Okay this is a rather unusual choice as wine of the week but this is a highly unusual week – not just because for so many of us it brings the big build up to Christmas with all its excitements and exceptional demands on wallet and good nature, but because it is the week in which this new site has finally seen the light of day, or whatever crepuscular glow computer screens can be said to operate in.
So here I am at the end of a very long working day/week/month, having poured myself (before others to come) a glass of the famous Cristal, for once from a fully mature vintage. It is also, incidentally, one of the very few wines that cuts the mustard with the under 23 year-olds in my household, thanks to various rappers' espousal of the easiest-to-spot de luxe champagne of all.
So what does it smell of? Full, almost nutty maturity and some very serious fullblown, autolysed, Pinot characters. This is a very dry, substantial, full-bodied wine as it hits the front palate and then spreads its magnificent self over the breadth of the palate and slinks down the throat (no thank you to spitting tonight). I can feel that savoury, just-this-side-of-mushroomy aftertaste insinuate itself down towards even the lungs – it almost seems to have reached my furiously typing elbows now. To think how much of this wine was drunk a decade ago...and it's food, grand food wine really. White truffles, anyone?
Happy Christmas!