And so to continue my recent obsession with southern French whites, today I picked out a 1999 Hermitage Blanc from Domaine des Remizieres from my friendly local wine merchant, Howard Silverman at Howard's Wine Cellar in Lakeview, Chicago, from where I buy a lot of my wine. The bottle had been sitting there for a couple of weeks, I'd been eying it up since I first saw it, and today I made my move. Anyway, to sum up, this wine was completely AWESOME!! I absolutely love this style, the very full body, the way the nose toys with you, giving you a hint of the pleasure that your taste buds are about to experience, then the way the intensity of the flavour builds and builds on the mid palate and explodes into a long and glorious finish, leaving you wishing that the bottle would never end.. Hmmm... The nose had peach and floral notes (rosewater) and a tiny hint of an oxidative sherry style, and this was followed on the palate by more stone fruit (peach and apricot) plus lemony citrus notes, and again this slight nutty, oxidative sherry taste, which I love. I'm pretty sure that this is a deliberate style, and I guess you either love it or you hate it. There was also some very beautifully-integrated oak, and some very well-balanced acidity, and all of these things combined to make a truly splendid wine. I feel that this wine would also keep for a good few years yet, there seems to be plenty of evolving flavours there, and good acidity to prop it up, so if you can find it then buy, buy, buy! Actually don't, less is more after all.. I had it with some simply-prepares veal escalopes and it more than stood up to it.
Tomorrow I'm roasting a very large, saliva-inducing bone-in prime rib of beef. Just because I want to, and I can't wait. Not sure what I'm going to drink with it yet, I have some excellent S Rhone wines here, we'll see... And in case you were wondering, it has been a fruit day today, as it will be tomorrow, the best day to drink your wines. Any old excuse eh...
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