Bordeaux and Cali Cab Dinner

I have some generous friends. Extremely generous. For reals. Most of you know that though.

For example, on Tuesday, I went to play poker with some ex-collabnet peeps (and some current ones) over at Todd’s. For some reason Todd has felt the need to clean out his cellar, so he started popping open early-90′s Napa cabs. Damn nice stuff. Oh! And we had a big thing of tri-tip to go with it. Mmmm.

But last Saturday was even more over the top. Paul and Stef had another dinner and wine tasting, but this one was more formal. Well, c’mon, not formal, we’re never formal, but this was an honest blind tasting. The theme of the dinner was 96 Bordeaux v 99 Napa Cab. Oh, and the other theme was “awesome f*@#$@@#$ food”.

I can’t find my notes so I’ll steal Paul’s writeup from the WS Forums. I’ll paste a link below. But check out the food menu:

and the final menu was:



Osetra Caviar with 6 traditional sides.



The Tasting.



Palate Refresher of Grapefruit-mint Sorbet.



Sausage and Roasted Pepper Raviolis with fresh tomato sauce



Herb de Provance Lamb T-bone in mint cilantro sauce and Scalloped Potatoes



Prime Rib Eye Beef Kabob Skewers with summer squash, crimin mushrooms and sweet Mayan onions and sides of hummus and crispy pita chips



Foie Gras, pan seared with 4 sauces; currant, cherry, blackberry honey, agave nectar



Pineapple-Rosemary Upside Down Cake

The wine tasting was divided into two flights. We had even more items with the food, but here’s what the breakdown was for the tasting:

Blind Group A

1999 Louis Martini Monte Rosso Vnyd (non blind)

1999 Van Der Heyden, Napa Valley Hill

1999 Cooper Garrod Lone Oak Vnyd, Santa Cruz Mtns. (the under $20 dead ringer)

1996 Cos D’Estournel, St. Estephe

1996 Chateau Palmer, Margaux

1999 Joseph Phelps Backus, Oakville, Napa

——————————————


Blind Group B

1996 Cos D’Estournel, St. Estephe (yep we had two bottles)

1996 Chateau Langoa Barton, St. Julien

1999 Abreu, Napa

1996 Chateau Angelus, St. Emilion

1999 BV Georges De Latour, Napa

1999 Lewis Reserve, Napa

1999 Shafer, Hillside Select, Stags Leap Dist, Napa (Bonus wine!)

Per Paul’s Notes, you’ll see that the bonus wine (the Shafer above) was a group fave.

Voting by flight, we voted for a #1 and #2 wine



Flight A:

99 Phelps Backus (10 first place votes!)

96 Palmer (4 votes)

99 Van Der Hayden (3 votes)



Flight B

99 Shafer HSS (6 votes)

99 Lewis Reserve (5 votes)

96 Cos Estournel (3 votes, it had 0 in Flight A)

All in all a great night and with some great food.

More notes on the wines. Pics are in the pics area. Full text copy of the wines.