Hacker wrote: Penfolds 1993 St Henri which was just a classic mature long and rich revelation;
There's not too many Australian wines from 1993 that are still kicking goals. Good to hear that there are still good bottles out there.
Aaron, whilst it was an honour to try, after about 90 minutes or so it started to break down a bit. We got it at or just past it's peak. Not so with the 389 though - it still has time on it's side.
I was actually pretty shocked at the St. Henri...it came off a lot better than I was expecting... If you try to imagine how good an aged St. Henri could be, this was just about there. Considering it wasn't from a great vintage, I think it impressed all that much more. I don't think the decanter did it any favors as far as going longer in the night but still..the first 60 minutes with it were fantastic.
The 1998 389 was also very impressive. If you knew today's 389s would end up this way, most people probably wouldn't mind the current price levels. I think there is always that thought that the same quality fruit is not going into the 389 but forgetting about all that, this was really very good...showed some very nice aged characters and it was noticeably fresher and a bit more vibrant than the St Henri. The structure of the wine suggested it still had many years left.
This also came up at the table..the two wines actually seemed similar to each other.....which is a bit odd seeing as they're made differently...There were differences of course..but there was something that made you feel they were from the same family...
The Champagne was beautiful...Hacker has brought quite a few Champagnes to these things and I think this was probably the best out of all of them. Wonderfully aged but still very vibrant, still feeling very young. This will definitely age for a LOT longer but this one seemed to strike that a perfect balance between age and vibrancy...
The Hewitson was a very nice Shiraz/Mouvedre blend but it just wasn't a night for a younger wine (and from Magnum). We've been doing older to younger at these Offlines..I think because we've been going under the assumption that the younger wines will make it harder to taste the subtleties of the older wines...plus our palates will be a bit more fatigued later in the evening. I think that has worked out so far but in hindsight this was one night where the younger to older would probably have been a bit better. With three aged wines that were really singing, it really did make the Hewitson feel a bit out of place...What it really needed was some other younger wines to give it better contrast...
