This is part three, which is to say the final, the last, the end of the wines for this dinner. Definitely more effort to chronicle them than to drink them, but such is the journalist's life. I'll recap the 1988 Bordeaux tasting from the F&W Classic in the next day or two as well—some amazing wines there, and some not so. Interesting lineup to say the least. Here are the final six from the Schoenfeld dinner:

2005 HDV Carneros Syrah ($50) I seem to have written "blueberry gravel," and while I'm not sure what that is, it does in retrospect seem like an appropriate phrase for this sweet, dense, California Syrah.

2005 Colgin IX Syrah Estate ($300 or so, if you can find it) Ink black, with gamy, savory notes on the nose (and not a little wood), then a powerful, super-extracted, black-fruited Syrah, with fierce tannins and a slathering of cocoa-oak. Impressive, yes. Delightful, well. If you like being hit in the face with a mallet, sure.

2002 Standish Shiraz ($80) Dan Standish sources the fruit for this wine from the eastern side of Barossa, on sandy soils. The aroma was toasty and hard to read in an odd way; the fruit, though, was lovely sweet blackberry, with luscious, fine tannins and a lot of grace despite its size. I wrote that it was "very all fruit all the time," which it is, but I was impressed anyway.

2002 Glaetzer Amon Ra Shiraz ($80ish) OK: the Standish is very good Barossa Shiraz. This is great Barossa Shiraz. A chunk of the fruit comes from 150-year-old vineyards in northwest Barossa, a windy place with sand over clay soils. The scent suggests black olives, chocolate and blackberries with an overlay of red currants, and the flavor follows along those lines, and just fills the mouth. I know plenty of people who would write this off just because it's a blockbuster, New World Shiraz, but I suspect they're also the sort of people who wouldn't understand why driving a Maserati is more fun than driving a Prius.

2000 Fabiano Amarone Della Valpolicella Classico  Pleasant, tarry Amarone but no great shakes. The fruit reminded me of cherry cider, and it had a nice little nip of citrus acidity on the end, but Romano Dal Forno ain't quaking in fear over this one.

2002 Kaesler Old Bastard Shiraz ($160, more or less) I know this is supposed to be up there in Amon-Ra territory (or even more culty, who knows), but to me it shot over the top: superrich elixir of blackberries and sweetness, so ripe and gobular that any nuance seemed drowned in the richness. Perhaps pleasant on pancakes? You got me.

And that's it. No more wines. Just your average little wine dinner in Boulder. I may be recovered enough by May for the next one. We'll see. 

Just to keep going with what I started the other day (or what we finished the other night, depending on how you want to look at it), here are the red wines—and two rosés—from the wine dinner Bruce Schoenfeld hosted on the Tuesday before the 2008 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. (Photo again by Jeremy Parzen.)

1997 Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondonia Rosé General agreement could be found around the table that this wasn't the most impressive version of LdH's rosé around; I was part of that gang. Nice enough, with a kind of old book-dried strawberry scent, watermelon-strawberry fruit and a creamy texture, but it didn't have the depth some other vintages have had.

2007 S. C. Pannell McLaren Vale Grenache Rosé All ebullient ripe raspberry fruit and not much else. I wrote at the time, "crisp, juicy and a bit idiotic." 

2004 Sea Smoke Southing Pinot Noir Crunchy ripe raspberry and other berry notes wrapped with sweet spicy tannins. Very ripe Central Coast wine, but with a nice spice element to it. Sea Smoke's gotten a lot of culty praise; I thought this wine was very tasty, but not complex enough to justify raves.

2007 Emilio Bulfon Piculit Neri ($26) I completely rained on Jeremy Parzen's plan to mystify the whatsis out of me by having actually had this wine before—it's obscure as all get-out, but Henry Bishop (who used to run the wine program at Spiaggia in Chicago) once gave me a bottle, oddly enough. I liked it then, and I like it now. The aroma is floral and twiggy and reminiscent of a really good Dolcetto; the flavor is darker and sweeter than most Dolcettos, though, with lovely wild berry and plum notes, ripe but graceful. It's on wine-searcher.com, but strangely only available in Illinois. Go figure.

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Now that our annual F&W Classic in Aspen is over, I finally have the time (and focus) to recap some of the highlights of the thing. First up, our sister mag Travel & Leisure's contributing wine editor Bruce Schoenfeld's annual pre-Aspen dinner. As always, a gang of sixteen or so wine folks—makers, writers, drinkers, etc—convened on the-restaurant-that-shall-not-be-named in Boulder on Tuesday night, preparatory to making the trek up to Aspen. And as always, everyone brought along fabulous—or at least would-be fabulous—wines. Here's the lineup of whites (reds tomorrow), with prices for those that are current releases. (And many thanks to my pal and fellow wine blogger Jeremy Parzen for the loan of his terrific photographs!)

2004 Domaine Joseph Cattin Hatschbourg Pinot Gris  Not a wine I'd had before, this was potent, off-dry Alsace Pinot Gris, with an oily, luscious texture, dusty spice and dried peach flavors, and an odd, slightly varnish-tinged aroma that made me wonder if it had a bit of VA floating around. "Intriguing" might sum it up best.

2006 Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe Châteauneuf de Pape Blanc Les Crau ($55) A blend of Clairette (40%), Grenache Blanc (30%), Bourbolenc (15%) and Roussanne (15%) from roughly thirty-five year old vines. The nose here was subdued, though some steely apple (yep, steely apple—only way I've figured out how to describe it) and floral notes crept out. The wine itself was full-bodied, lush, with pear and sweet spice notes. Very pretty stuff, and will be better with time, I'd guess.

2006 Zarate Albariño ($22) Crisp, as Albariño should be, with an appealing briny note, and surprisingly full-bodied. I liked this just fine, but it didn't strike me as quite as complex as Pazo de Señorans, say, or Fillaboa.

1983 Kirchmayr Gumpoldskirchner Cuvée Solist Konig Altwein My first reaction here was roughly, "What the hell is this stuff?" and my second was roughly, "Well, whatever it is, it's fantastic." Partly that's because at my corner of the table it was too dark for me to read the back label clearly. But because I am a skilled reporter, I stood up and walked over to a light. It was a blend of—wait for it—Zierfandler, Rotgipfler, and Neuberger; it was dark gold in color; and it was blow-you-away good, with deep resinous and stony aromas, a rich but focused presence, lingering stone fruit characteristics, and notes of minerals, honey, and nuts. 

2000 Lucien Albrecht Clos Himmelreich Riesling  Clos Himmelreich is a two-hectare monopole of Albrecht. I didn't love this as much as some people did, but I enjoyed its orange-rind scent and its power; it had an odd raspiness to the texture, almost tannic, that didn't thrill me.

1989 Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondonia Blanco Reserva ($45) Oh, those old Lopez de Heredia whites. I love them, even if they occasionally suffer from a certain amount of bottle variation (which, of course, all older wines tend to suffer from—more on this when I get to the 1988 Bordeaux tasting in Aspen). This blend of 90% Viura and 10% Malvasia hit all those notes that make old white Rioja so appealing: wax, resin, almonds, citrus zest (sort of lemon oil, here, actually), and still retained some green apple as well. Plus the winery has a fellow with a really excellent beard on its home page. 

OK. So here's how the first night of the annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen feels if you're a wine editor:

 5:30 PM. Stop by Betts & Scholl wine party. Gawk at Dennis Scholl's extraordinary collection of modern art. Taste some B&S Hermitage Blanc, Aussie Riesling, Aussie Grenache and Côte Rôtie while munching on hors d'oeuvres made by James Beard award-winning chef Michelle Bernstein, of Michy's in Miami. 6:15 Jump into car, drive over to the big F&W welcoming reception. Exchange about fifteen words apiece with about two hundred people. Taste a rum cocktail that turns out to have lavender in it. Decide once again that lavender is meant for soap, not food. 7:15 Jump into shuttle bus, zoom over to the Wines from Spain shindig, where chef José Andrés is presiding over paella for three hundred people, which entails a paella pan literally big enough to seat four adults comfortably, if they wanted to be turned into paella. Taste Spanish wines, among them the 2006 Portal de Montsant Sant Bru Blanc, a fragrant blend of Garnacha Blanca, Garnacha Gris and Macabeo, and decide that yes, it was a good idea that you chose this particular wine to pour in your "Spain's Profound White Wines" seminar tomorrow morning.

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So in the context of spending some time last week with the always erudite and engaging Michael Terrien, winemaker at Hanzell Vineyards, he felt it necessary to open up a few older vintages of Hanzell Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (undoubtedly because I shamelessly asked). If you're hanging on to older Hanzells, consider yourself in luck. Especially consider yourself so if you've got a stash of the 1998 Pinot, which pretty much blew me away. Here's why. We opened it in the evening—nice accompaniment to steak, btw—and it was both focused and luscious. I wasn't taking notes, because I decided I was tired of taking notes. Fine. Since we also opened a 1991 Hanzell Chardonnay (savory and spicy and still very much alive) and a 1984 Hanzell Pinot Noir (aromatics heading towards earth, dried cherries and twigs in a lovely way), along with a few other wines, we didn't finish the 1998. I cleverly deprived Mr. Terrien of the bottle. 

Then, because I'm of the "see if it takes a licking and keeps on ticking" school of wine testing, I stuck the remainder of the wine in the trunk of my car, and the next day drove it up Mt. Veeder Road and down the Oakville Grade (nice and windy—lots of aeration), headed back into Napa to have lunch at Ubuntu (fabulous all-veg food, and this is coming from a serious carnivore; I parked in the shade), then zoomed back to Yountville, where I parked the bottle on a countertop where I was staying until 7:00 PM, when I opened it to drink with a roast beef sandwich and potato chips.

Now, most older wines, you do that to them and they weep in pain and die. This Hanzell Pinot got better. My first reaction, after pouring a glass and sipping it, is unprintable in a family magazine (or on its website). Safe to say it was a violently profane expression of surprise. My second reaction was to think, well, maybe I better make notes after all. So: aroma of black cherry compote, brown sugar, black tea leaf, and orange skin; lasting flavors of fresh and dried wild raspberries and cherries, smoke, and more tea; and a velvety, fully resolved texture that still wasn't showing any signs of tiring or falling apart. A great wine.

Should I have drunk it with something more regal than a sandwich and some chips? I don't know, and don't really care. I suspect I could have drunk it with an old shoe and it would have been just as delicious.  

The other day I went to a vertical tasting of Chateau Palmer, the Bordeaux third-growth that's generally considered the best wine of Margaux after Chateau Margaux itself. Bernard de Laâge de Meux, Palmer's communication director, was there to conduct the event, which mostly involved presenting the various wine journalists present with a series of foil-covered bottles and smiling with a kind of offhand Bordelais devilishness as we tried to guess which vintages we were tasting.

I'd like to say that I nailed them all, but I'd like to say that I live in a villa at Cap-Ferrat and drive a Ferrari, too. Instead I drive a '93 Volvo and live in Brooklyn. But at least I didn't make a sad fool of myself, which is always comforting. All of the wines were very good (not surprising) and some were great. My favorites (slightly more surprising) were two less well regarded vintages. First there was the 1998, which had a fragrant, lightly gamy aroma with a slight and strangely appealing band-aid-box note, a dense, tongue-coating texture, and graceful black currant and black cherry fruit. About this, M. de Laâge de Meux (I sort of love writing that name-makes me feel like Stendhal or something) said, "A vintage of Palmer takes about ten years to show its aromatic complexity," to which I say, "Yep, sure seems that way."

The second of my favorites-along with several other people at the table-was the 1991, which was particularly surprising given it was paired against the much more acclaimed 1990. The color had a ruddy, beginning-to-fade quality, the aroma was full of tobacco, gamy secondary notes, licorice, and berries; in the mouth it was supple, lovely, fully developed, with dried fruit and plum cake notes, sort of sweet and savory all at once. Really wonderful wine from a frost-damaged and rainy vintage, and all the more mysterious for that. There doesn't seem to be much of it around, but what there is seems to run about $120 a bottle-not cheap, but given 2005 Palmer futures are somewhere around $250 to $300, you know, the price tag doesn't seem so bad after all...

As I wade through the scrawled notes from the last couple of weeks, I see I've missed a few wines worth mentioning. From the Frederick Wildman tasting a week or so ago, some appealing and impressive stuff (in addition to the two new wines from Jolivet that I already blogged about):

2006 Castello Monaci Salice Salentino ($10) Negro Amaro with 20% Malvasia Nera. Tasty, inviting Salice Salentino for a very good price—lots of strawberry, plum and pepper. The grilling months are approaching...

2006 Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc "Les Setilles" ($23) Almost always a good choice in basic Bourgogne Blanc, this cuvée comes from declassified Meursault and Puligny fruit. Light oak toast on the nose, and crisp, almost prickly apple & peach fruit. Simple, but charming. Getting a bit pricey, though. Regarding 2006, Patrick Leflaive says, "A very nice year for whites. The reds..." He ended with one of those Gallic shrugs.

2006 Re Manfredi Bianco della Basilicata Muller Thurgau/Traminer ($20) I don't know what these folks are doing growing Muller Thurgau and Traminer down in Basilicata, but as strange as that idea may be, based on this wine it's not a bad one. A sort of round, luscious, spicy variation on these northern Italian grapes. Pretty darn tasty, to get all technical about it.

2006 Nino Negri Ca'Brione ($34) An even stranger white: a blend of Incrocio Manzone, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and, to top it off, free-run Nebbiolo juice. Go figure. But it's a dense, viscous, fascinating wine, with citrus zest, red apple, melon, and a touch of wild berry, framed by some light oak spice. Some of the grapes are also dried for a few weeks before fermentation, apparently. Those crazy Lombardians! I love them.

2006 Château Fuissé Vieilles Vignes ($56) Says Antoine Vincent of Ch. Fuissé, "2006 was very round, and we had to pay attention to balance, not to have wines that were too fat. Which is why we used no battonage." Evidently a wise choice, because this certainly wasn't too fat; rather, it was focused and clean, with pretty green apple fruit and a touch of caramel, and a resinous note on the end sort of recalling the taste and texture of fresh-peeled apple skin. From 65 to 77 year old vines.

One of the pleasures of doing seminars at our Food & Wine Classic in Aspen is that I get to come up with a nifty topic, then taste a slew of potential candidates for the five or so wines I can actually pour at the thing (forty-five minutes isn't very long). There are always more good wines in the tasting than actually make the Aspen slate, and it seems a shame not to give them some attention, so here are a few good Spanish white wines that almost got picked but didn't quite. Note that for this seminar, enthusiastically titled by our marketing department "Spain's Profound Whites," I'm only pouring one wine per region, so the fact that I chose not to pour the Palacios Remondo Placet doesn't mean it's not a good wine. Got it? All righty then.

2007 Vega Sindoa Blanco ($8) Eight bucks? No argument here. 75% Viura/25% Chardonnay, and while I wouldn't claim it was the most complex wine on the planet, I liked its happy apple-blossom scent and crisp body. Buy several thousand cases and pour it for everyone at Shea Stadium.

2007 Bodegas Pedro Escudero Valdelainos ($11) Grassy melon-lime aromas and perky grapefruit flavor define this appealing (and affordable) Rueda. Darn tasty stuff.

2006 Aforado O Rosal ($19) Vinos & Gourmet, a small importer of Spanish wines that I hadn't run into before, brings in this citrusy, lightly seasidey (if that's a word) Rías Baixas white. O Rosal wines (it's a subregion of Rías Baixas) are typically blends of Albariño, Caiño (Trincadeira), and Marqués (Loureira), and are on the more saline, vinho verde-like side of the Albariño spectrum. Another good one to try, if you can't track this one down, is the Terras Gauda O Rosal—though, according to wine-searcher, it's mysteriously only available in Neptune City, NJ, and Sioux Falls, SD. Go figure.

2006 Palacios Remondo Placet ($30) This is pretty terrific white Rioja, and if there hadn't been an even more impressive white Rioja in the mix I undoubtedly would have chosen it for the seminar. Lemon-lime zest aroma, minerally, clean flavors of green apple and citrus, round texture. From Priorat star Alvaro Palacios's family estate in Rioja; 100% barrel-fermented Viura. 

2005 Bodegas Dos Victorias José Pariente Fermentado en Barrica ($32) Generally, Verdejo fermented in oak leaves me cold—such a nice bright grape, why slap it with a bunch of wood?—but in this case it makes for a rich, viscous, but not overly galumphing white, the grapefruit and green apple character of the variety mingling with honey and earth notes.  

2006 La Conreria d'Scala Dei Les Brugueres ($33) Another superb wine that I just couldn't fit into the lineup. Sigh. Anyway: This white Priorat avoids the flaccidity that affects a lot of white Grenache. Instead, it's a crisp, vivid white with a lot of succulent stone-fruit character and an elusive lushness that I'm guessing comes from the winemaker's choice of letting the wine rest on its lees in stainless steel for several months.

Another day, another tasting. The fun never stops around these parts. In any case, here are a couple of new wines from Pascal Jolivet, the Loire producer, that I found particularly impressive (i.e. I loved them both). Both are made with natural yeasts, no sulfur dioxide before fermentation, organic fruit, no filtration, and a year of aging on the lees.

The first, the 2006 Pascal Jolivet Sancerre Blanc Sauvage ($45), from chalky soils, had a crisp minerality and flavors of grapefruit and grapefruit rind, with an earthy density lying underneath everything that gave it a kind of increasing presence in the mouth as I tasted it.

The second, the 2006 Pascal Jolivet Pouilly Fumé Indigene ($45), grown on silex soil (flinty rocky soil) even more compelling, I thought—the aroma a kind of smoky lemon-lime scent, the palate creamy and succulent even while it had fingersnap-crisp citrus and green apple flavors, ending on a savory note. According to Jolivet, the Indigene took a full four months to get through fermentation, a pretty bizarre situation but one that certainly paid off in the end.

I stopped by yesterday at the VOS Selections portfolio tasting. For those not in the wine business, at various times during the year wholesalers and importers put on comprehensive tastings of their wines for folks in the trade, a concept that sounds pleasant in theory but is often like trying to taste wine in a rush-hour subway station. (Even worse, a subway station where everyone around you keeps spitting out jets of red liquid every few seconds.) Thankfully, VOS's event wasn't too jammed, which afforded me the opportunity to taste some terrific French wines, among others. I probably made it through 60 or 70 wines before the siren-call of the office pulled me back uptown; here are some highlights, all worth looking for. If you have trouble finding them, which you might well, then I'd suggest getting in touch with VOS directly and seeing if they have accounts who stock their wines in your area (in fact they suggest that on their website).

Roger Pouillon Cuvée de Reserve Brut NV (about $48) This grower Champagne comes from organically farmed vineyards. The cuvée is 85% Pinot Noir, which accounts for some of its full-bodied depth; it was toasty but crisp, with rich fruit and notes of honey. Pretty seductive.

2006 Domaine Courbis St Joseph Blanc (about $28) Impressive Rhône white for not too much money, at least given what you pay these days for white Hermitage. The origins of this estate date back to the 16th century (so says the handy tasting book from the event); this wine is a blend of Marsanne and Roussanne from chalky soils. Fragrant white nectarine and crisp pear fruit, with firm acidity that really brings it to life. 

2006 Domaine des Schistes Côtes du Roussillon Villages Tradition (about $20) Boy howdy, you want value, this is value. Heaps of sweet black- and blueberry fruit, dense velvety tannins, underlying earthy notes. Forty year old vines, 40% Syrah, 20% Grenache, 40% Carignan. Very impressive.

2003 Domaine de Cabrol Cabardès Vent d'Ouest (about $24) Cabardès, you say, bien sûr. As did I, of course, because I know EVERYTHING ABOUT this tiny Languedoc-Roussillon AOC north of Carcassonne, named for the ancient Lords of Cabaret (a gang of medieval French fellows wearing tights who happened to be very fond of Liza Minelli CDs), which became official only in 1999. OK. I admit to journalistic falsehood: I knew nada about Cabardès before Victor Schwarz of VOS helpfully explained to me that the intriguing aspect of this miniscule region is how it is mutually influenced by both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; hence the winemaker's two cuvées, Vent d'Ouest (west wind) and Vent d'Est (east wind). Appropriately, the Vent d'Ouest is predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon (60%) with equal parts Grenache and Syrah. It's also a fascinating wine, with an earthy, dark aroma that reminded me of Bourgeuil more than anything else, but then has an almost Bordeaux-like cedar-and-graphite turn to the flavor, atop cassis and plum fruit. I found it fascinating, which is why I'm subjecting you, patient reader, to this absurdly wandering wine note. But now it's done.

2006 Gilles Morat Pouilly Fuissé Belemnites (about $32) Choosing between Gilles Morat's two superb single-parcel Pouilly Fuissés is pretty much a matter of personal preference, since they're both so impressive. For me, the Belemnites, which comes from 42-year-old vines on limestone-clay soils, had a slight edge this time over the more linear La Roche bottling; I loved its scent of orange zest and earth, and the substantial lime and mineral depths of its fruit. 

That's all I've got time for today. I may add some of the pricier Burgundies tomorrow (short note: if you see any of the '06 Dupon-Tisserandots, and you can afford them—not easy—then buy them. Do not pass 'Go', but definitely collect that $200, because you'll need it).