Unauthorized

Another terrific meal at Chef Cindy Wolf’s Charleston restaurant offered impeccable service, only the finest, and for the most part local ingredients, and flavorful cuisine. I like what they are doing now, where you can literally do anything you want on the menu ... have six appetizers, two or three main courses, or if you want, all cheese from Baltimore’s finest cheese selection, or all desserts, etc., etc. The cost for this is one flat fee based on how many courses you order.

We started with a delicious, still young and vibrant 1996 Taittinger Comte de Champagne Blanc de Blancs. That was followed by a slightly evolved, golden-colored 1999 Bouchard Montrachet. I just don’t understand why people keep buying all these white Burgundies with seemingly only those from Domaine Leflaive and Coche-Dury being free of oxidation. It is truly one of the biggest scandals in the wine world. I have stopped buying all my favorite white Burgundy producers, including Domaine Leflaive and Coche-Dury, but there it is just a question of the prices being too ridiculous, and I am not in the mood to pay them. The finest dry white of the day was the 2003 Chave Hermitage. It is an exquisitely rich, full-bodied wine with lots of honeysuckle, caramelized orange and nectarine notes as well as amazing glycerin and power. No doubt it has lofty alcohol, but everything is well-balanced, a tribute to the Chave family, whose ancestors began making wine in the late 1700s.

That was followed by a mini-horizontal of Hermitage that included two perfect wines, and one that was totally closed. The 1990 Paul Jaboulet-Ainé Hermitage La Chapelle is still a youngster at nearly twenty years of age. It offers a youthful preview of what the 1961 Paul Jaboulet-Ainé Hermitage La Chapelle already offers. The latter wine (almost 50 years old) exhibits a celestial bouquet of crème de cassis, forest floor, pepper, barbecued spices, soy, and balsamic. It is a broad, full-bodied, unctuously textured, still fresh and lively wine. This was my last bottle of this beauty, and I served it in honor of board member Jeff Leve’s visit to Baltimore. It was “the real deal!” The 1990 Hermitage La Chapelle almost seemed one-dimensional in comparison, but everything is there as the wine is fat, rich, and super-concentrated, but still a youngster. Somewhat disappointing because it was so incredibly closed, which surprised me, was the 1990 Chave Hermitage Cuvée Cathelin. The regular bottling is sumptuous, open, and already complex and delicious, but this luxury cuvée is still an infant. No matter how much coaxing we did, it was difficult to get it to reveal much mor than huge concentration and lots of tannin. A sleeper producer is Bernard Faurie, and his 1990 Hermitage Le Méal exhibits a dense ruby/purple color as well as lots of juicy, succulent fruit. It has not yet taken on many secondary or tertiary nuances (somewhat surprising for a 19-year-old wine), but this is Hermitage, not Beaujolais.

We then moved to a flight of four Guigal single vineyard Côte Rôties. A perfect wine, and one that ranks alongside his all-time greats (1969 and 1978), is the 2003 Côte Rôtie La Mouline. Guigal was one of the latest harvesters in 2003, when all who picked a month or two before him, and acidified based on oenologists’ fears, made incredibly flawed, green, unnatural tasting wines. Guigal waited and waited, got the tannins right, and his wines also had incredible freshness, with no acidification. This is one of those staggeringly intense, rich yet refreshing wines. Still a baby, it has at least 20-25 years ahead of it. The 1985 Côte Rôtie La Mouline is just hitting its plateau of full maturity. An extraordinary wine of great complexity and richness, it boasts notes of violets, black raspberries, licorice, asphalt, camphor, truffles, and loads of cassis and kirsch. This extraordinarily silky textured, full-bodied wine can be drunk over the next 10-15 years. In contrast, the dark plum-colored 1985 Côte Rôtie La Landonne is a manly, savage beast displaying aged beef, blood, barbecue spice, and scorched earth characteristics. Full-bodied and still revealing some tannin, it has not yet hit its peak. The1982 Côte Rôtie La Landonne is the outlier. Fully mature, this particular bottle was not showing as well as several previous ones I have had. It appears to be losing some color and fruit, and its acidity and tannin are beginning to poke through the rich character. There are plenty of earth, charcoal, and burning ember-like notes, but the wine tails off in the finish and did not improve with further exposure to air.

This was another beautiful meal at Baltimore’s finest downtown eating establishment, Charleston. I actually had to get a double order of the yellow fin tartare, it was so fresh and flavorful, and of course, I’m a glutton for Chef Cindy Wolf’s deep-fried cornmeal-crusted oysters. The 1996 Billecart-Salmon Blanc de Blancs was the perfect foil for the appetizers, followed by perhaps the best bottle yet of the Marcassin 2003 Chardonnay Three Sisters (a vineyard owned by the Martinelli family from which, until recently, the fruit was shared equally between the Martinellis and Helen Turley and John Wetlaufer of Marcassin). This wine displayed great minerality, with notes of nectarine, white currant, quince, powdered stone, and lots of honeyed citrus, with hints of marmalade and lemon blossom. It’s a beauty, and to reiterate, the best showing yet of it.

To finish off, we had a magnum of fully mature – and my last one – 1990 Vieux Donjon. This wine was one of those wonderful Châteauneuf du Papes from this great vintage that drank well when it was released in 1992, never went through a dumb stage, continued to develop additional complexity, but always stood out for its velvety opulence and complex garrigue, black currant, black cherry, licorice, and peppery notes, with some meaty grilled steak nuances as well. This wine was still very full-bodied and fleshy, displaying some amber at the edge, and clearly ready for consumption. Any owners of it would be advised to drink theirs up over the next 3-4 years, as I can’t see it getting any better.