Unauthorized

My favorite local restaurant is the Oregon Grille, and once again we enjoyed the finest high quality food available in northern Baltimore County. Their crab cakes are second only to my own, and they offer the best dry aged beef available in the area.

We (my wife and I and some friends from Japan) began with a magnum of Aubert’s 2005 Chardonnay Quarry Vineyard, a wonderful wine full of honeysuckle, crushed rock, white citrus, and lemon blossom characteristics. My Japanese friends were thrilled with its greatness, richness, and precision. That was followed by three reds from my cellar that I had decanted well in advance. The 1990 La Mission seemed fully mature, offering up a beautiful cedary, graphite, earthy-scented bouquet, followed by a supple-textured, medium to full-bodied, fleshy, round wine that displayed all the complexity of La Mission, but appeared to be on a relatively fast evolutionary track compared to the 1989. The aromas of this beauty could fill a room. More restrained was the 1990 Latour. Attractive cassis, licorice, earth, and spice notes emerged from this deep ruby/purple-colored offering. Approachable, fleshy, full-bodied, and supple in that undeniably sumptuous 1990 style, this may have been the most evolved bottle of the 1990 Latour I have yet had. We finished with one of my last bottles of the 1970 Mouton Rothschild. This wine possessed a certain austerity for many years, but it has rounded into form, exhibiting a deep ruby/purple color and classic cedar, mint, and black currant notes. It held up beautifully during this three hour dinner. It has always been an old style Bordeaux with more aggressive tannins, but they have mellowed out considerably. Readers who own well-stored bottles should be able to enjoy it for another two decades or more. The beauty of Bordeaux!