On a Path

Your life always follows a path. Hurdles often appear. It can take a concerted effort to overcome them, and often with help and understanding, it happens a little more easily. Wines also follow their own path. A couple of individual wines showed this to be the case last night. The Planning Man and passionate guests from a Pointed Place were the reason for opening a few:

First up was a 2000 Dauvissat Chablis Grand Cru Le Clos, initially seeming very forward, fully integrated with chalk and minerals and a soft, textured palate, though an underlying leanness, as can be expected from Chablis. The path of this bottle was nearing its end journey, disappointingly for the Pointed Place Man, whose last bottle of this wine was very youthful. Then the TCA emerged. SWMBO was instantly struck by it. Strange how cork taint can lie low, them at a certain temperature or time in glass, it announces itself.

As a wine starting is path, the 2005 Grivot Vosene-Romanee 1er Cru Beaux Monts was primary as could be. A degree of blood and iron to the richness and density. A mouthful that will follow a long and possibly glorious path over the next two decades.

Then a wine that followed a path and never deviating and will go nowhere. A 1983 Deinhard Bernkasteler Graben Riesling Auslese. Light golden, and searingly acidic. Hints of blue cheese and decrepit notes plus a little oxidation, but still discernably old Riesling from the Mosel and eye-opening for it. It must have been a tart and sharp number at the start of its path. It still is. It will not go anywhere different now. Except down.