Drinking the 2005 Brancott Sauvignon Blanc and the 2003 DDO…again
In honor of my mother’s impending birthday and my stepfather’s recent birthday, the four of us went out to Stanford’s Restaurant and Bar in Hillsboro on Saturday night. Stanford’s is a fairly upscale family restaurant with lots of wooden booths, an open kitchen, and a generally friendly atmosphere. The only drawback to most restaurants of this type, though, is the bustle as the kitchen works hard to get food out to the customers as fast as possible. Delicacy isn’t the forte of a high-volume family restaurant, but Stanford’s does a decent job.
We had some seared, blackened ahi to start. My wife and I split a Caesar salad and I had the top sirloin with cabernet mushrooms, creamed spinach, and “loaded” baked potato for my main course. We ended with a triple berry cobbler that had a lovely lemon shortbread crust. The meal itself was great!
As an appetizer counterpart, I tried the 2005 Brancott Sauvignon Blanc, a wine from the Marlborough vineyards of Brancott Vineyards in New Zealand. The Brancott Web site, which was down recently but was back up when I wrote this post, proclaims Brancott as the world’s leading New Zealand wine. Apparently, “more people around the world drink Brancott Vineyards than any other New Zealand wine” (link to original quote). I didn’t know any of this when I ordered the wine, I just wanted a good, crisp, dry white with the ahi appetizer.
The Brancott turned out to be a good wine for the price ($6.25/glass); here are my notes:
- Aroma: Lemon, green apple, Bartlett pear, and a faint clover honey note on the bouquet.
- Flavor: Dry and crisp, as is expected of a Sauvignon Blanc. Semi-sweet with a firm, smooth aftertaste and an uptick on the sweetness in the finish. Lots of citrus and apple flavors here.
- General impression: A nice aperitif-type wine, not too sweet or dry but a good balance of the citrus, melon, and apple flavors that seem to highlight a nice Sauvignon Blanc.
Beverages and More in California has this wine for $7.99/bottle. It’s worth it. I miss living in San Jose sometimes because BevMo was a great wine and spirits store in general, and they frequently have good deals on the alcohol brands I enjoy (El Tesoro Plata tequila and Morgan Pinot Noir, for example).
Back to last night: With our main course, we shared a bottle of 2003 Domaine Drouhin Pinot Noir Willamette Valley (also known as Classique). Excellent, as always. It took about 10-15 minutes to open up in our glasses, so to speak; we didn’t decant the wine and it would have helped. But we finished the bottle in about 20 minutes so we hardly needed to decant any of it at all! The wine showed a ton of spice up front when we first tasted it immediately after pouring, but once the wine opened it was absolutely delicious. A great reminder why I am in the DDO Direct Wine Club. I have yet to be disappointed with any of the DDO offerings, although my mom confessed to trying the 2005 Arthur Chardonnay and not being too impressed, but she also dislikes Chardonnay on the whole so she admitted to being a poor representation of the audience for that wine.
Overall it was a great evening made even better by good food and wine. It was especially fun to watch my mom get extremely animated while talking about politics after a glass of wine and a Lemon Drop martini. Now that’s entertainment!