The greater the expectation ....

Sometimes expectations can influence assessment such that the greater the expectation, the greater the eventual disappointment. Chateau d'Yquem is the one of, if not, the most famous sweet wine of France. This is also witnessed by the fact that the Sauternes Classification sets it apart by giving it a separate class of its own, Premier Cru Superieur.

This vintage was a difficult one and the harvest was done in 5 tries, with only the first 4 making it into the final assemblage. 40% of the harvest was done in the 3rd trie from October 27-31. The finished product was definitely a good Sauternes, but without the flair that one would expect from every bottle of such a legend. If it were Suduiraut, I would have applauded it. However being Yquem, the extraordinary flair I had come to expect was nowhere in evidence in this 1984 wine, leaving me with a sense of disappointment.

Ruster Ausbruch

Although this is specially bottled for the famous London department store, Fortnum and Mason, this is a half bottle of the equally famous Ruster Ausbruch made by Feiler-Artinger. Rust is a town bordering Neusiedlersee which I had mentioned in the blog entry on Austrian eisweins, together with Feiler-Artinger. Ausbruch is one of those Pradikats which the Austrians have but the Germans do not. Originally designating the method by which grapes severely affected by Botrytis are mixed with less concentrated must to speed up fermentation (in the manner of Tokaji Azsu wines), Ausbruch has now come to denote a Pradikat level between Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese.

The town of Rust has been famous for its Ausbruch wine since the 16th century and became a Royal Free Town in 1681 for supplying 500 buckets of sweet wine to the Emperor Leopold I. The traditional cepage is a blend of Furmint and Muskateller, but Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Neuburger, Traminer and Welschriesling are used as well. These wines are incredibly long-lived, maybe up to half a century or more. Showing well for the initial 2 years, the wines closed down in the 3rd year for a year or so, opening up after that with more fruit and complexity and being more rounded and integrated, remaining in this wonderful balance for some 15 years or so. That means I can drink the above bottle any time now till around 2027. Jolly good!

Terrantez Madeira

This is a bottle of 1977 vintage Madeira, made from Terrantez, which I bought in England. The grape known as Terrantez in Madeira is more widely known as Folgasao and is a low yielding but high quality grape. Although the grape is fast disappearing from Madeira, it is fondly remembered for the quality of its wines. Talking to Cristiano van Zeller, he told me his favourite Madeira was Terrantez. The 1795 was one of those great historical vintages which produced a lot of long-lived Terrantez wines, many still surviving to this day. They number amongst some of the oldest surviving wines on earth.

A raisined Riesling dessert wine from New Zealand

This is a dessert wine made from raisined Riesling grapes and it comes from New Zealand. It is an unconventional introduction, but although I have blogged about Vin santo and PX wines, there is hardly mention of the fact the grapes are dried before vinification. There are many different types of raisined grape wines, most of which are sweet. The exception to the rule is Amarone which needs another tidbit.
This is quite a nice wine and it's been well appreciated by the judges at the Decanted Awards as the stickers show. The wine was a golden tea colour with a sweet luscious nose. What was a little surprising was that there were notes normally associated with botrytis infection, which should not be present in raisined wines. It was sweet and luscious on the palate, with notes of dried apricot and its acidity appearing just before swallowing, and which linger onto a long balanced finished. Nice!

Bottle variation at the top

I have mixed feelings about this Mouton 1994. This is basically generated by the immense bottle variation in a group of bottles I take to be a couple of cases of this wine that I tasted over the course of some 6 to 8 years. My first encounter with the wine was at a blind tasting that the KCC Wine Society hosted in early 2001. Neither my wife nor I recognised its excellence and it did not come in the top half of the dozen bottles we tasted. The experience was repeated with the rest of the group and it did not come in at the top three. The top was Ch Haut-Marbuzet, the surprise winner in a whole host of cru classes! We were so "impressed" by the Mouton 94 that we bought a couple more cases of Ch La Conseillante 1996, which we liked and was on offer at the time.

Over the next few years, we've had the same wine around half a dozen times. Sometimes it would be quite nice, but it never reached the dizzy heights of perfection. At other times, it was rather uninspiring, better than ordinary but not confidently so. As these bottles all came from the same reliable source, I can only conclude that whatever causes bottle variation in top wines, there was a massive overdose of it within these two dozen or so Mouton 1994s.

100 point perfection in Austro-American collaboration

This is the second RP100 sticky that I've bought and this time it is straw wine made from dried Semillon. This is a collaborative project between the Austrian dessert wine guru Alois Kracher and Manfred and Elaine Krankl of the Californian cult winery Sine Qua Non. The results of this joint venture are market as "Mr K" after the initial of their surnames, but due to the untimely passing of Kracher (losing the battle with pancreatic cancer) at the end of 2007, the 2006 vintage was the last.

It is really amazing but this is also the second cheapest RP100 wine I've bought, the cheapest one being the Cuvee Madame from Chateau Tirecule la Graviere (which I had already blogged about). This Californian wine was around the same price as the Monbazillac, but then the latter was 500mls, whilst this one is 375mls. Of course, the French wine was bought with high wine taxes, whilst this one is not taxed.

When you think about it, any RP100 wine is the pinnacle of perfection. So why is a red or dry white wine with that score much more expensive than a similar dessert wine? Could fashion and speculation be the culprit? Well, that's my bet!

Mavrodaphne of Patras

This is a bottle of Mavrodaphne of Patras, a port-like sweet wine from Northern Peleponese in Greece. The wine is made from the eponymous grape blended with Korinthiaki and has its fermentation stopped using spirit distilled from wines of the previous vintages. It is then aged in oak via a solera type system. However, it is vinified in large vats exposed to the sun and becomes a little oxidized in style, somewhat like Madeira.

The second grape in this blend is the grape that is dried to give currants (Zante currants in American usage). The dried vine fruit is often referred to as raisins de Corinthe, which became corrupted as currants. The dried fruit is totally unrelated to the Ribes fruits, red- and black- currants. The grape itself was one of the oldest recorded varieties being described by Pliny the Elder in 75AD.