Wines of Christmas

Hey Everyone,

So the holiday season is thoroughly underway, with Christmas Day passed, New Years ahead and a long, long winter to come. One of my favourite parts of the holidays is the succession of family events where the dinner table assumes the role of centre stage. This is when the greatest, most heart warming meals of the year take place; when your favourite foods are cooked and the best wines are drunk.

this years, owing to the newly regular uncertainty of all my siblings' schedules we were able to miraculously pull off three incredible dinners and as we couldn't match last years Mouton '83 and Jarvis '97 for all of them, we had to improvise and that we did well. Christmas is different for everyone with small traditions here and there that make it so wonderful and unique. For us, we have a massive dinner for 30 immediate family members from my dad's side of the family over on Christmas day and serve up a massive rare roast fillet of beef for everyone with all sorts of trimmings and sweeties on the sides.

Seeing as this is a uniquely large family dinner we weren't about to willingly provide anything super costly so we rummaged around the cellar for something that might work nicely, recalling that we had a couple bottles of Indian Wells Cabernet that would do just fine. What. Came up with was a bit of a forgotten gem. Sitting mostly for decorative use on a barrel in the corner of the cellar was a magnum of 2001 Falcor Red. It had been standing upright for god knows how long so we had no way of knowing if it would still be good but we dug through the wax and my brother decanted it and we were happy to smell a wine that would serve well enough.

As the meal went on it became apparent that this Falcor was no simple Napa Cab. It was refined, elegant and very much like a 2003 from Bordeaux. It was big yes, but there was something restrained and backward about it for a California wine. The blend was about 50% Cabernet Franc with the rest about equal between Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot and it showed off its notes of autumnal leaves, toasty oak and sour forest fruits wonderfully and delivered with a composed balance I had not expected. Overall it was an awesome bottle of wine and though not a match made in heaven for the beef, it was excellent.

For my immediate family, however, the main event is always Christmas Eve and that is when we try to go all out with wine and food. This year we were unsure of when my brother could make it home, so we decided that we would have our usual Christmas Eve dinner on Boxing Day. Seeing as he arrived a bit earlier from New York than expected we were blessed with two beautiful dinners in very short succession. The choice of wines was therefore a bit improvised but proved to be excellent.

Alongside our dinner of seared duck breast with orange risotto on the 24th we had a nearly forgotten bottle of Cakebread Syrah 2004. Not generally intended to age long, this wine held up marvelously and showed a distinctly Rhone-like character and a great purity of blackberry and sour cherry alongside emerging hints of green olive and brine. This went along with an obscure 1997 Mercurey from Domaine Voarick, which was another wine bought long ago and more or less forgotten until we happened upon it the night of the dinner. Despite the cork crumbling into oblivion, it tasted great with a leathery farmyard profile and a lot of raspberries.

For dinner on Boxing Day we cooked up our traditional roasted rack of lamb. This meal lends itself so well to Bordeaux that I could not resist opening my 2004 Chateau Talbot. While it was clear that this wine has a long life ahead of it, perhaps as much as five or six years before it reaches it's peak, it was excellent in its richness, with chunky tannins, restrained, backwards fruit and searing acidity cutting through the oily fat of the lamb. I generally think that 2004 in Bordeaux is underrated and offers classic style and a good value for money, but in particular I believe that the classed growths of Saint-Julien are often great buys from this vintage.

So overall it was a great holiday for wine and with some bottles I may never find again coming into play I think it was a treat to try some of these. Year in and year out, Christmas never fails to bring out the best in my family and I was blessed not only with these wondrous meals and wines but first and compost with the company of those who surround the table.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

G

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