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2009: Wine in Context - Your Turn

I've reviewed the year, and declared my top wine moments of 2009. Not just the best wines, but those wines that showed best in a certain context. Wines that made life just that little more special, or accompanied a fabulous, thought-provoking or maybe even tragic event.

I have just three more Wine in Context submissions from Winedoctor readers for you today - when you see Eric Cheng's you will perhaps understand why I stopped short of adding a fourth today. I hope you enjoy reading these latest submissions as much as I did. If you have one of your own to submit please don't hesitate - send me your best wine moments of 2009, and I will post them online (I am assuming your consent for that!). Email them to me here. (13/1/10)

Superb website, one of the best dedicated to this vital subject. Prefer your tasting notes, by the way, to the many professional ones decanted here and there in print and elsewhere.

Two favorites for 2009 and I would like to request permission to relay one from 2008.

2009:

1998 Clos des Papes. After 20 years in the same house, my wife and I packed up to move a whole half-mile away in Madison, New Jersey. This old house had been the scene of numerous wine-plied dinners with friends from all over the world. So, with the boxes piled high and the moving vans ordered, we invited some friends visiting from France for one final soiree. We toasted our tiny Victorian house with a 1998 Clos des Papes CDP. Still virile and wonderfully complex, the '98 Clos des Papes made the perfect send-off for two decades of domestic conviviality among amateurs du vin. I checked my livre de cave and saw I have one left!

1998 Canon La Gaffelière. As I write this, I realize that the wines came from the same vintage. Amazing - all the roar about 2000, 2005, etc. seems to have overshadowed some of these more modest yet pleasurable vintages (your tasting notes are a great help here putting the older vintages in context). I brought 98 Canon LG to a Christmas dinner thrown by some friends from our years in Germany. I just grabbed it out of the aging yet reliable Eurocave. The wine had been a gift and I thought nothing of offering it up though I was worried about its drinkability. The wine showed remarkable depth and vivacity, so much so that the next day I went an auction site to find some more! Alas, I could scrounge up no more.

And from 2008:

Weingut Winfried Hermes: A Mosel Riesling from the Vintage of the Century (1976). After two years working in Munich, I was preparing to return to the US. A friend invited me to his family's house nestled in the hills above the Mosel. The family owns a winery in Poltersdorf on the Mosel that they have been working for generations. They have vines out in the flat near the river to make the basic wines and then vines on the steep hills that require handpicking to make the luscious and more complex late harvests. Like all winemaking families, they keep a stash of their many vintages. We sat around the fire one night polishing off some Spätleses and Ausleses when my friend's father went back to the cellar and pulled out a gift of kings, or at least Bacchus: a 1976 Riesling Auslese. He then begins to recount the extraordinary summer of 1976, which apparently provided once-in-century conditions. Most of the grapes picked that year made wine of Beerenauselese quality or better but for marketing reasons most were sold as Ausleses. The wine itself: deep golden hue, a nose of honey and candied citrus (giving it my best shot here), and remarkable power and balance. So stunning that I started asking around if my European friends remembered the summer of 1976. Many indeed did. If you can find 1976 Riesling from Mosel or the Rhine, don't pass it up!

Thanks Fred, and thanks also for you kind comments on the site. I'm delighted you also looked back to the '76 Auslese in 2008 as well, it sounds like a very special bottle served during a very special evening. Having moved house once or twice in my time I know what an upheaval it is - great that you had a good bottle in hand to toast this moment - Chris.

I must rate a single dinner during an April visit with my girlfriend to the Loire Valley as my best wine moment of 2009. While staying in the village of Sancerre, we had an opportunity to try the tasting menu at the Restaurant La Tour. The wine list was exquisite, and the sommelier has my gratitude for providing so many venerable offerings. In the interest of brevity, I will only describe one wine of the five paired with our seven course meal, which took three hours to finish: the 2006 Vincent Pinard Harmonie, estate bottled at Bué. Wine like this demands adjectives that would otherwise be wasteful: it was daring, wholly connected, brilliant. It almost brought tears to my eyes. To give this wine proper context, we drank it paired with smoked ham ice cream in artichoke soup with parsley puree and chives. Following the adage that pictures are worth 1000 words, I have included a photograph taken in the village, and will end by noting that the Loire remains my favorite wine region.

Thank you for your wine blog, by the way. I am a daily reader, and would guess that it has proven as informative as any book I own on wine. Great postings, and I'm looking forward to reading on through 2010.

Thank you for those kind words Alex, much appreciated. Your visit to La Tour sounds fabulous - I shall have to head that way when next in the region - Chris.

First of all thank you for such a wonderful site, I find the depth of coverage in Bordeaux to be fab and think your tasting notes in that region are spot on. I'm looking forward to reading your report on the 2009 vintage later this year.

My top wine moment of 2009; toasting the arrival of my first daughter, which if I get this is the important bit, right? Wine and life coming together, the emotions associated with one wrapped up in the other? Being a fan of Bordeaux I naturally did this with something from the region, and I chose the 2003 Angelus (your profile of the estate is excellent by the way), a stonking wine which although young was perfect for the moment - perhaps because it is so young?!! It was a perfect choice, on the evening we arrived home. It is a moment that will remain deeply locked inside me for the rest of my life, the emotions only to be unleashed now and again, perhaps - almost certainly - to be prompted by the uncorking of another of this same wine.

Harry, thanks for the praise for the site, I am glad it has been of use to you. This sounds like a perfect wine moment, and it's fascinating to see someone toast a new arrival with something other than the usual (clichéd?) Champagne. I hope every bottle of your 2003 Angélus turns out the same for you, and wish you and your family all the best for the future - Chris.

Wine in Context moments don't have to concern only great or expensive wines to qualify, it's the context that I'm looking for! So send me your best wine moments of 2009, and I will post them online (I am assuming your consent for that!). Email them to me here.