It just wouldn’t be Christmas without The Wine Raconteur, Jr., a sobriquet that he gave himself, when he guest wrote a couple of articles for me.  We met when I was posting a job at his college and he immediately responded and we have been pals ever since.  Even our Brides get along, and they probably both think that I am daft, but that is a common perception. He wanted to host, to make it easier for his children to do their thing, after dinner, they would probably be bored at our house.  So, we brought the wine.

We started out with some appetizers, assemble charcuterie snacks, mixed olives, and freshly roasted nuts.  And I brought out a bottle that my Bride and I have been waiting to have, but it had to be with the right couple that could appreciate the wine.  I brought a bottle of a rather unknown white wine that carries the Appellation Bordeaux Controlee, which would not be all that remarkable, except that this wine is Chateau d’Yquem “Y” Ygrec Bordeaux 2017 and not Chateau d’Yquem Sauternes that was famous and still has representation in the wine cellar of Thomas Jefferson.  Chateau d’Yquem is by far the most famous dessert wine in the world and has definitely made the Sauternes district of Bordeaux prime real estate.  In the Classification of 1855 of the Medoc, it was the only estate to be rated as Premier Cru Supereiur and it still is, and while most say it will be great for a good fifty years, there are others that feel that it is the longest-lived wine and may be eternal.  The Yquem estate was owned by the King of England in the Middle Ages and has been producing late-harvest wines since at least the late 1500’s.  It is a two-hundred-ninety-acre vineyard situated on the highest hill in Sauternes.  Possibly the ideal setting to produce sweet wine; a warm, dry topsoil of pebbles and course gravel over a subsoil of clay that retains water reserves which aids the development of “noble rot” and the property has about sixty miles of drains to prevent waterlogging.   There have been nine vintages that were never produced in the last century, because the wine did not meet the specifications required.  The estate was under the Lur-Saluces family from 1785 to 1999 when it was sold to the luxury brand LVMH.  Y or Ygrec is a rather rare wine for the estate as they produce about ten-thousand bottles each year.  It was originally made at the end of the harvest with the last bunches of grapes since 1959 and in 1966 the selection of the grapes changed and the wine is basically Sauvignon Blanc (eighty percent) picked at the beginning of the harvest and a small amount of Semillon with Botrytis (twenty percent) and in 2004 the brand was to be produced every vintage.  They now have a state-of-the-art vat room just to make this wine and it is vinified first in Stainless Steel vats, and no Malolactic fermentation; and the aging on the lees take place in French Oak, of which half is new, for an average of ten months, and regularly stirred for the ten months.  There is no second label for either wine produced at the chateau.  A beautiful golden colored wine that offered notes of grapefruit and tangerine.  On the palate tones of peaches, apricots, and pears with refreshing salinity and bright acidity that finally ends with a fantastic finish of dried mango and pineapple and a wonderful slate terroir.  This was just beyond any White Bordeaux that you will ever encounter.  Dinner could have ended here. 

The second course was a Rosted Pork Tenderloin with a side of Smashed Potatoes, and both were exceptional. The wine we had was Familia Fernandez de Manzanos “Manzanos Red Wine 1955 Spain.” Bodegas Manzanos is a large wine producer in Spain, founded in 1890 and is now run by the fifth generation of the Fernandez de Manzanos family.  They are in the top three of Navarra and the top five in Rioja for production and they own ten wineries.  The original winery for the family is in the Rioja Alta zone back in 1890.  The newest generation has been going through all the facilities on all the properties.  Around 2020 they discovered a cache of bottles under canvases, forgotten and untouched since they bottled the wine 1961 Vino Tinto, so probably 1964/5.  They originally must have thought that the wine could use some additional maturation time in the bottle, and it was forgotten about in a hillside cellar.  History sometimes has a way of repeating itself.  A hidden cellar was discovered with three hundred some bottles of a 1955 vintage.  They contacted the Rioja Association who oversaw that each bottle was opened using inert gas and checked to have no flaws, poured into a Stainless-Steel vat.  Then new bottles, new labels and they ended up with about one-hundred pristine bottles of Familia Fernandez de Manzanos “Manzanos Red Wine 1955 Spain.” Some background on the wine.  This wine is a blend of Tempranillo and Garnacha (Grenache) from vineyards of  predominantly alluvial and clay-ferrous soils.  The fruit was harvested in the manner of the mid-Twentieth Century tradition of hand-picking in small baskets.  The aging was done in old oak barrels.  This wine offers a window into how Rioja wines were from that era.  The wine still had a nice garnet color with bright highlights to it, in the glass and it offered notes of dried fruits, spices, cocoa and an unmatchable nose of tradition and age.  On the palate there were tones of dried fruit, totally different from fruit-bombs that are the rage these days, and blended in with layers of sous bois (a descriptor that I seldom use, but for this wine, I guess it is imperative, and it is used to convey a wet forest floor – earthiness – an ethereal term) and old tobacco. 

For dessert The Wine Raconteur, Jr. made a Pear Tartine; he is much more elegant and refined than I am, and a far superior man in the kitchen.  I brought a bottle of dessert wine that took my breath away, and then the same thing happened when my Bride tasted it.  We opened a bottle of Roberts + Rogers Louer Family Cabernet Sauvignon Port Napa Valley NV.  I had no information about this wine, nor could I find any, it was like it didn’t exist.  I called and got ahold of Roger Louer, who I have met a couple of times at The Fine Wine Source and he gave me some information.  After the Cabernet Sauvignon vines were picked for the wines, they went out a picked whatever late-harvest berries were left on their St. Helena estate and they were reading around 25 brix and after fermentation they added brandy and got the wine down to nine percent sugar reading.  They only made one barrel of this wine, and they aged the barrel for one year.  They produced about forty cases, because they were the smaller 375ml bottles.  The wine was really made for their family and friends’ usage, but the wine shop and the winery have a long record of association and the shop got a few cases.   They have only produced this wine perhaps every five years or so, and I was told that in the future the bottles would read “Port-style.” The wine was a deep-dark red wine that offered notes of dried fruits, candied nuts, and spices.  On the palate there were tones of figs, black fruit, caramel, mocha, and nuts with a very long finish of dried fruit and nuts.  I just teased The Wine Raconteur, Jr. with tidbits of the wines I was going to bring, and his culinary skills paired flawlessly and it was a memorable meal.