It is unusual for me to blog the same night as a meal (often the wine consumption makes me less articulate than usual), and it is unusual for us to entertain on a week night. But night was an enormous exception.
John and Jonathan came for dinner tonight to celebrate fiddlehead fern season. We have all had a lot to celebrate lately (our wedding, Jonathan's job offers (which were celebrated by both Jonathan and John)), and John decided to surprise us all with a celebratory gift. Of course by now you know that it was the world famous Krug Clos de Mesnil Blanc du Blanc 1992 Champagne. What an incredible wine! At a decade and a half, it was still light and fresh. The nose showed true aromas of toast and bread dough. It was rich but balanced, fragrant and restrained, wonderful and delicious. Krug's standard wine is so much better than most producers' tete de cuvee, and this wine, made entirely of Chardonnay grapes from a select vineyard, really sets the curve. Thank you John!
As it happens, we also had a number of tasty wines this evening. The Beringer Private Reserve Chardonnay 2004 was full-bodied yet balanced with notes of lychee and well-integrated oak. It paired well with roasted beet soup with Cypress Grove chevre and beet chips. And the Chateau Lafon-Rochet St. Estephe 1996 was in perfect harmony with NY strip steaks a la Colicchio, fiddlehead ferns, and new potatoes roasted in goose fat. It was medium-full bodied, with roasted red pepper and graphite notes (Jonathan declared it really, really good). We finished the night with the near-profound Jasper Hill Farms cloth-bound cheddar and a decadent bottle of Chateau Saint-Amand Sauternes 2000. I detected ripe pineapple at the core of its penetrating sweetness.
It was a wonderful evening, never to be forgotten. Thank you all.
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