An Older and a Younger

Posted on December 29, 2018 by thewineraconteur

There we were, The Wine Raconteur Senior and Junior getting ready to sit down for dinner.  We had just finished having appetizers and now on to the main event.  It was even better because we had our Brides with us, as well as the family of the Junior.  The two of us go back quite a few years and always with great memories.  Let us just say that there is some twenty plus years that divide us apart.

For our Christmas dinner, my Bride had made her Bourbon Marinade Salmon, the dish that she is making quite often these days and to be quite honest, people have even started requesting it.  She also made Armenian Pilaf and Green Beans.  She finished off the meal with a Tiramisu cake.  It was not a real elaborate meal, but a good satisfying meal, that she had decided on, that would even keep the children happy and it did, as we were told that the daughter of The Wine Raconteur Junior has become quite the maven on Salmon, and my Bride passed the test.

The varietal of choice with Salmon for us is Pinot Noir, and I am sure that some may shake their head and think that I have totally lost it, putting a red wine with fish, but I really like the combination.  I find that the oily texture of Salmon especially depending on the marinade really harmonizes with a Pinot Noir.  All I had to do was go and pick out a wine from the cellar.   I found a nice older bottle of Talbott Pinot Noir 2007 from Monterey County.  I have a certain fondness for Talbott wines, just like I have a certain fondness for his parent’s neckwear line Robert Talbott.  This is the beauty of having a cellar, because the odds are that this wine would have been gone with a smaller collection of wines, but it was allowed to age and it really mellowed out.  I let it breathe for about an hour before dinner, and when I poured it, the color was still quite dark with no signs of softening or browning.  The nose, while not the strongest Pinot I have had, let me know that it was a Pinot.  The taste was so mellow and silky that I am not sure if I could have deduced that it was from Monterey County and I have had plenty from there over the years.  Of course, the dinner was still going strong, but the Talbott had evaporated, so I went and found a younger Pinot Noir for a comparison, and it was stellar in its contrast.  The Fort Ross Symposium Pinot Noir 2013 took over the balance of the dinner.  Fort Ross Winery used the fruit from the Fort Ross Vineyard and the wine is from the Fort Ross-Seaview the only sub-region from the Sonoma Coast AVA.  This youngster came out like gang-busters, but it sounds odd, but it was elegant and sophisticated even for its youth.  The fruit was very much evident, but not in a brassy-showy way.  I think both wines were equal in their star appeal, but definitely not clones of each other.  There was plenty of conversation about how each of the wines showed their style.  So once again, we can see that older and younger can be harmonious side by side and at the same table, in more ways than one.

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What a Difference

Posted on December 27, 2018 by thewineraconteur

Sometimes you don’t think about the difference between a craft wine and a commercial wine until they are side by side.  We were all excited to have another dinner with an old friend of mine, and now ours, The Wine Raconteur Jr. and his family.  His was one of the first dates that we had to hammer down, because his schedule is the most precarious, because of his work.  Since last year they hosted, it was time for us to host again, and the major concern was how were we to keep their children occupied after dinner, as we were pretty confident that we could keep the parents busy.

We started off the evening in the living room, and yes, we are one of those old timers that actually use our living room, and it is not a museum piece that you walk by to get to another room.  We had munchies and appetizers arranged to nosh on, prior to the dinner.  Appetizers can always be a hit or a miss, especially when you factor in children, but their children are perfect miniature adults with an attention span and that is so refreshing.    The fresh shrimp with a cocktail sauce is always a safe bet.  The other safe bet, or so I thought was baked Brie with almond slivers, and that was kind of OK, the almonds weren’t the hit we thought they would be.

It was the wines during this course that really surprised me, as we have had the wines before, but not side by side and they were both wonderful.  We started off with Podere Ciona “Ciona Rosé” Toscana IGT 2016.  Franca and Franco Gatteschi were looking for a place in the countryside to retire to and found this one-hundred-acre estate with a house from the 18’th Century that had been abandoned for about forty years.  They purchased the property in 1990 and spent three years working on the main house.  They also started planning a winery and in 1997 they had their first official vintage.  They are located in the commune of Gaiole in Chianti Classico country.  They had been making a Rosé for a couple of years using Sangiovese, the grape of Chianti and Cabernet Franc, unfortunately one year the local wild boars decimated the Cabernet Franc vines, so this particular vintage is made from pure Sangiovese, and was aged for three months in Stainless Steel.  The entire production of this wine was a hundred cases of wine, and my local wine shop got the monopoly on the allotment of the United States quota.  The wine had a nice dark salmon pink color, with a nose of fruit and herbs, with tastes of strawberry, and watermelon.  It was a very easy drinking wine which just flowed along with the conversation.  We ran out of this wine, but there was another rosé wine in the refrigerator that has become kind of a go-to for us from the Wagner Family of Wines.  We opened up a bottle of Meiomi Rosé 2017 that was predominately Pinot Noir.  The wine carries a California designation as the fruit came from Monterey, Sonoma and Santa Barbara Counties.  It was cold fermented and aged in Stainless Steel.  It had a pretty color and was very easy to drink.  Now getting past the fact that the two wines were made from different grapes all together, the Podere Ciona was night and day superior on all counts and there was really no price differential between the two wines, but the craftmanship and texture was just amazing.  As a side note, afterwards we had to go back and get some more of the Podere Ciona for the house.

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Our Christmas Wish to You

Posted on December 25, 2018 by thewineraconteur

We just want to make sure that we get a chance to wish everyone a Happy and Merry Christmas full of love, luck, health and happiness.  I will let you in on a little secret, a Raconteur is never out of stories to relate.

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It is Time to Hide

Posted on December 23, 2018 by thewineraconteur

“A man’s home is his castle” is an idiom that is bandied about and some claim that it derives from Cicero and others from Blackstone.  I found an evening where valor was the knowledge of not trying to demand that concept and hiding in an eyrie.  All I know is that it was the annual Ladies Christmas Party that my Bride has been hosting since before I ever appeared on the horizon.  While some may question why I avoid this scene, instead of trying to be a co-host, I will say that it is better to be invisible.  For years, I never had a problem, as I would be working and by the time I got home from retail, the party would already be coming to an end.  The party is always the following Friday after the Thanksgiving weekend, and Thanksgiving is our demarcation day to have all of the presents wrapped, bundled by family, the Christmas/Hanukah cards with newsletters mailed and all parcels going out of state.  In the old days when I would arrive home, it was basically a hello and goodnight greeting rolled into one, but now I am there prior to the madness, and I am there afterwards.

How my Bride coordinates it all, is beyond all imagination.  The evening begins with basically is a Ladies pot-luck, and for some odd reason women prefer noshes to meals, so think of a barrage of small plates of appetizers, entrees, sides and desserts that seems to make no sense, but in the end, there is a complete meal.  Some of the dishes are plates are to die for (can a man say that?), while others are pre-packaged from the “catering” section of a local grocery store.  My job after carrying most of the winter coats upstairs, is to hide.  Of course, as I am writing on my computer upstairs in the office, I can hear when the “dinner” has commenced and I wait as the crowds go through and then reseat themselves back in the living room, the dining room or in the breakfast nook.  Then I become a Ninja and hastily make a couple of plates of goodies to take back up to the office, before they begin the next phases of the evenings.  My Bride besides maintaining photo albums of each event, keeps logs of the gift exchange and the part that I really wish to hide from, the moment when each participant gets up and announces what they hope to accomplish in the following year, and of course someone (I wonder who that is?) can remind them what their aspirations were the year before.  One lady that had moved away for business and had just returned, thought she was safe, but her aspirations from the last time she had been here was duly noted from that year’s log.  Did I mention that the Ninja actually makes a couple of sweeping attacks to the kitchen, I mean who wants to see Shrimp Cocktail, spectacular Deviled Eggs and fried chicken go to waste, and I mean this is about the only time for a year that I get to eat fried chicken?

In the library, just off the foyer opposite the living room, we set up a table near the Christmas tree with adult libations.  There is an assortment of different liquors and liqueurs that are the current trendy items for those that want a cocktail or two.  Then there is the collection of wines, which include my Bride’s assortment of go-to Chardonnay wines that I probably write about too often, because she is a creature of habit; I mean she still drinks the same Scotch since I have met her, even with me buying her an extravagant blended Scotch that she doesn’t like as much as her blend.   Then there are a couple of treacly sweet wines that are necessary in today’s society that I try to refrain from writing about, because I might become more of a social pariah than I already am with my writings.  I put out a bottle of red wine, even though most of the time, I hear that the wines are too dry.  I put out a bottle from the Columbia Valley in Washington state, and one of the largest AVA areas in the country, as it basically has all the smaller AVA districts within its huge district.  The MERF Cabernet Sauvignon 2018 is from the hands of David (MERF) Merfeld who grew up on a family owned farm in Greene, Iowa.  David ended up moving to Seattle and was employed by a construction inspection company and started brewing beer as a hobby.  In 1996 he quit his day job and went into brewing full time while attending beer school and in 1997 was hired at Bert Grant’s Ales as a brewer, which was owned at that time by Ste. Michelle Wine Estates.  It didn’t take long before he was working for Ste. Michelle as a winemaker.  He now makes his own wines which are cellared and bottled at MERF Wines in Paterson, Washington.  This particular wine is eighty percent Cabernet Sauvignon, nineteen percent Merlot and a whopping one percent of Cabernet Franc.  Seventy-five percent of the juice was aged for twelve months in a combination of French and American Oak, with the remainder aged in Stainless Steel for more of the fruit and when blended back together the wine is said to have character and complexity.  I was hoping to tell you more about the wine, but by the time I went down to have some after my fix of Chardonnay, the wine had evaporated.  I think this was a first for a red wine at the party.  There were also a couple of wines that were given to the hostess, and lo and behold, your Raconteur even received a present.  The guest that makes the magnificent deviled eggs (did I mention that there were deviled eggs) likes to shop garage sales for fun, and has found some spectacular things for our home and kitchen (her brother is a Master Chef) found me some wine bottle tags for the cellar, which are becoming scarce to find, so it was greatly appreciated.

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Two from Kenwood Vineyards

Posted on December 21, 2018 by thewineraconteur

When I am doing some impromptu wine tastings at The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, I always enjoy the chance to try wines from the same winery, if possible.  I had that chance, and a winery that I haven’t ran into for a while, but I really enjoyed it the last time.  The winery is Kenwood Vineyards and they began in 1970 when they bought the winery of the Pagani Brothers, a California producer that began in 1906 and been successful prior to Prohibition, that time when the government thought that they could dictate morals.  The winery has gone through some changes of ownership, in 1999 they were bought by F. Korbel and Bros.  In 2014 the international Pernod Ricard bought them and since then they have almost doubled production.  To put things in perspective, the last time that I had the wine, it was from the original owners from the 1970 creation of the former winery.

While Kenwood Vineyards is located in Sonoma County, Sonoma County actually has seventeen sub-appellations located there and some are famed for certain grape varietals.  The first wine we tried was the Kenwood Six Ridges Cabernet Sauvignon 2015.  The Six Ridges refer to the mountain ranges that create the Sonoma area and Kenwood has six different wines for this collection.  This particular wine is from the Alexander Valley and was fermented on the skins for twenty-two days, then settled and racked twice before the wine was aged for twenty-four months in small oak barrels.  The oak used was a mixture of French, Hungarian and American.  This was a big Cabernet Sauvignon wine with delivered a lot more terroir then I had expected and was really a tasty wine, and we all enjoyed this wine.

The other wine that we tasted was a wine that I had, when the winery was much smaller in scope and featured a single vineyard and they still continue this wine.  The Kenwood Jack London Vineyard Cabernet 2014 was the wine that I crooked an eyebrow at. The last time that I had this wine it just carried the Sonoma County AVA, and now the Jack London Vineyard carries the sub-appellation of Sonoma Mountain AVA.  The wine was almost all Cabernet Sauvignon with a touch of Merlot.  The wine spent twenty-four days on the skins fermenting, before being racked and aged for twenty-four months in a mixture of French, Hungarian and American Oak barrels.  This was a big wine, like I remember and thankfully the major corporation did not attempt to water this wine down for more production.  Once again, a wine that gave me my terroir, black cherries and some figs and a nice long finish.  Once again, we were all happy.

 

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Two Different Pinot Noir Wines

Posted on December 19, 2018 by thewineraconteur

I had mentioned that Ms. Yoga had been in town and one of the places that we took her was to The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan.  When she had been living in Venice, Florida we had gone a couple of times to her wine shop/wine bar for tastings.  Though in reality her place was more a wine bar that had tastings as well.  Most of the regulars that frequented the shop actually had their own engraved wine glass on a wall, waiting for the next time to be used.  For the time and money that we spent there, we should have had a set of engraved glasses as well.  I knew that we were going to have fun tasting the wines with her.

The first wine that we had was from FEL Wines Pinot Noir Savoy Vineyard 2015 from Anderson Valley in Mendocino County part of the huge North Coast AVA of California.  FEL stands for Florence Elsie Lede, the Mother of Cliff Lede Vineyards in Napa Valley.  Anderson Valley is at the north end of Mendocino County and is known for its cooler temperatures and favors grapes like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer and Riesling.  The Savoy Vineyards had an initial planting in 1991 and they continued planting through the decade and it now has forty-four acres of assorted varietals planted.  This wine was aged for fifteen months in French Oak, of which forty-seven percent was new.  It was a delightful Pinot Noir with black cherry and soft tannins and a nice long finish.  There were four-hundred-two cases of this wine produced and my first thoughts after tasting it, was it will be awesome in eight to ten years, but then I enjoy aged wines, and that is what a cellar is for.

Right afterwards we were tasting a second Pinot Noir, this time from the Santa Lucia Highlands of Monterey County and this area has been called the Premier Cru Burgundy region of California, because the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines are just stellar.  The Lucia Vineyards Gary’s Vineyard Pinot Noir Santa Lucia Highland 2016 was wonderful straight from the bottle and with aeration time it would have been even greater.  Lucia Vineyards had their first commercial vintage in 2000 and is owned by the Pisoni family of Pisoni Vineyards and a winery that I have enjoyed in the past and probably still have a couple resting.  Gary’s Vineyard is one of those vineyards that everyone in that region would like to claim having grapes grown there.  The first plantings were done in 1982 and eight years later groundwater was finally found hundreds of feet beneath a bed of granite, and then they planted seventeen more acres.  This particular wine was aged for eleven months in French Oak, of which forty-one percent was new.  Black cherry and spice and a granite terroir was noticed immediately and this wine also had a nice long finish, and to me, that is one of the greatest attributes a wine can have.  There were six hundred cases of wine produced and I think maybe a good fifteen years in the cellar, and I know that some people have argued with me that they don’t think California Pinot Noir will age that long, but from this region eight to ten have been easy.

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Two More Wines from Monterey

Posted on December 17, 2018 by thewineraconteur

Getting our latest delivery from A Taste of Monterey has made me nostalgic for another trip to that part of the world.  Carmel-by-the-Sea is God’s world as the old expression went.  I guess wine and great moments just go hand in hand for us.  As always there was a pamphlet describing the wines we were receiving, as well as write-up about Gouda cheese and a recipe for a Cheese Fondue dish.  There was also a featured article on Hot Wine or mulled wines, talking about the Gluhwein popular in Germany, Austria and Alsace, the glogg from Scandinavia, the vin chaud from France, the versions found in Southeast Europe, the style made in Portugal and the drink known as Caribou that is found in Quebec, Canada that is flavored with Maple syrup.

The second wine of the shipment was Mission Trails Vineyards Friars’ Reserve Chardonnay 2017 from the Arroyo Seco AVA.  Here is a wine that has been babied and treated special from day one and made from two different Dijon Clones.  The wine was aged in French Oak of which forty percent was new.  The Arroyo Seco is where mountainside soils and cool breezes from the Monterey Bay have made this area special for the growing of Chardonnay.  This particular wine is said to feature citrus and jasmine, offering a creamy mid-palate and a lingering finish.  There was a production of one-hundred-fifty cases mad of this wine and the aging potential is for five to six years.

The third and last bottle from A Taste of Monterey is from a winery that we have received wine from several times without a disappointment.  Wrath Estate Winery is located in Soledad and produce three series of wines, all with small production in Monterey; there is the EX series, the Winemaker Series and the Single Vineyard Series.  The newest wine we received is the Wrath Wines Destruction Level Monterey 2015 from their Winemaker Series.  Here is a wine that is a blend of fifty percent Syrah from the San Saba Vineyard and fifty percent Grenache from the Alto Loma Vineyard.  The wine was aged in French Oak, but only twenty-two percent new to maintain as much of the fruit dominance as possible.  The wine is described as very inky and intense, with dark fruits and earth and a long, lively finish.  There were ninety-seven cases produced of this wine with an aging potential of eight to ten years.  According to the winery wine site, this wine is already sold out, so I may as well just hold it for the right meal to come around.

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My First Zin from Monterey

Posted on December 15, 2018 by thewineraconteur

There is always some genuine excitement when the delivery person has me sign for my package from A Taste of Monterey.  It was our first wine club and the only one for ages and always a delight.  We just kind of haphazardly discovered them when we were wandering around the Cannery Row district of Monterey, California.  To be quite candid we were there to dine at the legendary The Sardine Factory and the appetizer that we shared will be forever etched in our memory, as well as a tour that we received of this great place.  Since we were there, we were just like all of the other tourist and wandered around.  We walked into an art gallery, with no intention of buying and left knowing that our living room will forever be that much classier for purchasing a Hirschfeld registered piece of Nick and Nora Charles and Asta (some of you may know as William Powell, Myrna Loy and Asta).  We also found a tasting room for a winery that we also bought wine from, and then we found A Taste of Monterey and their wine shop et al.

All I know is that we have been getting deliveries every quarter for at least twenty years, and when we signed up, we were ecstatic that they could ship to us, because we were considered a felony state and a social pariah, until the great case of Granholm vs. Heald and Granholm lost and Michiganders could get wine delivered to their doorstep.  When we joined, they were offering two different wine clubs, one that had two bottles delivered monthly or three bottles delivered quarterly.  The difference being that the quarterly shipment was of their better wine offerings and the monthly was more popular priced.  We figured that it was best to get their best wines that probably would never get to Michigan anyways, because of the archaic three-tiered system that has been in place with the wine distributors since Prohibition ended, and we have been happy ever since.

The first bottle that I grabbed out of the shipping carton was Mesa Del Sol Monterey County Zinfandel 2013.  I mean this was the first Zinfandel wine that we had received in the twenty some years of delivery, mostly it has been Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Rhone type wines.  Mesa Del Sol has been a favorite destination for travelers and some of the buildings on the estate go back to the 1800’s.  Costa Del Sol is in the Arroyo Seco Highlands and the hot dry air was considered a haven for tuberculosis patients and even Teddy Roosevelt had stayed there.  I went to the website for the winery and resort and I found another Zinfandel from Arroyo Seco, but not this Monterey County wine, yet both carry the same vintage.  This wine is made for the resort by Chualar Canyon Winery in Salinas, California.  I could find no production notes on this wine, but the notes accompanying the wines states it is a well-balanced wine with leather and blackberries on the nose, with overtones of currant, pepper and lavender with a long, smooth finish, and anyone that knows me, knows that is not how I describe wines.  The wine had a production of two-hundred cases, and the wine is suggested to be drunk now or it has the aging potential of ten to fifteen years.  It will be an interesting wine to try.

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Hyde Park in Northville

Posted on December 13, 2018 by thewineraconteur

Ms. Yoga was totally happy that we were trying a steakhouse that she had been to in Florida and had a chance to introduce us to it, in our own backyard.  Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse is actually in Northville Township to be exact, but I am sure that it will be listed as Northville.  It was so surprising that it had opened, and I had not heard or read about the new location, but then I am not much of a shopper.  The renovation of the restaurant from a pasta chain to a steakhouse chain, was, I can bet a complete remodel.  It had that swanky elegance that would belie that the building ever contained anything but Hyde Park.

We ended up meeting the manager of the location, plus the training manager who was still on-site, since they had only opened five days earlier.  The training manager also took us on a tour of the facility, including some private rooms that were not apparent, if one wasn’t looking for them.  As I said earlier, we had ordered food from all three of the menus (bar, dinner and dinner specials).   There was a Lump Crab Wedge Salad with Iceberg lettuce, bacon, Lump Crab and a Creamy House Vinaigrette.  There were a couple orders of the Lobster Bisque with Sherry, and some Lobster that was either poached or drenched in hot butter, just before being place in the soup.  There was also a couple of orders of the Filet Mignons with Bearnaise Sauce with Garlic Whipped Potatoes and Sautéed Spinach.  Once again, we left with out dessert, but we did have some “doggie bags.”

Finally, for our main wine for the evening we had Quilt Wines Cabernet Sauvignon 2016 from Napa Valley.  I had never heard of the wine, but it turns out that it is another “brand” from Joseph Wagner who produces Caymus, plus several other wines.  I guess the name evoked a patchwork quilt, because the blended wine was all from vineyards only in Napa Valley.  The vineyards were located in Oakville, St Helena, Atlas Peak, Coombsville, Calistoga and Howell Mountain.  It was really a nicely made wine, and I would wager that it was made with one eye on being included on the carte at steakhouses across the country, it was a steak wine.  Ms. Yoga, being her charming and “low key” young lady that she is, went on raving to the training manager about how she just loved the Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve 2016 with a California AVA.  That poor manager went searching high and low, until he found where this particular wine was being stored and brought a bottle over for us.  I didn’t get a chance to see if the winery was listed on the back label, but it was a charming wine.  I know that we will be going back there after the holidays.

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Some Wines to Get Dinner Going

Posted on December 11, 2018 by thewineraconteur

While Ms. Yoga was in town, we were going to go try a new restaurant in Downtown Detroit.  Ms. Yoga and my Bride were going to watch football at the stadium.  Now you have to understand that at some unknown and identified part of the brain, people, especially those that were born in Detroit have this compulsion to root for the home teams, good years or bad.  It is just expected somehow, just like when you are driving on a six-lane surface road in the City of Detroit, and you are at a red light, you just know that the odds are that some joker in the extreme left lane is going to make a right-hand turn in front of two other lanes of traffic.  To explain this compulsion is impossible, but we share season tickets on the Fifty-yard Line on the Visitor’s side about Row J, I mean these are probably some of the finest tickets out there and the lineage of these seats go back to when the Detroit Lions actually won games and two stadiums prior, when the Tigers and the Lions actually used the same stadium, which is probably not allowed except in High Schools and Universities.  Originally, I was going to drive them down, and then meet them later after the game at this new restaurant and they were going to use one of the questionable but grandiose trams or trolley-cars that both have very limited scopes of travel, but cause for excitement in the Fiefdom of Detroit.

 

The women drove together downtown and were going to drive back to meet me at another new restaurant, basically in my backdoor and I had no idea it was there, until we were driving about three miles from Casa Raconteur and there in a strip center where a mundane “Italian” restaurant chain used to be, had been converted to a steakhouse.  The restaurant that had been there, I had never eaten at, because it is what I call when I am being snobby about food “an Italian restaurant for Americans,” meaning that it was for the masses, so there would be no nuance or culinary craftmanship; and I love Italian cuisine.  To give you an idea how new the restaurant was, they had only been open five days and the training manager who assists in opening new locations was still there working with the management and the staff.    Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse is a steakhouse chain from the Cleveland area and it was totally upscale from the menus and to the wine list.  You know that I would have to study all of the pertinent paperwork, and I still feel sorry for our poor waitress who never anticipated a night with Ms. Yoga, the Bride and a Raconteur.  We were sitting in the bar section of the restaurant, because the ladies were still dressed in stadium attire, but it was fine, as we usually always sit the bar or tavern area of a restaurant anyways.  Hyde Park had three menus that we were ordering from, and that is why I have compassion for our waitress, because there was a bar menu, a restaurant menu and a special menu; and all three were used that evening and that is with out looking at the dessert menu, because we were stuffed by then.

As best as I can tell they currently have fourteen restaurants in three states, but the two in Michigan were not in place for the current issue of the Wine Spectator Restaurant Awards list, but the other twelve have all attained the Award of Excellence, and I am sure that the two new restaurants will join their brethren next year.   They have an excellent wine list, and I would say that it favors California and Italy the most, and to be truthful, if I were setting up a wine carte for a steakhouse, I would probably do the same thing.  The restaurant also takes full advantage of the Coravin System, so for a mere eighty dollars one can have a glass of Opus One with dinner.  We were not that extravagant that evening, but we started off quite well, because the wines were evaporating right in front of us.  We had Cave de Lugny La Cote Blanche Chardonnay Macon-Villages 2016.  Macon-Villages is an appellation for dry white wines made from Chardonnay and is a step up from the basic Macon.  This is a mechanically harvested and Stainless-Steel aged wine and it was just easy drinking, especially for the sports fans.  There was also Chateau Minuty “M de Minuty” Cote de Provence 2017.  Cote de Provence is actually the largest appellation of the Provence, though it sounds like it should be a smaller appellation.  Chateau Minuty is one of the Cru Classés of Provence in 1955, but the classification never received the esteem as some of the other classifications.  The wine is a blend of Grenache, Cinsault, and Syrah and when Chateau Minuty updated the grounds and facilities, each individual vineyard block has its own designated tank, so I would surmise that none of the wines are aged that long.   This was also an easy drinking and enjoyable wine and I will discuss more wines of the evening and the menu the next time we meet.

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