Pouilly-Fuisse & Termanthia

Last night was basically the opening night of the holiday season with friends, and it started in great fashion with one very, very good wine and one extraordinary wine. Dinner was primarily fresh crab cakes, that were mostly crab and only a little stuffing. They were seasoned, rolled in panko bread crumbs and sauteed in a skillet.

The wine is pictured above. It was a 2005 Verget Pouilly-Fuisse Terroirs de Vergisson. The wine was light gold with a nose of crisp melon, lemon, a hint of butter and light touch of oak. There was perfect acidity to this wine and that only heightened the lemon butter feeling in the mouth. The finish was long and pleasant. Everything was together with this wine and it was near perfect with the crab. Very good stuff.

After dinner a friend's cellar was raided for a red wine and up came a 2001 Bodega Numanthia Termes Toro Termanthia, a Spanish Tempranillo made from from some very old, ungrafted vines. This was a massive wine that was dark purple to the core. The nose was all about black fruit, coffee, earth and chocolate. The taste was very ripe dark fruits with fresh roasted, black coffee and chocolate overtones. The tannins were huge, but fit the wine perfectly. With this much stuffing to it I was expecting low acid, but the wine finished with more than enough acid. The finish seemed to go on for several minutes. Over the course of the evening the wine continued to open up with more fruit and more earth coming out. This was a rare treat that will be hard to match over the holidays.

The third wine of the evening was a complete and total disaster. The wine was a 2000 Torbreck Descendant from Australia. Brettanomyces made this wine totally undrinkable. No amount of air time could make the "wet horse in an unclean barnyard" smell go away. Horrid stuff, but another glass of the Termanthia made up for this sad wine.