New Year’s Eve

For New Year’s Eve, we decided on lamb for dinner, with sweet potatoes, garlic bread, and sauteed portobellos.  The wine with dinner was the 2008 Chasseur Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, a very elegant wine with a deep red color and relatively clear water rim.  The characteristics include some sweet cherry and other fruit, mostly red, with soft spice and herbs, and some earthiness, with fairly bright acidity and firm tannins, and a long finish.  The wine is youthful and somewhat lively but still very elegant.  The pairing was perfect and the wine is absolutely delicious and so enjoyable.

2008 Chasseur Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir

And for midnight, we opened the Champagne Philipponnat Brut Royale Reserve, a bottle I’ve been wanting to try for quite some time.  It’s a rich golden color and it was fairly obvious that there’s plenty of Pinot Noir in that Champagne - the color, the big rich characteristics of vine and nut and a bit of baking spice, and a bigger texture with lots of creaminess and a fuller feel.  I really loved this Champagne and I think it will become one of my favorites.

Champagne Philipponnat Brut Royale Reserve