Tuesday, December 27, 2016

What Did We Drink Over Christmas?

Strangely enough, my Christmas this year did not involve any Champagne nor Sparkling Shiraz. Christmas Day was whites with seafood.

The Batard-Montrachet was good, featuring tropical fruit, but a little bit on the fat/flat side. The Lovedale Semillon was just as good, with fresh and intense lime flavours, for a fifth of the price.

Boxing Day was the big one, wine wise.

The 2011 Grosset Polish Hill was excellent, given the wet vintage. The 1996 Penfolds Grange was astounding. Really fresh, with an intense aroma, and on the palate concentrated and intense blackberry with a deep core of mocca - classic Grange. Noble One is always liquid honey.

What was your favorite drink over Christmas? Please comment.   

5 comments:

Bjorn said...

Belated Merry Christmas to you......many wines but the highlight was my last Pierre Gimonnet 2006 Paradoxe Champagne shared with my 86 year old mother.Fantastic wine....dry,very crisp acid,great line and length.My mother,born in what was then East Prussia,was most impressed.

Alontin said...

Fantastic! The power of special wines!

kr1 said...

Mostly whites this year with a smattering of reds.
Jauma Pet Nat to get things started followed by a number of sparkling wines (Deviation Road Loftia and the O'Leary Walker Hurtle were excellent). We had an excellent 93 Seppelt Pertalunga Chardonnay which went very well with a vegetarian terrine! A couple of rieslings followed by an 02 389 which drank very well.
Finished this off with a boozy trifle and a 06 Hobbs Semillon (late harvest).

your notes on the 96 Grange are consistent with my last impressions from a couple of years ago. It is a real gem of a wine and I reckon the right bottles will last a very long time to come. I am chuffed to hear about the 11 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling, Jeffrey Grosset seems to have cooked some really special wines in that vintage. The Pinot had great length and drank well for over a week.

Alontin said...

Hi Ranjan,

You have to explain to me how you drink a bottle of Pinot Noir for a week, ha,ha.

You (or someone) have a very deep cellar of interesting old wines. Patience pays off most of the time. Well done!

Thomas

kr1 said...

it is not easy... Quite a bit of patience and using the refrigerator to store the wine at a cooler temp seems to help the wine last longer..
Younger grosset pinots seem to handle this treatment ok.