• N.V. Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne Brut - France, Champagne
  Consistent with previous bottles. A solid champagne. (88 pts.)
• 2006 Bodegas Naia (Viña Sila) Rueda Naia - Spain, Castilla y León, Rueda
  This starts out with some seriously impressive aromatics of honeyed fruit, flowers and massive stone and mineral notes that make you sit up and take notice. After a couple whiffs, I was just praying that the palate would follow up at the same level… unfortunately, no dice and while there’s nice sweet fruit, this is soft, lacks concentration, precision and verve. Still, all in all, a delicious, easy drinking white that’s worth the tariff. (87 pts.)
• 2005 Louis Latour Côte de Nuits Villages - France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Côte de Nuits Villages
  Excellent with beautiful dark cherry scented fruit, spice and earth aromas and nose and this has some real depth to it. The palate is pure, silky, balanced and shows plenty of pinot fruit on the long finish. (89 pts.)
• 2003 Domaine de la Janasse Châteauneuf-du-Pape Vieilles Vignes - France, Rhône, Southern Rhône, Châteauneuf-du-Pape
  I drank this bottle over multiple days and it didn’t change much with air. Just packed with raspberry liqueur, plums, graphite and licorice notes and with air, subtle spice and garrigue aromas start to show up. Full bodied with fantastic levels of fruit, this is impeccably balanced, seamless and long with gobs of underlying structure and fine grained, ripe tannins on the monster finish. Damn thing is drinking so well, this is my second bottle inside of a month… here’s to hoping I can keep my hands off my sole remaining bottle for a least a year or two. (96 pts.)
• 2003 Fonseca Porto Vintage - Portugal, Douro, Porto
  Good lord, I’m not too sure that I don’t like these better on the ridiculously young side and this almost converted my port hating wife. Right after opening this, there was almost no nose but man, what a palate. It’s 7am in the morning and I can barely bring myself to spit this amazing juice. After 12 hours in the decanter, the nose finally showed up with copious amounts of blackberry and raspberry fruit, plums, cedar and massive spice notes and the palate actually tightened up slightly. Just stacked with ripe, lush fruit, a rich, full bore texture, awesome balance and a long finish, this is some serious juice. I finished the bottle on the following day and it was still utterly fantastic. (97 pts.)

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