Great Wines of the World. Tasting at Tango

I run a wine tasting club at Tango. It's a great perk for employees, especially when their VP of Engineering (i.e. yours truly) personally invests time and energy to entertain and educate. About a third of the company attends, it's popular. To celebrate our recent D round ($280M) and passing 200m registered users, we splurged a little bit. See for yourself - this was a mesmerizing line-up of some of the world's greatest wines. Chave and Quintarelli were jaw-droppingly, mind-bogglingly great. Others - very good too.



Tasting notes:

JL Chave Hermitage blanc 2009 - wow, amazing wine, depth, complexity, impact! Up there with top grand cru white burgundy.

Marquis d'Angerville Volnay 1er "Clos des Ducs" monopole 2006 - top wine from Volnay, complex and interesting, secondary notes, but a bit medicinal / pine-needle and in need of more time to smooth out the remaining tannins. I suspect that 2006 was not the greatest vintage of this legendary wine.

Giacomo Conterno Barolo Cascina Francia 2009 - opulent and luscious Barolo consistent with the 2009 Barolo vintage. Lacking a bit of cool classic structure for me.

Calon-Segur Bordeaux 1995 - very classic, balanced Bordeaux 3rd growth, good depth of fruit, acidity, in a sweet spot of development but nowhere near the end, good but not amazing.

Dunn Howell Mountain 2003 - very good and tasty, many people's favorite, and one of my favorite Dunn vintages in the 2000's. Not quite as complex as some of the other wines, but a pleasure nonetheless.

JL Chave Hermitage rouge 2008 - beautiful wine, super complex and expressive, pepper, herbs, cured meat, beautiful silky texture, and lots of other things, not a powerful blockbuster like 2009 and 2010, but drinking well right now, at half the price.

Quintarelli Amarone 2003 - wow, almost port-like without being heavy, but dry, super luxurious, super complex and exotic. Amazing. Watch out for 16.5% alc.!

Warre's Vintage Port 1980 - very good, but maybe not old enough or complex enough for my taste. Good, but perhaps just ok, especially after Quintarelli. Still pretty fascinating to be drinking a 34 year old wine and calling it "not old enough"...

Willi Schaefer 2011 Graacher Domprobst Beerenauselese - deliciously sweet, classically balanced and luscious, but not amazing enough to justify a $170+ price tag for 375ml IMHO. For almost the same money, I strongly suspect that 2011 d'Yquem is a much more impressive wine.


So there you have it. Tango Winos were very pleased and slightly tipsy. Good times!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Most expensive Cognacs in the world?

Rajun Cajun - when only a beer will do

Shaoxing rice wine - learning the taste