The Red Bigots October Bash

Every few months the red bigots get together to practice the dark art of our craft and last weekend the gathering took place at my place. The first event is always to do the wine swap. Brian and I buy lots of wine in dozen lots (to take advantage of good prices) and then split the spoils. With two of us looking, we rarely miss a bargain but all these savings are enough to almost send me broke. As we started switching the cases of wine from one car to the other my long time friend Marion arrived.

The dogs love company, especially Brian’s and as he makes such a fuss of them and never stops playing with them. Since Brian and Andrea lost their old dogs last year I sometimes wonder-

1. If they are coming to visit me or my dogs.
2. Who gets more enjoyment in playing the doggy games, Brian or my pack?

It was mid afternoon and time for a cup of coffee so I gave my (fairly) new SAECO automatic digital wiz bang machine a small workout and let my finger do the button pushing. These machines are not inexpensive but if you like a good cup of coffee and drink them regularly, the entry fee is well worth the return and I can not recommend them highly enough (and I am a fussy coffee drinker.)   

As usual, we normally start the formal part of the wine proceedings (after double-decanting the 4 masked reds) with a good bottle of Sparkling Shiraz and Brian was kind enough to bring a bottle of Rockford Black Shiraz (disgorged 1999). Initially the wine was medium weight but as it opened up it showed increased weight and complexity which confirms this wine will get a lot better with additional bottle age. Milk chocolate, raspberry, blackberry and plum were some of the complex array of flavours which showed some elegance in a wine that is all class. Rated as Excellent, it’s not inexpensive but it is worth every last cent.

Shortly after we opened the Black Shiraz my good friend with a great nose, Lynne joined us. And then it was then off to the Bowral Grand Bar and Brassiere where they are used to our strange pagan red rituals and don’t mind us walking in with our own glasses and wine. As usual, all wines are served masked and we play an options game. In addition to the obvious primary objective of having a great time and enjoying benchmark wines we have two other objectives. There is always a friendly competitive objective of messing with each others minds in the options game and the second is to try and have the best wines of the night.

Wine Number One was Brian’s so it was my turn to guess. The wine was obvious mature and was almost Pinot like in its bouquet with truffle, milk chocolate, some berry fruit and menthol. Very smooth, almost seamless with great intensity, not at all heavy, excellent length across the palate and obviously a wine of high quality. On the palate the flavours were dark fruit with chocolate and mushrooms which were layered. Light on the front of the palate it built and built as it journeyed across the tongue and finished with very good persistency. It was a cerebral wine that would have been better served alone but I still rated it as Excellent and would have guessed it was about a 1986 based on the bricking. Option one from Brian was, Australian, New Zealand or French. It was all over red rover, this had to be French and as I would have been hopeless at picking regions etc the wine was unmasked as Chateau Cadet-Bon 1990 St-Émilion Grand Crue (a Bordeaux blend).

Our starters were ready and Brian and I both had quail wrapped in prosciutto with brie and slices of quince so it was time to hit the second bottle which went well with our quail, see below. Marion had a Yarra bloody Valley goat cheese tartlet – a week later and I still can’t get away from the place. (See last weeks article for details.) Lynne had a salad and Andrea had something else. The entrees all tasted very good but mine could be improved by more quail and less quince. As the second bottle was mine, it was Brian’s turn to guess but first here is my tasting note.

Wine Number Two initially showed some saltpetre like characters which blew off. According to Lynne, there was some elegance to the bouquet with lots of mint/eucalyptus, dark chocolate and Brian remarked on the bright fruit component. The flavours were sweet and sour, very cranberry like in character and reasonably tart. (This tartness was a wonderful contrast to the sweetness of the quince in the food.) The wine was ample in weight with tannins that had mellowed quite well but the acid was still youthful. The wine was good on the front and mid palate but it didn’t go all the way though to the back. The wine was rated as Highly Recommended (just saved by the food) and was unveiled as the Tim Adams 1994 Aberfeldy. I have had this wine four times now and on all four occasions it has shown with differing levels of quality, from fantastic to this one which was relatively ordinary. Why? I have no idea!

In order to protect the guilty, I won’t tell you how both Brian and I did in the options games, they were just too embarrassing.

Wine Number Three was mine and for some reason I was a bit concerned about it even before I had opened it. Over the last few months I have had a great run with very few dud bottles and as this was going to my shot for best wine for the night I guess that explains the concern. It had a fair bit of bottle stink when I decanted it but that seemed to blow off and the sediment glass was OK when we left for the restaurant. When I poured it Lynne took one sniff and went “yuk, this is volatile and smells like my shed.”

“Trust me” I said, “it’s just a bit of bottle stink and it will blow off.”

Lynne – “I know what my nose tells me and I am not going to like that wine.”

With loads of patience I explain that it will be OK and all it needs is time but Lynne was unconvinced and sticking to her guns.

The wine had a big bouquet that still had a fair amount of what we thought was bottle stink but it also showed rich ripe intense fruit with loads of eucalyptus, and some very earth farmyard notes. One sip was enough; it was Brett affected and unpleasant.

I hate it when Lynne does that to me and I have to extract my left foot from my mouth!

The wine was a Jaspers Hill 1993 Georgia Paddock and according to Brian’s cellar records he tried one a while back and was so unimpressed that he sold the rest off so it looks like it may not be an isolated bad bottle.

The main course arrived; Lynne had a Thai vegetarian curry that was reasonably hot but well prepared. Marion had a sirloin with mushrooms and the rest of us had a rib eye of beef (half a cow each) on a bed of Pontiac mash and a sauce made from beetroot and ox tongue. The steaks were all cooked perfectly and soft as butter and went very well with Wine Number Four.

Whilst I was tucking into my slab of meat and concentrating more on the food than writing tasting notes, Lynne grabbed my pen and wrote “soft to the nose the wine shows a delicate first impression with mint, and floral fruit.” (That lady is a real red bigot.) I also noticed raspberry, milk chocolate and formic acid. On the palate the wine was very savoury with cherry, raspberry and chocolate. Tannins were soft and integrated the wine ample in weight, complexity makes the wine interesting and provides some class; the acid is amazingly fresh considering its age. Rated as Excellent it was unveiled as the Best's 1994 Thompson Family Reserve Shiraz.

The Thompson was the first bottle finished and it was a close second between the Aberfeldy and the frog stuff but the Chateau Cadet-Bon was next by a smidgeon.

Some of us little piggies decided to have desert, Brian went for a cheese platter and I had a soft warm baked chocolate dish with home made vanilla ice cream, what a way to go! The Campbell Gold Top Tokay (500ml) went really well with the desert and this wine which is loaded with complex toffee characters is a standout and great value at under $40; rated as Excellent its one of my favourites.

Marion had a big day planned with an early start so instead of staying at my place overnight she elected to do the long drive back to Sydney after dinner and as Lynne had to work on Sunday she headed off home too. Both of them had been good girls as they were both breathalysed in Mittagong and were below the .05 limit. Brian, Andrea and I certainly were not, so we hopped into a taxi for the ride back to my place were we had a night cap before bed.

Up bright and early the next morning we had a three kilometre walk up to the main road and back which the dogs enjoyed far more than I did. There are two advantages of living in the country. The first is that during the whole walk not one car drove past us, the second is that the air is beautiful and fresh.

At nine o’clock my next door neighbour Nicki drove up (yes she does live far away – 300 metres) and it was time to crack a bottle of bubbles. It was a beautiful warm spring morning so we sat out on the deck whilst watching my superior brand of luxurious weeds growing and had some Piper Heidsieck 1990 Champagne. Andrea remarked that the wine had a Brioche like character to it but as you can c-though it I didn’t give it a second thought. It did go well with the freshly made fruit salad which had been exceptionally well prepared by a gastronomic genius. (But that’s not the extent of my cooking skills because I did a great job of not burning the bagels which we had a little later.) The bagels were served with smoked salmon and all the necessary accompaniments. As the first bottle had disappeared I opened a Billecart Salmon NV which seems to be a much younger wine with fresher livelier characters but to my palate it also holds more interest and complexity. Andrea calls it “Fish on Wheels” and considering we had bagels with smoked salmon, that description was doubly apt!

By 11.30 after a very leisurely breakfast had been completed it was time to say goodbye to my good friends as they headed home and I did what any sane person would do under the circumstances, left the washing up and went back to bed for a couple of hours kip and then an alcohol free thirty hours.