Right then, sorry for the delay, we've been trying to buy a house this week, rather a time-consuming affair. Anyway, enough of that now, where's the food and wine, I hear you clamour? Have no fear, for here it is.
In honour of my venerable parents being here in Chicago, we decided to make a couple of decent meals and purchase some reasonable wines, although I should say my father bought the wines, I just retrieved some from the cellar.
The first meal: chervil and chive-crusted sea bass, served with roasted potatoes and asparagus - a very simple preparation, but lovely. the fish was apparently imported from the UK, and actually was some of the best fish we've had at home for a long time. We were meant to drink a bottle of 2000 Jean Boillot Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles with it, but this turned out, most tragically, to be corked - there were huge amounts of wet cardboard aromas as soon as the bottle was opened, which only got worse over time. It was less bad in the mouth, but the unmistakable taste of evil was still there. Sad really, as it was a very complex wine apart from that. Unfortunately all I had to replace it with was another bottle of the 2005 Ata Rangi Chardonnay, which showed considerably better than the last bottle we had, but was a much more basic wine that the Puligny.
This was followed by some seasonal strawberries for dessert, served with a wine from legendary winemaker, the now very sadly-deceased Alois Kracher, from the Neusiedlersee region of Austria along the Hungarian border. My father chose a 2000 Scheurebe TBA No. 9 Zwischen Den Seen - a most wise decision on his part, in fact one of his wisest ever. This is a splendidly rich, luscious and powerful wine, that seemingly has a very long future ahead of it. Joyously youthful with a light amber hue, the flavours dance across the palate with gay abandon in a melange of passion fruit, orange and apricot, with hints of a kind of sugary, grapey muscat, and plenty of botrytis. The texture is thick and unctuous, but it is not cloying in any way, fine acidity sees to that. The richness and the high acidity levels mean this wine has lots of places to go from here too - I would love to be able to revisit this powerful, pungent and practically perfect wine in 10 years. Well done dad...
I hate to leave you on tenterhooks like this as there is more to come and I know you will all have sleepless nights with the anticipation, but I have to go and pass out now. More tomorrow campers...
