Coteaux Sauvages 2006

It was brutally cold and snowing last night so we cooked Steak Diane indoors, though we dispensed with the flambeing part.  At it's base this is really a pan seared steak with a brown sauce to cover it. 

Throwing caution to the wind I pulled out a wine that for the last three months I never would have attempted.  The wine was a 2006 Michel-Schlumberger Coteaux Sauvage, a red blend of syrah and viognier from Sonoma County's Dry Creek Valley in California.  This wine had been resting in the cellar for five years and I wanted something more upscale than what I had been trying for the last three months.  In short - it was the best wine I've had in that period by far.  Perhaps the problem all along was that I no longer have a taste for less expensive wine, though the doctors and medications tend to disprove that.

Wonderful aromas of dried meat and earth filled the glass.  This was a wine that was not short on fragrance.  It was singing of summer.  There were tastes of dark fruits and blueberries and ample tannin to support those flavors.  The acid was very appropriate.  This was not a shy wine but it was not overpowering in any way.  Throughout the course of the evening it kept opening up, softening,  and it retained its just opened fragrance to the end.  It was so nice to totally enjoy a good wine again. 

There is one large glass left for this evening.

2006 Michel-Schlumberger Coteaux Sauvage.  14.6% alcohol and $60.