By AJ McClellan
Yesterday was a classic day at Graileys! One of those days where a good group of friends get together and everyone starts trying to fool everyone else with fun blinders… Well, I can say that while all the wines opened were fantastic, we all failed miserably and calling them.. haha! I was a big fan of all the wines, but the below three were the rock stars of the night for me.
1979 Pichon Lalande – I am a huge fan of these wines, I have tasted the 79 mutable times and it never fails to impress. The 79 is drinking great right now, but I feel that it is on the backside of its aging curve and the time to drink the wines are now… That being said, this wine was smoking! Big tobacco on the nose with a smooth, dry palate. Dry, dusty, dark fruits were flourishing once the wine was opened and there was a nice minerality with moist soil and forest floor on the back end. Huge tobacco and mocha came out in the glass after half an hour with chewy tannins that left a long finish.
1991 Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Gris – This Pinot Gris was AMAZING! We served it blind and the wine fooled everyone, getting called everything from Grand Cru Burgundy to Coulee de Serrant, and even Alsatian Riesling. This is the second time I have tasted the bottle and it is unlike anything I would expect. The wine is waxy on the palate, almost like a white Bordeaux. White peach, tangerine, and pear exploding from the nose complimenting a silty minerality. The palate has something I can only describe at green apple wax combined with stone fruit and a beautiful note of dried white flowers. This wine only gets better with 3 hours in the glass, if it wasn’t so good I could have left it in the glass to see what else it would do but 3 hours was all I could stand… A great wine and a very pleasant surprise…
2004 Chateau Tour Grise – This was a super cool bottle of bubbles. Completely bone dry with beautiful mineral notes of limestone and granite. This wine was not expensive but it was so different for anything else that it was like a breath of fresh air.
Other wines of the night were – 2005 Yalumba Octavius, 2000 Three Hills Shiraz, 1976 Pichon Lalande, 2012 Perfect Seasons, 1997 San Felippo Brunello di Montalcino, 2000 Lynch Bages, 1999 Tignaello, 2009 Arnaud Ente Meursault, 2011 Newton Chardonnay, 2005 Ramey Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay, 2005 Dominus