Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Valentine's Day Weekend

1995 Fleury Champagne – Doux ($80)

This was our Valentine’s Day wine. We had to buy this one because how often do you see a doux? It was fantastic and the biggest surprise to us was that it didn’t even seem as sweet as some of the Demi-Secs we have tasted. Despite the sweetness, as with the Billecart Salmon Demi Sec, the sweetness never overpowered the flavors. Here are Jen’s notes:

If you want to know how this Champagne tasted, eat a lemon sweet tart, take a bite of an apricot and eat some pop rocks to simulate effervescence. It is sweet but with a refreshing zest. The palate is quite rich with succulent apricot and a little bit of bubble gum and raspberry.

On Saturday, we opened a 2005 Grgich Petite Syrah (around $45). This was also an excellent wine. Grgich is one of our favorite Napa wineries. All of their wines are quite distinctive and never over oaked. Here are Jen’s brief notes.

Deep red color. Palate shows smoke, pepper, violet and currant.

On Monday, we went to see Philip Glass perform “Music in Twelve Parts” at Davies Symphony Hall. It was a four hour affair with two intermissions and a dinner break. We both love Philip Glass, but four hours is a long time to listen to repetitive minimalism. We definitely spaced out and fidgeted at times but overall, the piece was fantastic.

For the dinner break, Jen stayed at Davies and bought us some wine while I ran to McDonalds for the burgers. Jen had a non-descript Pinot while I told her to buy the Dows 10 year tawny for me. I am a huge fan of Dow’s restrained style and was thrilled to see it on the list. When I asked Jen why she didn’t get the tawny, she replied that she didn’t think it would go well with a McDonald’s cheeseburger. My philosophy on that one is that if you are confronted with a wine list dominated by Crane Lake, you pick the best available wine and wine/food pairings be damned!

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