Essex County Wine Society

Essex County Wine Society

March 16, 2011

Dear Fellow Wine Society Members and Friends,

First let me say that Ron Schwartzman has already volunteered to do another tasting for us in a couple of years so we don't have to wait for another 14 years like we did for his fantastic presentation on March 3rd of those tasty 2007 Washington State cabernet sauvignons. Ron chose wines from multiple AVA's and representing a wide range of prices. Overall the 2007's are well made wines with plenty of concentrated fruit and acidity with good balance. The clear favorite of the evening was the 2007 Leonetti Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon followed by the 2007 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2007 DeLille Cellars Chaleur Estate. Ron also presented the 1994 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon for comparison and to demonstrate the ageing potential of the wine. Although it did receive a few votes for wine of the night most members felt it had lost too much of its fruit to compete with the powerful 2007 vintage.

The Spring Dinner is now set to be held at Aozora in Montclair (www.aozorafusion.com) on May 1, 2011. Please mark your calendars now. Details will be available in the April Wine Press. Our previous Aozora dinner (2004) was a great success so we can be assured that owner Nelson Yip will offer us another interesting dinner matching his French-Asian Fusion dishes with great wines from the ECWS cellar. This will be a fabulous ending to our 2010-2011 season.

Our next tasting on April 7, 2011 is for our Bordeaux fans. I will be presenting a ten year vertical of the second growth Chateau Rauzan-Segla (Margaux) spanning 1985 to 2007. If you really must know, the ten vintages are 1985, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2005, 2006, and 2007. Hopefully everyone will find a year or two in there that suits their taste. The chateau has been producing high quality wines for the last several years and the advance tastings for the 2008 and 2009 wines have received  very good ratings. The 2005 Ch. Rauzan-Segla, picked as the #2 wine on the Wine Spectator Top 100 list in 2008 and rated a 94+ by the Wine Advocate promises to be an impressive wine but still very young. Although the property is but a mere 350 years old it has undergone a complete renovation in the last 15 years and is fully modernized and on track to produce many more great wines.  

The cost for the tasting will be $100 for members and $120 for guests. Please return your reservations to our Treasurer, Peter Ballance without delay. SEATING WILL BE LIMITED.

Please return your reservation form and payment by Friday, April 1, 2011.

Date: Thursday, April 7, 2011

Place: Montclair Women's Club, 82 Union St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Time: 7:30pm Aperitif, 8:00 Tasting

I hope to see you all on April 7th.

Dennis Roland     

"In vino veritas"

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