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On Monday I dined at the Claret Club, an exclusive invitation only club for networking amongst senior "city" types, using great wine and food as an excuse. We were drinking Pingus, one of the worlds most expensive (£350 a bottle on release) new boutique wines from the Ribera del Duero in Spain and made by Peter Sisseck.
Peter was supposed to fly in to London to talk about his wines, but due to a exceptionally early harvest and shortage of pickers cancelled at the last minute. No matter, his wines were there in abundance, and the cooking at the Michelin starred restaurant of No.1 Lombard was very good indeed. {mosgoogle} We warmed up with Dom Perignon 1998, far too young, a great champagne needs at least 10 years to start to show its best attributes, but as ever with Dom P very elegant as a mouth cleanser. Then Louis Latour's Corton Charlemagne, 2001 good enough but a little unexciting, the excellent truffle oil with a crab and lobster salad was too much for the wine.  Then the second wine of Pingus, Flor de Pingus 2003, with a squab pigeon, pretty good wine but young and tannic and suitably rustic, followed by some ribs of Beef with the Pingus 1998 and 2001. These are very good wines indeed and the 98 was certainly ready to drink, with the '01 still tannic and probably the better wine if less approachable now. These wines are massive, intense fruit driven but with mineral and liquorice and wild fruit characters and great acidity and structure, very seductive. The great shame for me was that these wines had been openned and decanted five hours before drinking, to allow the young wine to breath and soften. But as a result all the development one might have seen with great excitement as the wine developed different intriguing aspects in the glass, had happened. It's a bit like missing the wonderfully exciting moment when a lover starts to undress!
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