Linden Vineyards

Sunday was a pretty nice day; high 40s, mostly sunny, with a bit of a breeze. Not a bad day at all to head down to Linden to drink a bit of wine with our friend Karen. You can see from these photos that it is still late winter: nothing doing yet on the Chardonnay vines and the witch hazel wreath at the front door.


My partners in crime:


We did the obligatory tasting which was my first chance to taste the 2010 Seyval Blanc, which is a lot bigger, fatter, and more tropical than the 2009 that we're currently pouring at the restaurant. This is all due to the hot, hot 2010 summer. And it was also my first taste of the finished 2009 Claret; it seems a bit disjointed now and needs some age (which it will probably never get) to come together.

From there, we moved on to the library wine, always a highlight of our winter visits to Linden. They were pouring the 2004 Boisseau Red, a mostly Franc blend from Richard Boisseau's really warm west-facing site. It really was drinking superbly and a lot better than I imagined that hot site wine would be drinking at this point—I was really thinking it might be beyond prime, not so at all. And it has developed the most unusual cinnamon bun flavor right in the mid-palate, very cool.

After this, we had some sorely needed breakfast, whose detritus you see here, first with the 2008 Petit Verdot, which is simply wonderful with its dried blackberry leaf and big dense black fruit, and then with the 2008 Hardscrabble Red, which has more structure than the more opulent hot weather 2007.

And finally, the two of us, thanks to Karen, staring into the brutal late afternoon sun.

Feeling no pain, no pain at all!