German Wine Society at the Seven Oaks

Saturday night the German Wine Society gathered at the Seven Oaks Best Western to enjoy a very fine dinner with some very fine wines. And here are our notes:

Reception

2005 Gustaf Adolf Schmitt Niersteiner Kabinett - Rheinhessen

• A little sweeter than we expected;
• Very nice;
• Would be good with Asian food, we suspect.

Appetizer: Chicken vol-u-vent with cream sauce

2003 Martinshof Muller-Thurgau Halbtrocken - Pfalz

• A very typical Muller-Thurgau;
• Seemed extremely robust and flavorful after the light reception Riesling;
• Nice acidity;
• Well matched with the chicken appetizer (which our six-year-old daughter loved; we liked it, too!).

Soup: Consommé profiterole

2003 Martinshof Gewürztraminer Spatlese - Pfalz

The soup left us cold, partly because it was cold--or, at least, not very hot. It had crunchy noodle things floating in it which some people disliked. Ed didn't mind those, but hated the gritty bits of parsley, which were just annoying. Most people at our table didn't finish it.

As for the wine:

• Extra honeyness;
• Lots of lychee flavour;
• Very, very nice.

Entrée: Bison tenderloin with sun-dried tomato sauce, potato au gratin and seasonal vegetables
2003 Black Tower Pinot Noir/Dornfelder - Pfalz
2002 Selbach Riesling Spätlese - MSR

We may not have liked the soup, but we loved this fabulous entrée: tender, delicious, wonderful. Also very, very large.

As for the wine, first, the red:

• Light bouquet;
• Dark red in colour;
• Fruity;
• Good tannin;
• Went very well with the bison.

The white:

• Also very nice;
• Went better with the sun-dried tomato glaze and vegetables than the bison.

Dessert: Peach and apple strudel in phylo pastry, garnished with white chocolate
2000 Dienhard Beerensauslese - Rheinhessen

The dessert was absolutely delicious; way too big after the giant appetizer and huge entree, but somehow we managed to choke it down.

As for the wine:

• Ed loved it;
• Margaret Anne said "I've had better";
• Burnt orange and honey flavours;
• As usual, we preferred the wine by itself rather as a match for the dessert.

And that's that! As the rural correspondents for the Weyburn Review used to write when Ed was editor there, "A good time was had by all."

Laughing Kangaroo Shiraz 2002

This 2002 Laughing Kangaroo Shiraz was a very, very dark purplish red, almost black, with a red berries and a little pepper on the nose. I thought I detected some of the clove that would be varietally appropriate, but Margaret Anne didn't get it.

Very dry and not as peppery as some Shirazes, but it's hard to say much more about it because the extremely high alcohol content, 14.5 percent, meant that mostly it just tasted hot: the alcohol simply wiped out whatever nuance we might otherwise have noticed.

Not bad, but probably wouldn't buy it again because of the alcohol content.