Therefore, I was still thinking about Rieslings earlier in the week. I almost brought along a bottle of the 2008 Grosset Springvale Riesling to compare with their Polish Hill style from the same vintage when I was on Food in Focus last week, but as it was, we already had four bottles to try!
So I opened the bottle of 2008 Grosset Springvale Riesling to drink while blogging earlier in the week and to go with a salmon and cream cheese bagel for dinner. It was magnificent. It was lighter and with less mineral taste than the Grosset Polish Hill and very drinkable today (even though it will cellar a long, long time). It still had acid and strong minerals, but not like the Polish Hill which is over the top! It tasted of lime, grapefruit and lychee.
I love how versatile Riesling is. This one went well with salmon and cream cheese the first night and then we had the rest with Thai food the second evening and it matched up just as well.
I have been on a bit of a Riesling kick recently as it provides great variety in style and taste. Clare Valley makes premium Rieslings and it is difficult to go wrong with any Riesling from the area. Canberra is also known for their Rieslings. Try a few different ones and see what you like best. I love them all!
The majority of my cellar consist of wines that I have bought, usually by the dozen or more. I enjoy the opportunity to have a repeatable experience of drinking an excellent wine (I only buy wines by the dozen or more when I have had the opportunity to taste the wine), and I love tasting how a wine develops over multiple years.
Yet, I am often gifted wine or have ended up with the ‘loose’ or odd bottle. Sometimes these bottles represent excellent wines and I am aware of the wines characteristics and how it will taste. Sometimes I have ended up with a crap bottle of wine, best used for cooking or to pass onto someone who is looking for the alcohol experience more than the wine tasting experience. But the most interesting bottles are the ones I know nothing about, but have some indication they may be an interesting wine.
In the past several days, I have pulled out two bottles of wine that I knew nothing about. The first one was a 2001 Courtney’s Post Pinot Noir from Marlborough, NZ and the second, a 1996 Carindale Chardonnay from the Hunter Valley. Both fortunately proved to be excellent bottles of wine!
Not knowing anything about these wines, I was uncertain what to expect. I also had the concern that both wines being past their best drinking periods as Pinot Noir does not last well to a decade or beyond and neither does Chardonnay for the most part. However, you are often blessed to find a bottle that defies the normal structure of the grape and the aging process. Both of these wines surpassed my expectations by a far mark.
I knew who had given me the Pinot Noir and I was concerned as I had some nice bottles from him previously that had not been cellared properly and had not stood up well. But the 2001 Courtney’s Post Pinot Noir was great. It was sweeter than most Pinot Noirs I have had and still retained a lot of fresh fruit with slight overtones of smoke. My loved one had cooked up a tremendous pasta, chicken, cheese and broccoli casserole where she refused to follow the recipe and added some hot chile sauce and bacon among other things. It was unbelievably good! While I would usually match a younger Chardonnay to go with it, I had the Pinot Noir and it worked fine. While not a perfect match, the wine and the food were both enjoyable. I would not consider a Shiraz or even a decent Cabernet Sauvignon with a chicken, cheesy pasta dish, but the Pinot Noir was suitable enough.
The next night, I finished the 2001 Courtney’s Post Pinot Noir with a serve of FAT (Feta, Avocado, Tomato on Toast) and that worked well also even though it was not a perfect match. I think a lot of white wines would have gone well with the FAT, including Pinot Gris and Semillon. But again, while not a perfect match, the Pinot Noir worked well enough with FAT. I then had a sip of the Pinot Noir with mango and that did not work! (I will be writing a separate post a bit later on what wines to drink with veggies and fruits.)
But the strange thing was that I could not find any references to Courtney Post wines, either through Wine-Searcher Pro or through Google. They may have gone out of business, but I was expecting to find something about them somewhere. (I must admit that while I did not try exceptionally hard to find a reference to them, I certainly thought it would be easier than it was!) This was an exceptional wine for which I can find no history. This is the reason I do not buy single bottles – I would have liked to repeat this experience, but sadly, it has become a ‘one-nighter!’
Tonight, we are having leftover chicken pasta with cheese, broccoli, bacon and chile and I really wanted a Chardonnay to go with it tonight. I had to scramble and only found two bottles of Chardonnay in my apartment. Since one was a 2007 La Belle Voisine Chassagne Montrachet, I decided to go with the other one, that being the 1996 Carindale Chardonnay from the Hunter Valley. When I checked Google this time, I did find a reference and found out it was a Hunter Valley winery that made aged Chardonnay among other wines. And they are just down the road from Waverley Estate on Palmers Lane who also specialize in aged Chardonnay and Semillon.
I have no recollection of who gave me this bottle or how I came in contact with it. But it is delicious! I cannot discern a specific fruit flavor to it – it tastes more like a finely blended fruit cocktail, but less sweet, in fact, a bit minerally. Yet, the texture is somewhat viscous which I really enjoy in a well-aged white wine, and it has a very long finish. This is a wine which fills and satisfies the senses! And look at the color of the wine! While not as golden and as complex as several of my ‘Top 5 whites ever,’ this is a great wine and still has some way to go. I expect it will be drinking even more beautifully in 3 – 5 years, and hope I can find a bottle to test my theory out!
Fortunately, they are still in business and just around the corner from our place in the Hunter Valley! I will be visitng them during my next visit to the Hunter Valley. While they are sold out of the 1996 (and 1998) Chardonnay, they still appear to have some of the 2000 Chardonnay left and if it is anything like the 2000 Waverley Estate Chardonnay (or their own 1996 Chardonnay), it will be a great drink!
I don’t always strive for the best food and wine match, even though I think it is usually worth the effort. Sometimes I just want to try a particular bottle of wine and will drink it with a meal. And while I don’t usually like single bottles of undiscernable heritage, I must admit that I got very lucky with these two bottles and they have provided a great drinking experience over the last few days. Some times it is worth taking a risk and going on a ‘blind date’ with a bottles. Even though it may not last a life time, it can still be a great one-nighter!
In Part 1, we discussed the impact of temperature on red wines. We will now do the same for white wines. The effect of temperature is even more profound than it is for reds.
In general whites are stored in quite cool temperatures. My long-term whites like my long-term reds are stored at 14 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit). But then I have usually about 6 – 8 ‘ready-to-serve’ whites in my kitchen refrigerator which are stored at 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit). This is too cold a temperature to serve most white wines. In general, excellent white wines (Montrachets and other aged Chardonnays and Semillons) should be served at 10 – 14 degrees Celsius (50 – 57 degrees Fahrenheit) to really release their great flavors and bouquet. Typically good white wines (Most other Chardonnays, Rieslings, Pinot Grigios, etc.) served at 7 – 10 degrees Celsius (45 – 50 degrees Fahrenheit) and bad white wines as chilled as you like!
Boxed white wines and lower quality white wines are usually served very cold as they are lacking flavor anyway. What most ‘bad’ white wine drinkers are looking for a a refreshing, cool drink and lots of alcohol! But if you want to get the most flavor out of a white wine that it has to offer, then you should warm it up a few degrees.
In the past, I made the mistake of storing and serving my white wines too cold, especially if I took an excellent white wine directly from the fridge. Now I tend to take the wine out of the fridge for about 15 minutes to let it rise in temperature a few degrees and become more flavorful. This is often accomplished by putting the bottle in a carrying case to bring to a restaurant and the time it takes to get to the restaurant is perfect in terms of the wine being a few degrees warmer. Or if I am going to serve it at home, I let it sit on the counter for 15 minutes before serving it.
For an excellent white wine, especially a great and aged Chardonnay, I now let the wine warm up to about 12 degrees or so. (Note that I do not actually take the temperature of the wine, but rather just feel the bottle and compare the bottle to room temperature.) A bottle such as a great Montrachet or the Penfolds Yatarnna deserve this type of treatment and you will definitely notice the improved bouquet of wine in your nose and taste of the wine on your palate.
I love taking a sip when it is still ‘too cold’ and swirling an excellent white wine around my mouth. The body temperature of my mouth warms the wine almost immediately and over several minutes, you can pick up a variety of different tastes that keep changing over time. It is an amazing experience and worth savoring!
Champagnes and sparkling wines are usually served even more chilled than while wines. For low-end sparklings, you can serve them at 4 – 6 degrees Celsius, but good Champagnes should be served at a somewhat higher temperature.
While difficult to discern by other than expert tasters, Chef de Cave Richard Geoffroy relates the different experiences he has had with the 1996 Moet and Chandon Dom Perignon Champagne:
at 8°C, mineral and a little closed, perfect with an oyster tartare
at 9°C, moderately open, to be matched with crayfish
at 10°, complements wild salmon magnificently
at 11°, chardonnay’s butter notes appear, volume amplifies
at 12°, delicate mushroom aromas appear
at 13°, pinot noir aromas, tannins! serve with a lamb tajine
at 14°, smoky flavours and yoghurt aromas are revealed
at 16°, aromas of meringue and walnuts, amazing intensity – magical with a tarte Tatin with candied violets
Most of us could not discern such differences in flavor, but some can. However, we can all learn from this and be appreciative of the difference a few degrees makes! BTW, if you want to do this experiment with a bottle at each degree between 8 and 16, it will cost you about $2,400 at $300 per bottle!
You deserve the enhanced flavor of letting a great white wine warm up a few degrees towards room temperature to enhance the taste. A number of people will take a great white wine directly out of their long-term cellar at 14 degrees Celsius (by now you should know this is 57 degrees Fahrenheit!) and serving it.
Right way – no ice
If you have removed white wine from the fridge or a Vintec where it has been stored ‘cold,’ and once it has warmed up a couple of degrees to release the flavors, you should place the white wine in wine storage container without ice (like in the photo to the left). This ensures the wine stays at the right temperature for a long time (hopefully long enough to finish the bottle!). If you put it in an ice bucket, it will return the wine to close to freezing, choking off the flavor. Therefore, I never use ice in any manner with good white wine. (Or you may consider just using a few cubes to counterbalance the room temperature.) If you are drinking bad white wine, then use all the ice you want, as you want to hide the poor flavor!
Wrong! Do not use ice!
We may not all have the discerning palate of Richard Geoffroy, but we can still greatly enhance our white wine tasting experience by making sure we are storing and serving the wine at the right temperatures.I have learned that there is great benefit in warming an excellent white wine up a few degrees before tasting it. Do some comparison testing and see if you do not agree!
And if this all seems just too hard, then for white wine, take it out of the fridge for 20 minutes before serving it and leave it at that. That is as good a rule of thumb as any.
