Saturday night - SC Oh ! Block 6

I peeled off the pvc tape, cracked the cap, rubbed Aladdin's lamp, and a plume of pungency pervaded the table. The last bottle of Saint Clair Oh! Block 6 2008. I'd been keeping these since March 2009 in cool total darkness. This was the most beautiful of all of them. Very very pale in the glass, wonderful ripe pink grapefruit, passion fruit with notes of white peach all over the place, minerality in the middle and then, a lovely pith on the length, that went on and on and on. The lemon grass, if there ever was any ? Had long gone. We had great company who loved this wine, Mike took a pic of the label for his iphone gallery, he'd never had one of these. The wine is featherlight purity, it dances, there is zero cloying, it floats in the mouth, while nicely cutting the palate. Beautifully integrated now, and surely one of the best MSB's I've ever had. I served the wine slightly cooler to be trendy - and it was very very racy.

Heavy & Oily - that gotta to be total bollocks for Oh ! Block 6, well, unless bottles have been tampered with ?

You can't get a more featherlight, yet integrated concentration of flavour - or can you ? I have the '09 Astrolabe Kekerengu Coast for much later this year, which Bob Campbell has not done !

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Duncan

It was only "oily" at 14°. Colder it was just too intense to enjoy - almost needed watering down.
Will leave the second for a few months.

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Four wheels move the body - 2 wheels move the soul.

...it was just too intense to enjoy

~faints~

I got that slightly wrong, I've saved a snippet in the bottle. I'd been drinking the extra savoury '09 Cairanne Cdr before with grub. It was not white peach, it is Lychee and currant bud, same as JE'07 only a notch or two above for featherlight sophistication.

The most notable '08 MSB that has passed my lips.

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Duncan

Well I waited one month. Tiny snifter last night and in frij all day, awaiting my pleasure after what I knew would be a hevvy day. Ebbw Vale this morn / aft boyo and a ***** committee meeting ce soir.
Nice, don't know what happened to the first, but this is NICE. Not what I want every day, it's toooo much for that, but just what I needed tonight. Lovely now isn't it ?

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Four wheels move the body - 2 wheels move the soul.

Ebbw Vale ..... good grief !.

We went to Mumbles. It's lovely there. Like Brighton only without the pensioners and transvestites.

They have two wine shops. Mumbles Fine Wine which is the sort of place where Dunc could happily stay for a fortnight. It's all posh Burgundies and other high end French stuff.

And the CheersWine shop which is new. It had 17 MSB's, 14 pale pink Provence/style rose' and 11 Loire sb's including the lovely but slightly atypical Henry Pelle la Croix au Garde Sancerre.

The MSB'S were Cooper's Creek, Stoneburn, Vidal Estate, Distant Land, Zepher, Cloudy Bay, Jackson Estate Green Lip, Fairhalls Down, Villa Maria Private Bin, Tohu, Nautilus. Allan Scott and some I hadn't heard of.

I would of bought a Green Lip if I could have smelt it but once bitten...

I bought nothing despite spending over half an hour in there.

The Cailbourdin Pouilly Fume at M&S is a perfect example of Loire sb. The SC PB 19 at MW is MSB at it's finest and even though the Circumstance single variatel mourvedre rose looked lovely and £8.99 is about right for such a wine the Gard rose at Marks for £6.49 is about as good as that style of rose gets so why pay more.

They lured me in ...they kept me there...they tempted me....but I resisted.

Is this good or bad ?

No idea.

Trial

It's very nice up the valleys these days as well. Blackers has turned to green. Flowers & rapeseed out, birds singing, even the occasional sheep. Went up via Usk & Ponty then back via Abergavenny.

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Four wheels move the body - 2 wheels move the soul.