A couple of bottles at Hawksmoor

Long time readers will know there is nothing I like more on a Monday night than noshing on quality meat. This is because London’s best steak establishment, Hawksmoor, charge a fiver corkage on Mondays. If you wish to dine I suggest you order the 600g Sirloin steak on the bone, top meat which is great value. So, our wines:

Chambolle-Musigny 2007, Domaine G. Roumier

Now this has a really fruity nose, opulent and overt for a village wine. It has a pleasing mineral tang to the nose as well, but what you have to love about smelling it is that fruit; it is just delish, man. The palate has fine, ripe tannins, an attractive, refreshing degree of acidity and one hell of a lot of that lovely fruit. Seems a touch plump to me, but that can, and does here, work very well. Yum, yum, yum. This is very Chambolle, and as such I really like it. It has complexity, charm and fun value, what more could you ask for from a village wine?

Hermitage 2007, Domaine du Colombier

Now this smells very pleasing. It is a tiny bit reduced and beetrooty, but there is a lot of lovely fruit here which demands to climb up your nose and activate your pleasure-centres. Blueberry fruit, I feel. There is a lot of ground pepper, too. It is also big, manly and as complex as you could wish. This seems a particularly fruit-driven nose for a Hermitage, that is the vintage character. The palate is an explosion of ripe fruit, silky tannins and rich minerality. It tickles every bit of your palate with the pleasure it delivers. It is really extra-ordinarily long, and that earthy/fruity/tannic interplay is still intriguing on the finish. Once again, I feel this is easily worth the compliment of more time in the cellar. Perhaps it’ll have a more accessible ageing profile than the 2005 that I had recently thanks to its shed-loads of fruit, and it probably won’t need as long to reach its peak. This is a serious quality wine which is a riotous romp of gratification.