Coming Up for Air

Another quiet night with the Ally Pally Helly couple still meant plenty of vinous noise.  The conversation was mellow but the wine and food tastes were a little more out there.  It’s the perfect was to spend an evening, with humour, civility and plenty of interesting things covered.

The final red produced was the 1990 Robert Sirugue Vosne Romanee, a bottle with a bit of bottle age.  This was obtained on a trip 20+ years ago.  A label we don’t see here, but a bit of digging shows a 11 ha domaine and Jayer family ties.  A wine of good provenance.  And it was a wine that needed the time both since bottling, and after being poured in the glass.  Still dark with black-red and garnet hues, this was fulsome and voluminous on nose and weighty and rich on the palate.  A bigger wine for Vosne Romanee, especially for village level and for a wine with a quarter of a century under its belt.  It must have been a big, structured and grunty wine in its time.  Now into its secondary and tertiary phase with savoury, earthy and dried herb flavours, and that seasoned oak resinous, not quite dank expression.  But holding it all together was lovely rich and sweet fruit.  The tannins and acid all in magical balance, and as it saw more air, it cleaned up, become more harmonious.  The more we looked at what it was like when young, the more we were pleased to be drinking it now.