Sexy O-Six

Across the bay Spiffen and Sandra, and SWMBO and I went to have a meal at the Bar&Co.  It’s a beautiful location and in the daytime the sun streams in the large glass frontage and sides.  At night I’m told it still feels airy but quite intimate in the dining room.  Bar&Co. serve excellent contemporary food and the wine list is full of interest.  The list isn’t huge, but it’s chosen carefully.  The Cellar List has some older gems – not too old, so they’re not outrageously expensive.  The setting is so inviting that one must have Champagne to celebrate being on the right side of the ground!  An NV Laurent-Perrier with its new label, a little like Moet & Chandon’s, typically elegant with florals, citrus and delicate bready notes.  With the oysters, it got sweeter, and became even more delightful.

However the wines selected to go with the butterfish were two sexy Chardonnays from 2006.  That’s a few years down the track for many of this variety, but for wines with any degree of aspiration, they’re just coming into their own.  The 2006 Kumeu River ‘Mates Vineyard’ Chardonnay with some golden hues, and that distinctive struck-match, flinty complexity and great weight and depth of stonefruits and nuts, but all with style and class.  More a dry, minerally mouthfeel, and it worked well with the sea flavours of the oysters, more so than with the fish, but no issues there either.  The great pairing was the 2006 Sacred Hill ‘Riflemans’ Chardonnay.  Pale yellow, with ripe citrus fruits dominating, backed by oak nuttiness, and just the perfect degree of complexing flintiness.  More to this wine in volume and presence. This has a lusciousness and sweetness to the fruit and this element met the sweetness of the fish.  They say the sum is greater than the parts.  True here.

Two really sexy O-Six Chardonnays, both with plenty of life and future ahead.