Another night around the neighbours’ place

We have a few wines planned for tonight, the first of which has been a pleasing surprise.

Riesling Spätlese Serringer Schloss Saarstein 2005, Schloss Saarstein

Unlike previous bottles of this that I have opened, this smells quite clean and has a more pronounced mineral character. It has good peachy fruit. It is obviously pretty ripe. There is a bit of spritz on the palate, along with really nice fruit, good minerality and a nice backbone of acidity. It has a degree of complexity and reasonable length. Not great by any means, but quite a nice drink.

Riesling Polish Hill 2004, Grosset

This has shut down a tad since [link2post id=”1505″]I last had it a year ago[/link2post]; it has lost a bit of the lively lime character. It is still quite mineral, and it has a lot of style. Just seems awkward and middle-aged (I am middle-aged and I am awkward). I still think this has a good future in front of it and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone. Just age it for a bit before you drink it.

Gigondas Prestige des Hautes Garrigues 1998, Domaine Santa Duc

Robert Parker gave this 93 points and said it’d age until 2018. He is very well paid and drinks a lot of wine, of course. This honks of an extremely booze-tastic, Port-like drink; some kind of crazy fortified Mourvedre. There is really rather a lot of jammy fruit on the nose as well. It seems far from balanced. It also seems a touch mature. Ageing this has done the palate no favours, the jammy fruit is not powerful enough to balance the frankly worrying level of alcohol. No balance, rather dirty and far too muscular. If this wine knew where your stolen bottle of Musigny 2005 was and was alone in a room, blind-folded, with its hands tied behind its back and you went in with a cricket bat, you’d be the one walking out in a daze. Can that ever be nice?

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