2005 Alain Graillot Croze Hermitage

[TheEngineer]

I am so glad I have a couple of cases of this to last the long term. If you have not bought one please see if you can get one. I love this bottle.

Very very dark on opening, slightly muted nose but brooding in power. This is a big wine, lush large, broad, loads of dark berries, hint of herbalness, tarry and thick. Very smooth but large tannins still that needed a lot of decanting time (3 hours and it was still not all gone). Long finish but great mouth feel. You could drink this all night but seems to have the structure to want to avoid it for like 5 years......yeah like whatever...gonna open another one tomorrow. Big difference from 2004.

[TheEngineer]

On tuesday night, after the disappointment (or so I thought of the Chapoutier), I opened up old faithful.

No change in notes but again, polished off an entire bottle....starting at 10:00pm....

I love the approachability of this wine. Lush, broad, but still very balanced and structured. Easy drinking. Should've bought one more case to make it 36 bottles....

[TheEngineer]

Finally got to go see KC and brought a couple of bottles for him to try. Of course KC pulls out the big gun and lets me taste a Vodka that I've never even heard of before. It's wonderful stuff, great nose, sweat, and as he appropriately described it, the experience is almost like a single malt,....and this was a vodka.

I like Grailot's 05 and I was hoping that this would be a good bottle sot ath KC could try it....but as luck would have it ti was corked...so many corked wines recently..my percentages must be coming back up to more norms.....

[hotwine]

Dang, I hate it when a wine is corked! But not enough for me to embrace synthetic closures.

[TheEngineer]

Nope, I hate synthetics as a whole!

What I really hate about synthetics is that you do not know that it is there. If they are not made to last that long (which I am fine with), then at least let me know what is under the capsule so that I don't pull out a riesling 5-7 years from release only to find it oxidized from a sythetic being in there. If they want to use a synthetic, they should be required to let us know so taht we will consume the bottle earlier.

[TheEngineer]

Not corked this time [img]/ubb/smile.gif[/img] Lovely as every if not better, seems to be a bit lighter but more integrated this bottle. Good on a chilly NE evening.

[This message has been edited by TheEngineer (edited 01-07-2011).]