Food Adventures #17: Vintage Wine and Port Night With The Parents

Father Cigar has recently gotten into the wine auctions over at K&L Wine Merchants- so he put in a bid on a trio of consecutive vintages, won and you know what that meant...

VINTAGE WINE NIGHT!

The Cigar Parentals had run across this particular vintage on an early 1990s visit to the UK where they had stayed in a super-swank hotel near Gatwick. (The Cigar Parentals tend to have more expensive tastes than I do- so when they say it was super-swank, it was undoubtedly SUPER-swank) and they loved the Cos D'Estournel Saint Estéphe so much they kept hunting for it. When it come up on K and L, Father Cigar just couldn't pass it up so he snagged a 1998, 1999 and 2000 for everyone to compare and sample... extensively.

Mother Cigar did her usual thing of producing fantastic food to accompany all this wine- fillet mignon with red white reduction and pomegranate seeds, bread, multi-colored potatoes- but not the veg! The Missus and I snagged fresh produce from the New Bo City Market in Cedar Rapids and Mom roasted them up. They were delicious- in fact all the food was delicious.

While most everyone around the table liked the 1998, the Missus and I didn't. I thought the 1998 tasted a little weird. I'm used the red wines having that earthy, almost metallic bite but the 1998 tasted like- well, put it this way, people described it as 'kerosene' or 'wet wood.' And if you want wines that taste like that, then by all means, go for the 1998. The 1999 didn't have that weird flavor but it felt thinner than the 1998- a little watery, if that's the right word. The 2000 had the best of both, I thought- the body of the 1998 and the lack of weird flavor of the 1999. It was my favorite for the night.

I'm not a super wine snob by any stretch of the imagination but this was a fun night. It was very relaxing to sit around a table, eat some good food and drink some truly excellent wine- my ability to swish a glass around and inhale deeply and detect notes of wet wood or grass clippings might not be up there with this best of them but I do know what I like and I know good wine when I drink it.

There was a post-script to this deliciousness:

Vintage Port... oh yum. I seem to be inheriting Father Cigar's genetic predisposition to scotch and Mother Cigar's love of port. What's port you ask?

Port wine is typically richer, sweeter, heavier, and possesses a higher alcohol content than unfortified wines. This is caused by the addition of distilled grape spirits (aguardente similar to brandy) to fortify the wine and halt fermentation before all the sugar is converted to alcohol and results in a wine that is usually 18 to 20% alcohol.

Leaving aside the Wikipedia definition- it's delicious is what it is. And the older you get the more delicious it becomes... perfect way to end the night.