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I provided the wines from my cellar, and the great Daniel Boulud provided his restaurant as well as himself and his superb kitchen staff to cook the meal - all for a worthy charitable cause. The courses were all topnotch, and while I am primarily a Maryland crab lover, his Maine peekytoe crab salad was fabulous. Even better was the crispy Scottish langoustines and the remarkable salt crusted dorade with black mission figs. We then moved to the duet of rabbit, both great courses, and his sensational 24-hour braised veal shank with grilled porcini.

As for the wines, we started with the dry, full-bodied, fresh, lively 2003 Riesling Schlossberg Cuvée Ste.-Catherine from Domaine Weinbach. It is a serious palate refresher. We then moved to a remarkable flight of mostly white Burgundies, with one ringer, the 1996 Marcassin Chardonnay Lorenzo Vineyard, which was the best wine of the first flight. I am always skeptical of California Chardonnay’s aging potential, but this 1996 is a brilliant effort offering notes of brioche, honeysuckle, citrus oil, smoke, and earth. Its complexity, freshness, richness, and overall balance made it stand out, even in this tough company. The 1995 Niellon Chassagne-Montrachet Les Vergers was fully mature, revealing no oxidation, which can be a problem with this vintage. It needs to be drunk up. A brilliant, but still young wine is the 2002 Raveneau Chablis Montée de Tonerre. Revealing crisp oyster shell, lemon zest, and loads of citrus, it is a powerful white.

The next flight of white Burgundies was even greater. The 1989 Gagnard Chassagne-Montrachet Les Caillerets was stunningly opulent, rich, and honeyed. The two youngest whites were 22 year old white Burgundies. The 1985 Leroy Meursault-Genevrières could have been 5-7 years old. Light-colored, with extraordinary minerality, richness, and body, this sensational white is still a baby. Remarkably, the 1985 Comtes de Lafon Meursault-Charmeswas just as youthful as the Leroy. A fatter style of wine with plenty of butter, earth, brioche, and tropical fruit characteristics, it possesses superb minerality as well as fabulous acidity. It’s interesting that many great white Burgundies age more slowly than their red counterparts.

The next flight was a mini-vertical of Château Rayas. The only vintage not made by the late Jacques Reynaud was the 1998. Although it is an underachiever for the vintage, I still believe it is an outstanding wine. It is light in color (already showing some rust at the edge), and is unquestionably on a fast evolutionary track, but it offers a gorgeous kirsch liqueur character, medium to full body, and a round, generous, transparent personality. However, it does not possess the stuffing or potential longevity of the other wines in the flight. The 1995 Rayas Châteauneuf du Pape flirts with perfection. Its deep ruby/purple-tinged color is followed by beautiful aromas of kirsch, licorice, lavender, and flowers accompanied by a full-bodied, powerful, rich palate with great acidity, sweet tannin, and fabulous concentration. The 1988 is a somewhat underrated, sleeper vintage, especially for Rayas. A late adolescent in terms of evolution, it displays beautiful smoky, kirsch notes intermixed with high quality unsmoked cigar tobacco interwoven with crushed rocks, raspberries, and black currants. The 1985 Rayas(which was dormant for 8-10 years) has exploded in terms of its qualitative evolution. It is sumptuous, full-bodied, fat, and fleshy, but possesses enough acidity to provide freshness and definition. This wine boasts fabulous aromatics and a long finish. It is drinking beautifully at present. Once a superb wine, the 1979 is only a shadow of its former self, with one foot in the grave.

We then tasted a vertical of Domaine Ponsot’s Clos de la Roche from my cellar. The 1993revealed the tell-tale high acids and a linear, intense, taut style. It exhibited pleasant notes of meat, fresh mushrooms, figs, and plums, but the acidity will always be high. The 1990 was sumptuous, although some tasters thought it was too flat. As it always has, the 1985 tasted great, but it needs to be drunk up. The 1983 is the most bizarre wine of this group. It initially displays notes of fresh garbage intermixed with old mushrooms, but then fabulous plum, fig, marmalade, and exotic tropical fruit aromas and flavors emerge. It is an interesting and captivating, somewhat kinky Pinot Noir. The top wine of this flight was the 1980, a wine that remains remarkably young. Exhibiting the deepest color of any of these wines, it is a full-bodied, powerful, rich, super-pure, well-delineated Pinot Noir that remains an adolescent. It should evolve for another 20-25 years, outliving any other wine in this flight.

Switching gears we moved to Nebbiolo. The 1982 Barolo from the late Sobrero possessed huge amounts of volatile acidity. Every bottle I have had seems to be completely different, but if you can handle the VA, you will love the wine. It is living on the edge, with some bottles complete failures and others just à point as the French would say. The 1990 Mascarello Monprivato is a rich, full-bodied, still young beauty revealing tremendous licorice, cedar, fruit cake, cherry, and tobacco characteristics. Still a baby, the young, dense, full-bodied, powerful1990 Sandrone Barolo Cannubi Boschis is a perfect example of a wine that seems to cut a path halfway between the arch-traditionalists and the modernist school of winemaking. It is amazing how young the 1989 Barolos continue to taste. They are far less evolved than the 1990s. Luigi Einaudi’s 1989 Barolo revealed notes of tobacco, truffles, berry fruit, cedar, black tea, soy, and a hint of balsam. This stunningly full-bodied, powerful wine needs more time in the cellar. It was in total contrast to the 1982 Bruno Giacosa Barbaresco Santo Stefano, a fully mature wine displaying considerable amber as well as fabulous aromatics, great sweetness in the mouth, and an incredibly long, rich finish. My colleague, Antonio Galloni, brought a bottle of 1989 Barolo Rionda de Serralunga that was corked, which was a disappointment. However, when that wine is right, it’s a 100 pointer for sure.

The final flight of dry reds included northern red Rhônes. The 1989 Chave Hermitage is a baby that is just beginning to strut its stuff. Owners should sit on it for another 3-4 years. The same can be said for the 1991 Chave Hermitage Cathelin. It boasts a stunningly complex bouquet, fabulous richness, and a silky, seamless personality. This great wine has another 20 years of life ahead of it. Chapoutier’s 1989 Hermitage Le Pavillon was very reduced. It came on with air, but clearly this wine needs to be decanted in the morning and drunk in the evening ... it’s that backward and the reduction requires significant aeration. We ended the flight with two perfect wines, the 1989 Guigal Côte Rôtie La Turque and 1989 Guigal Côte Rôtie La Landonne. Just hitting its plateau of maturity, La Turque is more evolved and rich, whereas La Landonne needs another 5-7 years of cellaring.

I was pretty well in the tank at this point, but I did enjoy the extraordinary sweet wine with which we finished the evening, the great 2003 Mr. K Noble Man made by the partnership of the great Alois Kracher from Austria and the transplanted Austrian living in Ventura, California, Manfred Krankl of Sine Qua Non winery. Altogether, it was a great night of food and friends with several board members in attendence.