine and therefore it made sense to select a Riesling.

There are a lot of great Australian Rieslings, especially from Clare Valley, SA.  But my favorite Riesling of late comes from Alsace and Hugel.  We are drinking the 2009 vintage and it is a spectacular wine for the money.   We paid $30 per bottle for this.

I have some great Rieslings we paid $15 – $18 per bottle for, including Ladbroke, Leo Buring, Annie’s Lane, and Mamre Brook, but I did not have one of those chilled.  After this bottle of the 2009 Hugel Alsace Riesling, I will need to be more selective as I only have four bottles left and this is a truly spectacular wine.  In fact, this wine is so good, it is part of my second best wine meal ever!  I may need to see if I can source some more.

The 2009 Hugel Alsace Riesling has melon flavors and a long finish.  And dare I say, a slight taste of banana.  (Or maybe the banana impression is coming from the baking of banana bread by my wife today that is sitting on top of the kitchen counter!)

As an aside, the other thing I love about French wines, is the corks!  They still use corks more often than not (I am not sure I would find an Australian Riesling from 2009 with a cork – can anyone help me out here?), and such beautifully labeled corks.  I keep all of my labeled corks in a big basket (which I hope is filled some day!) and the French are helping me out here.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the value and the risk-adverse approach to using screw tops, but there is still an ambient experience of opening a cork, and looking at how it held up that is difficult to beat.  It is just one more small, but nice element to complete a lovely Sunday evening meal.

Bin 144 Yatarnna – Penfolds White Grange

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With the great success of Grange over many years, Penfolds has always been interested in the concept of the creating a ‘White’ Grange.  The Penfolds Bin 144 Yatarnna is as close as they have come and it is commonly referred to as White Grange.  It is made from reserved Chardonnay grapes and usually cost around $130 per bottle.  I was very fortunate to pick up several dozen of the 2006 Yatarnna for a good price when some were found and treated as excess stock by the dealer.

During the 1990’s, Penfolds tried a number of ‘trial bins’ in an attempt to create a White Grange before settling on Yatarnna.  And to be honest, Penfolds was looking for an iconic white wine to match Grange, but never really had to the intent of marketing any wine as White Grange.  This was a moniker of wine writers around Australia.

In 1992, Penfolds started creating a number of trial bins to create an iconic white wine.  I actually have four bottles of the 1995 Penfolds Adelaide Hills Trial Bin Semillon, which I bought in 1997 in a Melbourne bottle shop.  I have not tried one yet, but am now excited to find out if this wine was a mistake or not!  I was only spending between $12 – $18 per bottle then for wines I did not know anything about, but wanted to try.  (In 1997, I did pay $200 per bottle for several bottles of the 1992 Penfolds Grange which were released that year.)  Therefore, I am certain I did not pay more than $18 for the Trial Bin Semillon I picked up.

One of the characteristics of Grange is that is was built to last a very long time, and I expect they wanted to have the same characteristic for an iconic white.  Therefore, Semillon certainly would have been a good choice of grape to experiment with.  In selling off wine recently and thinning my stock, I had the four bottles of the 1995 Penfolds Adelaide Hills Trial Bin Semillon on sale for $10 per bottle!  Fortunately, nobody bought any.  I will be trying a bottle soon to decide if I have an unknown gem here or not.  If so, then I will gladly share the remaining bottles with some great friends, and if not, we will use the remaining bottles for cooking wine!

But back to the Penfolds Bin 144 Yatarnna.  This is one of the finest Chardonnays you will find in Australia.  I still like my Montrachets a bit better, but the Yatarnna is a great Chardonnay.  I am currently sipping a 2006 Yatarnna which is stunning and one of the better vintages.  (The first vintage of Yatarnna was in 1995.)  It has powerful lemon flavors and some peach and grass flavor.  It is mellow but with a slight edge and crispness.  This wine should drink well for another five years or so.

I selected this wine to go with my wife’s homemade chicken pot pie which is in the oven now!  I am looking forward to that combination and am sure she will have an upcoming recipe in her blog “DAZ in the Kitchen.”  This mellow, yet robust wine will match beautifully win the chicken pot pie.

I have been upset at some of the commercial finanglings of TWE with the Penfolds brand, and have sold off most of my Penfolds inventory, but I have a dozen of this great wine left.  My wife has an easy way to tell if a wine is outstanding or not, and that is to ‘not notice’ that the bottle has been emptied so quickly when it it just the two of us drinking it, and that always happens with the 2006 Penfolds Bin 144 Yatarnna!  In fact, my wife just took a sip and stated, “You see, this wine does all the right things.  You sip it, it hits my palate perfectly and goes right down without thinking about it.”

While I find fault in some of TWE’s commerical approaches (TWE owns Penfolds), I cannot fault Penfolds for the passion they have always exhibited in making great wines and the 2006 Bin 144 Yatarnna is one of them!

My 5th best wine meal ever!

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In a recent post, I list the wines that were consumed in my Top 5 wine meals ever.  They were all great meals, and you will notice that three of the five took place at The Cut Bar & Grill.  This is my favorite steak house in Sydney.  They have a great sommelier and wine list and a great menu.  It is a perfect place to host a business meal, or a personal celebration.  We frequent it regularly and usually order wine off the menu, but sometimes we ask if for a special occasion, we may bring our own wine.

The reason we do that is because we want to make the night even more special by having spectacular wine and being able to match the wine to the occasion and the people involved.  When we do this, The Cut Bar & Grill charge $25 per bottle for corkage which is very reasonable as they decant the wine, pour it for you and have to clear and wash the glasses and decanters.  It saves us a great deal of money also and allows us to spend more on their great food!

That is why The Cut Bar & Grill is one of our favorite places and is the venue for three of the Top 5 wine meals ever!  Make sure to frequent them and check them out.

For my fifth best wine meal ever, the situation and wines consumed were as follows:

#5 evening – My 59th birthday – November 26, 2011, at The Cut Bar & Grill

  • 2005 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon
  • 2000 Waverley Estate Chardonnay
  • 2000 Houghton Museum Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
  • 2000 McWilliams Mt Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
  • 1975 Lindemans Porphry 

We shared a great evening with best friends, Owen and Lucy, Ric and Cristina, and Kevin and Yanna.  The eight of us often share a great meal and wine together and everyone has a pretty good palate and enjoys good wines.

When at The Cut Bar & Grill, we usually start with oysters, a plate of cured meats and a plate of salami.  Plus they have the most amazing Sourdough bread served with oil and butter.  We will serve up the white wines with this course and relaxed conversation.

This is typically followed by our selection of some fine red meat, either the slow roast (prime rib for you Americans in the audience!), or a Waygu New York Strip or Scotch Fillet, or one of the other great steaks they serve .  This gives us ample time to enjoy the reds.

And finally, we move onto dessert from their great dessert menu and have an assorted cheese plate to go with the Sticky!

Each of the wines that evening was superb in it’s own right and made a good line-up for the evening.  The 2005 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon is among the best ever made – just look at all those gold medals!  This wine is crisp, yet polished and beautifully balanced.  It went great with the oysters.  While the famous 1999 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon is the iconic vintage, the 2005 vintage in the Hunter Valley was truly outstanding and in another ten years, this may pass the 1999 in reputation.  (Hope I can make my remaining few bottles last that long!)

Waverley Estate is known for their aged white wines, both Semillon and Chardonnay.  Their 2000 Chardonnay is spectacular.  This wine drinks like a Montrachet, but at about a quarter of the price!  It is rich, smooth and buttery.  This wine relaxes you after the crisper, more vibrant 2005 Tyrrell’s Vat 1.

We then opened the wine of the evening, the 2000 Houghton Museum Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.  I have never had a better Cabernet Sauvignon (except the 1991 Caymus Special Reserve from Napa Valley now that I think about it).  This wine is perfectly balanced, large fruit taste with the slightest taste of  smoke and leather.  I had a few bottles of this previously and it is ethereal.  This is one of those wines my wife would say is like “sex in the mouth” when drinking it.

I always like to start with the slightly lighter, more elegant red before moving onto the heartier Shiraz, which this evening was the 2000 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea.  This wine was a real treat.  I only had two bottles and this was the first one I drank.  The other was polished off last week at the #4 Best Wine Meal with my BPAY teammates.  This is an excellent wine, with good tannins, and lots of refined fruit and spice.  It is perfectly integrated and the amount of age on the wine was perfect.

Another highlight from this evening was the full bottle of 1975 Lindemans Porphry.  Wow, what a treat that was!  Any time you are drinking a 35 year old wine that still tastes as fresh as this one, you are in for a treat.  I am delighted to know I have another three bottles of this!  It has a rich honey taste which almost sticks to the inside of your cheeks.  Needless to say, it went well with dessert.

When drinking a line-up like this, it is important to get the wines in the right order, generally going from white to red to Sticky, and the lighter, crisper grape to sturdier, heavier grape (for example, the Cabernet Sauvignon before the Shiraz), and younger to older vintages.  Then the anticipation and satisfaction continues to build throughout the evening.

While this was a great evening, it does not compare to the four others I have mentioned.  Stay tuned as those will be described in future posts over the next several weeks.

If it’s Semillon, make it a Hunter Valley Semillon!

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In most parts of the world, except Sauternes and Australia, Semillon is a lesser known white grape compared to Chardonnay, Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc.  That is a shame because Semillon is an amazing grape highly influenced by terroir and goes well with a wide variety of food.  I love Semillon with eggs (my breakfast wine with an omelet or fritatta!).  It also goes well with Thai food, Indian food, pesto (at least I hope so because I am going to try that this evening!), denser fish, and some crustaceans.

It also goes well with cheese or on its own.  In fact, I am drinking a glass now as I write this blog.  I have a rare opportunity to spend the next few hours uninterrupted, writing and drinking wine, and my wine of choice this afternoon is Semillon.  I must admit that I thought a Riesling would go nice with the chicken and spiral pasta with pesto meal we are having tonight, but I wanted to try a Semillon, especially the one featured in this post, which is the 1999 Moss Wood Semillon.

Frankly, I only drink Semillon from the Hunter Valley or Botrytis Semillon in dessert wines from Sauternes; such as the world famous and world best Chateau D’Yquem (which I claim is the best wine in the world in a previous post).  Why would you do anything else?  Hunter Valley Semillons are without comparison.  I have had some Semillon from Margaret River blended with Sauvignon Blanc in the Pierro LTC which is an excellent wine for the money and the 25% Semillon makes the Sauvignon Blanc actually drinkable and a good wine to match with fish.  I do not enjoy Sauvignon Blanc as a grape.  For starters, it is the most identifiable and pronounced tasting grape there is.  If you cannot blind taste a Sauvignon Blanc, you are going to have a tough time recognizing any other type of grape.  Sauvignon Blanc just does not have the subtlety of flavor that the other grapes do.  People often describe Sauvignon Blan as tasting like “cat’s pee!”  This should be all the commentary we need to steer away from Sauvignon Blanc!

I was recently given a bottle of the 1999 Moss Wood Semillon.  Moss Wood is one of the premier wineries in the Margaret River and makes a magnificent Cabernet Sauvignon.  Therefore, if I was going to experiment with a Semillon away from the Hunter Valley, this would be a good one to try.

This wine is very flavorful with melon tastes and still has some acid.  However, it is not well balanced and seems like the flavors are fighting with each other and fighting my palette.  With 13 years of age, you pick up some great flavors (and it does have a beautiful color which provides anticipation that this will be a great wine – only to disappoint once you drink it), but for a museum Semillon, one could do far better back in the Hunter Valley.  (See my post on Museum Semillons for some great recommendations.)

I was told this wine had some variability with the corks, but the cork I removed was in perfect condition.  The bottle I have opened is as good as it is going to get for this wine.  It is enjoyable enough to drink and I will continue to write with a glass at my side and have some more with dinner, but it would not be among my favorites.  Twice I have brought this wine over to friends for a meal, but have not opened it, and glad I am tasting it alone as this is not a wine that I would delight in sharing.  Again, it is decent enough to drink, but with so many great, inexpensive wines, why go with a ‘decent’ wine?

If you are going to go for Semillon, make sure to get it from the Hunter Valley, or Sauternes if you can afford it!

Pinot Noir with Pork Chops tonight!

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My bride and I have some pork in our diet, usually when having Chinese dumplings or Yum Cha.  Or sometimes we will dice it and stir-fry it for a pork salad or mixed with rice.

However, it has been ages since I have had a man-size pork chop for dinner.  My mom used to make pork chops as regular fair when I was growing up, but I believe it has actually been decades since I have had a pork chop.  We are also having mash potatoes and salad to go with the chops.  I sure my bride will be publishing an upcoming post with the recipe in DAZ in the Kitchen sometime soon!  (in fact, she just posted the recipe and blog entry for great pork chops a bit ago.  Here it is at DAZ in the Kitchen.)

The pork chops are currently slow cooking in the oven for about five hours (and smell great BTW!).  Therefore, I expect them to be juicy and flavorful throughout.  I considered a few options for the wine, include Pinot Noir, a GSM (Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvedre) combination such as a Chateauneuf-Du-Pape Les Sinard, or a true Burgandy Pinot Noir.

A safe choice would have been the Bannockburn Pinot Noir from Victoria, but since this was a new dish and ripe with juices and flavours, I wanted something a little more adventuresome, not an easy, elegant, refined Pinot Noir.  I wanted a big, aged Pinot Noir with complex flavors and big fruit flavors.  A Charteris Pinot Noir from New Zealand could do the trick, but my Pinots from PJ (Chateris) are only three or four years old.  PJ’s Pinot Noirs are big and elegant at the same time and beautifully drinkable now.  However, I like to challenge my Pinot Noirs to age in complexity and show me how good they are in old age!  (Maybe this is a transference to something I am doing as I approach 60!)

I have had some 2003 and 2004 Pinot Noirs from Blueberry Hill in the Hunter Valley.  As you know, I favor the Hunter Valley for my Shiraz, Semillon, and Chardonnay.  I do not really buy Pinot Noir or Cabernet Sauvignon from the Hunter.  However, I there have been two Pinot Noirs I sampled and liked, including a specially blended (2005 and 2008 grapes) Pinot Noir from Sandalyn in Lovedale and the Blueberry Hill’s Pinot Noirs.  I bought four bottles of the 2003 and also several bottles of the 2004 Blueberry Hill Pinot Noir, but for some reason have never drunk them.

I always pick one of the bottles up and admire the beautiful labels used for the Blueberry Hill wines, but for some reason or another, have put it down and selected something else to go with dinner.  I actually cannot explain this, except to say that I am a creature of habit and only having been to the winery twice, I never got into regular tastings year-in, year-out like I have for some of my other Hunter Valley favorites.  Therefore, my beautiful bottles of Blueberry Hill have sat and collected dust!

If you know your Pinot Noir grape at all, you know many good bottles will go off after 10 years.  I have recently had some magnificent Pinot Noirs which have been 10 – 12 years old and really try to push this limit as the wine grows in complexity and elegance.  However, if you wait too long, it loses its flavor unless you like drinking the flavor of vinegar!  Therefore, if I have a dozen or more of one particular vintage of Pinot Noir, I will sample a bottle every couple of years (and enjoy it along the way!) to be able to determine the best time to drink most of the bottles.

Unfortunately, I did not do that with the 2003 Blueberry Hill Pinot Noir.  When I opened the bottle, my immediate reaction was that the wine was dead, and completely flavorless.  However, this was just from the neck of the wine after removing the cork.  When I decanted it, I could tell the color was still good and had not turned brown.  There was only a very slight indication of that.  And after decanting and pouring a glass (of course into my favorite Riedel Vinum Pinot Noir glass), I was able to nose some remaining fruit.  Upon tasting, I enjoyed plum and a bit of leather taste.  The texture was perfect with fully integrated tannins.

The wine is still very drinkable, but should have optimally been drunk in 2007 – 2009, not at the end of 2012.  The wine is somewhat fragile (notice the loose edge between light and dark red color in the glass in the picture above).  Therefore, while still flavorful, the flavor breaks down quickly in your mouth and does not have much finish.

I can tell this was a good bottle of wine, but should have been drunk when five years old, not at nine years of age.  I will need to drink the other bottles quickly and may use some of them for an educational tasting seminar, in terms of comparing a young, aging, mature and past due wine of the same grape and maker.

This wine is certainly good to drink with dinner and will go well with the pork chops and mash, but I did both myself and Blueberry Hill a dis-service to wait this long to drink it. I will need to stop by Blueberry Hill the next time I am in the Hunter Valley and get a couple of bottles of the current release.  They make a nice Hunter Valley Pinot Noir and not many Hunter Valley wineries can say that!  And thanks to Riedel for their Pinot Noir glass which help funnel and save the remaining flavor of this wine!  It’s a good thing my head isn’t smaller, or I might get it caught in the globe since I really do like to stick my nose in there!

Update two hours after opening bottle and with dinner:  This wine improved significantly, with the little bit of brackish taste having worn off.  It was a real treat with the pork chop and mash!  Well done to the cook and the winemaker!