Unauthorized

The first truly great soft-shelled crabs of the season have finally arrived in Maryland, and no one does a better preparation than the Oregon Grille. Served within 24 hours of their harvesting from the Chesapeake Bay, the Oregon Grille sautées them in butter and serves them with a sauce that includes some coarse mustard grains. It is a fabulous combination. The restaurant also has some of the best beef in Baltimore, and the steak au poivre is one of their classic dishes.

With that we started with a sensational Jadot 2005 Corton Charlemagne. Surprisingly approachable with a lot more fat than I would have expected given the Jadot style of white winemaking, it exhibited lots of minerality along with honeyed nectarine, marmalade, and white currant notes, and a long finish. It should drink nicely for another decade or more. The 2005 Jacques Prieur Clos Vougeot was not very tannic, but neither did it appear to have much concentration. While it is a very good, delicious Pinot Noir, it was underwhelming for a grand cru from what was a great vintage in Burgundy. It exhibited a dark ruby color as well as tasty, silky flavors, but there was little depth or intensity. However, it was by far the least of any of the wines on the table.

We then moved to a trio of extraordinary Bordeaux wines. I had had the 1996 Lafite Rothschild a week earlier in Singapore, and was blown away by how it was showing. This bottle was from my cellar, and the 1996 is truly one of the greatest Lafites made in the last fifty years. Still deep purple to the rim, with secondary nuances beginning to arrive, it offers up lead pencil shaving, black currant, crushed rock, cedar, and spice box characteristics, followed by a full-bodied wine with remarkably silky tannins, and tremendous purity. It is an impressively concentrated, fresh, lively Lafite that should go on for at least another 25-35 years. Readers should be aware that 1996 was a top vintage for the Médoc wines, which remain underpriced as well as underestimated by many people in the wine world.  It is time to say good-bye to the fully mature, beautifully expressive 1983 Cheval Blanc. An orange/rust color at the rim suggests fully maturity, which was confirmed by the extraordinarily intense aromatics of forest floor, mint, sweet raspberries, plums, and soy. Soft, round, medium to full-bodied, and just beginning to fade slightly in the finish, this wine offers a gorgeous, fully mature drinking experience, but it is time to consume it. Lastly, the greatest wine ever made at this château, which has had its vineyard merged with that of La Mission-Haut-Brion, the prodigious 1982 La Tour-Haut-Brionstill boasts a dense ruby/purple color as well as an extraordinarily intense nose of incense, camphor, truffles, smoke, and oodles of dark berry fruit. Still an adolescent with ravishing richness, a multilayered texture, and exquisite complexity, this is undeniably one of the most prodigious 1982s. Moreover, it is probably somewhat undervalued should anyone be able to find any of the tiny production.