Taste it Again: Featherstone 2007 Gamay Noir
23 Mar 2015- Details
- Category: Lost & Found / Taste it Again
(December 31, 2014) ... New Year's Eve, Chinese food is ordered and now its time to pick out the last bottle of the year, what should it be? For some reason I found myself in the wine fridge pulling out a bottle of Featherstone Gamay from 2007 ... A hot vintage in Ontario, but the question is: does Gamay like the heat over the long haul? I'm about to find out. The nose comes across in a pleasant way with notes of black cherry and anise; while the palate has sweet dried black cherry, anise seed, lively tannins, and a long cedar mixed with cherry finish. As the chill wears off of this one some odds things begin to happen. First there is a kind of minty-earthy-cranberry note that develops on the nose, after about an hour and a half open. The palate also starts to play a few odd tricks developing sour cranberry and anise on finish - which truthfully is not far off from what you'd expect from an older Gamay wine, sure its still relatively pleasant, but with more tannin and acidity on the finish than one would expect. I think if you have some in the cellar, the time to drink is now, this one isn't going to get any better.
(December 31, 2014) ... On the morning of the last day of the year (2014) I put three Rieslings in the fridge, two from Ontario and one from Germany ... Later that day I brought out a couple of Riesling glasses, and in the middle of the afternoon the wife and I sipped and sampled those three wines, starting with a Sanson 2007 Riesling - this wine was dark orange in colour, almost to the level of being unnatural. On the nose was apricot and peach pit, but the wine lacked any kind of fresh fruit aroma, in fact with some time it developed an oxidative note, to match its colour ... I guess that is what you'd expect from a hot vintage Riesling. The palate has a definite citrus note on the finish with good acidity, but it seems a little bland as far as the flavour goes, I expected a little more depth from a wine this deep in color. On the 'depth chart' of Rieslings today it was right at the bottom.
Wine number two was a Chateau des Charmes 2006 Riesling, Estate ... Now this one, although older than the Samson, had much more to offer on the nose and the palate. Nose of wildflower honey and bosc pear skin (which seems quite apropos for wines from this house). Palate has a fresh mineral quality with a little green apple, both pulp and skin, but it's really the wet stone that shines thru from mid-palate to finish ... This was the wife's favorite, while I was drawn to the German wine for its laser focused balance between sweetness and acidity ... 
