When I was growing up, Independence Day was quite the holiday.  When I was a kid, the day started with a parade, that wasn’t even a block away from our house to watch, then we had a barbecue, and then a walk to George S. Patton Park, where there was room for everyone with eighty-four acres, for a tremendous display of fireworks, and yes, it holds great memories for me, and just about everyone else that I grew up with.  I am kind of old-fashioned, because I still refer to national holidays by their original name like: Independence Day, Decoration Day, George Washington Day, Abraham Lincoln Day, and across the river up down south in Canada, my family also celebrated Dominion Day.  The parade was disbanded by a former mayor of Detroit, and the fireworks were usurped by the International Fireworks celebration on a day before either of the two countries celebrate, though my current city has a wonderful fireworks celebration tied into their anniversary of going from a township to a city, but the barbecue continues.  I have to admit that neither my Bride or I are barbecue chefs.  Our one son is, and he has an elaborate smoker and barbecue apparatus, and he invited us for dinner, as he was making ribs, we also brought seven filets for him to make as well.  The ribs fell off the bone, I was a very happy camper. 

Beside bringing the filets, we brought some wine, as if you might be surprised.  We started off with Korbin Kameron Semillon Moon Mountain District 2018. For years, I would hear how some of the famed Medoc houses made a barrel or two of white wine for their own consumption.  I also heard how some of the great houses of Sauternes would make a barrel or two of dry white wine for their own personal consumption as well. I guess that I would lump this wine with those, as there was only one barrel made, or to make it easier to understand, there were twenty-five cases produced.  Normally, I try to have all the notes for this wine, I had originally tasted this wine, a day prior to the official tasting, and I bought what I could be allotted, as the following day, the entire twenty-five cases were sold.  The wine is organically made, using indigenous yeasts, it started in Stainless Steel and finished in new French Oak.  A very pretty yellow/golden colored wine which at the age of six, was still showing youthful appeal of citrus and white florals.  On the palate there was still fresh citrus, and ripe pear mingling together and ending with a nice long finish of fruit and a touch of terroir.

 I also raided the cellar for a wine that we fell in love with, when we tasted it at the winery, shipped it home, illegally at the time, put it on the rack and let it rest for a little while.  We had a bottle of St. Supery Vineyards & Winery Meritage Napa Valley Red Wine 1995.  In 1988, The Meritage Association (now The Meritage Alliance) was created to promote handcrafted wines blended from traditional noble Bordeaux varieties.  Meritage is a coined word combining merit and heritage, and is pronounced to rhyme with heritage.  The first wine with the term Meritage was the Cosentino Winery “The Poet” 1986.  This wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc and the fruit came from their Dollarhide Ranch and Rutherford Estate Vineyard.  The winery it appears now call this wine “Elu” and is still being made by winemaker Michael Scholz and consultant Michel Rolland; and the “Elu” is aged for twenty-months in French Oak, of which forty-seven percent is new, so I will go out on a limb and opine that the production for the Meritage must be quite similar.   When I removed the capsule, I thought the cork looked perfect, so I used my waiter’s key, but I had to finish opening it with The Durand, which I am glad that I packed, just-in-case.  For a twenty-nine-year-old wine, the deep garnet red color was showing no signs of foxing.  The wine offered notes of black cherries, blackberries, currants and secondary notes of graphite, anise, spices, and oak.  On the palate the tones of the fruit had mellowed along with the tannins and reminded me of many thirty-plus-year-old Medoc wines that I have had over the years.  I was very impressed, especially after I noticed that the back label said to “drink now through 2010.”