Tis past Friday night, I went up to Bin 75 in Alpharetta again for a BYOB tasting. Keith had been busy so the full blind format wasn't in effect, but there were still a few folks and some great wines.
When I arrived, three bottles were already open on the table. I began with the 2006 Guidalberto from Tenuta San Guido, a wine I'm familiar with from our Vinitaly tastings. This is a great wine, but still needs a couple of years to really flesh out and show its full potential. Next I tried the 2005 St. Cosme Cote Rotie. This wine was young, but already showing plenty of fruit. The structure, the fruit, and the minerality were all in very good balance and made this a wonderful wine. I still think a few more years of age will make this wine even better, but it is a great wine already.
The third open wine was the 2005 Torre Muga Rioja. This wine is a more modern-styled Rioja and still shows some oak, but is a very nice wine that I think will balance out over the next few years.
After those three, we went to the wine I had brought. I had it in a brown nag, so we tasted it blind. I will admit, I'd have had no idea what this was, as the nose was initially a bit musty while the palate wasn't showing too much typicity. The wine was the 1997 Argiano Brunello, and while it ended up quite tasty, I still never really hit it as a Brunello.
After that, we had one more blind wine. We all agreed it was also a little aged, but the region did split us. I thought it could be a blended Chateauneuf, but in the end Keith had it right with a Northern Rhone. The wine was a 1999 Paul Jaboulet La Chappelle Hermitage, a legendary wine that was starting to lose its luster by 1999. I was amazed at the age here - a 1999 Hermitage shouldn't be showing this much age to me, but this wine didn't have more than a few years of life remaining.
Finally, we concluded the tasting with one more modern Spanish wine, the 2006 El Nido. This is considered a new Spanish blockbuster, but I have some real concerns. The wine seemed almost overly extracted with just gobs of fruit hitting you right off. There is some acidity here, but very little tannin to suggest that several years of aging could really balance this wine out. I see the initial pleasure one could get out of this wine, but after some of the other things we tried, it just didn't stack up.
Overall, the St. Cosme Cote Rotie was my winner for the night - this wine showed why I really do love Northern Rhones, and would probably drink them more than anything if I could afford to. The St. Cosme is actually fairly affordable for a Cote Rotie though, and I will probably look to add some to the cellar.
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