Last night my friend Giuseppe Locascio invited me into his apartment for a pasta con le sarde dinner. When I arrived Iacopo di Teodoro (below) was tossing together a classic Puntarelle with anchovy and shortly after we had guzzled down some Sauvignon from the Alto-Adige Iacopo unleashed a 1996 Corton-Charlemagne from Bonneau du Martray. This Domaine holds only Grand Cru vineyads on the Corton hill. 9.5 hectares of Corton-Charlemagne as well as some Pinot Noir in the Grand Cru of Corton.
The wine had been open for about an hour and by the time we got to it (at slightly colder than cellar temperature), it was super expressive, singing to all of us. Sometimes when you are poured a magical wine that is aged properly and fully expressing its true character, you cant help but to smell it over and over. At one point I stopped sipping this wine and just continued sniffing the magical aromas coming from the glass.
For shits I was browsing the cellartracker.com notes and most reviews ripped apart this wine for being over the hill and/or oxidized which was not in any form the case here.
This '96 Corton-Charlemagne had the classic deep golden colour of aged chardonnay from Burgundy and bursted with scents of deep caramel, almonds, candied citrus and held an impressive weight, acidity and minerality on the palate.
Cheers Iacopo!
An overall classic Italian dinner in New York City with the New York Italian connection. Of course the conversation drifted from wine philosophy to the absurdity of recent Italian politics and it brought to mind the Bunga Bunga Ford advertisement that just went down in India.
