Thread: wine dinner tonight

Sounds like a wonderful time. Not surprised the Scarecrow was your pick of the night; it's freshly bottled, from a very good year, and still has all the big fruit at the forefront. The Screaming Eagle is from an interesting CA vintage year, I have no idea how they did that year (nor do I ever expect to find out first hand!), but I wonder if perhaps it needed more time? The Cheval Blanc was probably not a fair comparison, not as good of vintage as some? Also wonder what particular bottling the Gaja was, what vintage and what you thought? I'm a big fan of some of their Brunellos!

Great writeup..looks like a wonderful evening..thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by seanlee768

okay guys and gals, i am back. tonight is sake night. I know what you guys are thinking... but asian is always drunk anyways i got to finish this write up before i forget.

okay here it goes.
all the wine we had were open 1.5 hour prior to first taste. so you figure the dinner took about 2 hours therefore the wine that served at last course got a lot more air time compare to the wine at first course.

let me compare the a few top wine first.
bryant family
screaming eagle
harlan
scarecrow
motuon
cheval blanc

please also note that we are blending two first gru with some super cali cab. therefore in comparing structure of the wine is already unfair since cali cab always have less of structure due to soil and weather condition in comparing to french wine.

when i first taste the bryant family (which i have a few bottle myself too). its got all the good basica of super cali cab wine. i was thinking probably the ony thing can top this is the screaming eagle. its kind of hard to start a wine dinner with bryant family as first course. for people that knows wine, you gonna be thinking what else can top a BF. in coompare the harlan and BF. the nose of the harlan has much more floral flavor and complexity. you can feel the power of harlan by simply put your nose to it, both wine was still young at the time. i think give the wine 5-7 more years they will be much better to drink. when i sip the harlan, the fiish simply kept on coming and coming. for a minute i thought what else can top this...... !!!! then they serve teh screan eagle (SE). the nose is not as strong and clear as the harlan but the structure of the wine is ammmmmmmmmmmmmmazing... i mean, they all are top dollar wine but i never thought SE can blow away harlan and BF in terms of structure and finish. the nose i was still into harlan at the time. i was going nuts already with all these fancy cali cab. then i took in the mouton. mouton is like a woman or a vintage ferrari. not everyone will apprciate a 1960s ferrair for 20 million. some might never get it as to why people would buy a 20 milion dollar 50 year old ferrari which is hard to start and hard to stop. i think you guys are my drift.

mouton is always wonderful but comparing to super cali cab which focus on flavors. it will take that special someone to appreciated. after the mouton i had some chebal blanc which is also a wonderful wine.

then they finally serve the scarecrow.
for me and for the pirce. i think this should be the wine of the night. the price on it should be aorund couple hundred a bottle and this wine really stand strong among all the major player on the market. i was impressed about the nose, structure and finish of the wine, but please do note that dont let this wine breath for more than 4 hours. after 4 hours the wine is still good, but please do note that i still got BF, SE and mouton by my side. the wine is best to drink at its 2nd hour.

the wine of the night that everyone choosed was the the SE, but i choosed the Screacrow base on value. most of the wine are more than 1000 a bottle. the only thing that are cheap on the table that night and stand its ground was the sacrecrow.

however, here are my humble 2cent. i wil post more stuffs on other things later on. things like sake and other stuffs. please feel free to ask questions

enjoy life and drink up.

Awesome dinner!! And thanks as well for the TNs. Any of us would've been lucky to have participated in this.

Sorry, but the wine aficionado in me has to ask or point out a few things:

1) What is "gru"? Are you referring to "cru"?

2) I agree that it is unfair to compare cult CA cabs like Bryant, Harlan, Abreu, Sloan, Scarecrow or Screaming Eagle to premier cru chateaux such as Mouton Rothschild or Cheval Blanc. If I were involved in crafting the wine selections, I would've never allowed the Cheval Blanc or the ScrEagle to be uncorked. Both are way too young to be fully appreciated. The Mouton is fine. I've had several of the '94 recently, and it's not going to improve any IMO at this point.

3) Speaking of the '94 Mouton, it and most of the other bottles would never go for $1000++ a bottle, even with inflated markups by the restaurants. The only ones that would absolutely cost 4 figures would be the ScrEagle, Harlan Estate and Bryant Family. The others definitely retail for well below $1000, and most wouldn't approach that number on a restaurant list unless there were some very punitive markups (e.g. more than 3x). The Sloan would have a $1K pricetag on a resto wine list if it were the 2002 vintage.

4) What year was the Quilceda Creek?

5) I agree with you and several others here that Scarecrow (well, Celia Masyczek) makes some tremendous wine. I should've gotten on their mailing list when I had the chance to before it closed......


Sorry for the nitpicks. You're a lucky man to have been part of such a great evening.......

fushion

1. sorry about the spelling. sometimes i just kept on typing and dont prrof read much :P please bare with my bad spelling.

2. i totally agree with you. its like mudering a new born child

3. I think the main thing about that evening is not about the price of the wine. its more about putting together the superstar or wine and comparing them side by side. however there will be more write up on other dinners soon glad to know that you all enjoyed.

4. 2006

5. you are a lucky man enjoy it

i pick the SC simply because its value. for the money, its a lot of wine. there are a lot of cult cali cab right now. one of my favorite is CE2v from consentino. also some of the pride and peju are also pretty good recently.

there were still other wines that night which i did not write it out. wine such as 2002 robert modavi PR, opus one and few other botttle.

bacchus
the gaja is a 1996 also

another bottle i tried out a few weeks back