Mouton Dressed as Ham

Dinner at Andy and Claudia’s last night: one pork knuckle almost as big as a suckling pig per person with potatoes and sauerkraut and a Château Mouton ’81 in excellent nick. Miraculous 11.5% alcohol, still fresh and elegant with layers of complexity but hardly any sediment in the bottle. We next opened Michael’s Kanonkop Paul Sauer 1997 and the 14% alcohol really showed up against the Mouton. Andy supplied a 2001 Paul Sauer, also 14% alcohol and full of intense berry fruit.

Michael Sears, Claudia and Andy Rompel

What has happened to Paul Sauer’s alcohol levels? – I fondly remember them clocking in at 12.5% and being all the better for it. The Mouton had an Arman painting of an exploding violin on a blue background as a label. After the hacksen, it was our belts that were exploding. The blue was quite appropriate as Arman was a friend of Yves Klein famous for his monochromes executed in International Klein Blue while Arman himself was also appropriate as he studied mathematics, as did Michael and I. In fact Michael supervised my PhD but an even bigger crime was introducing me to wine.

I notice from the back label that I bought the Mouton in San Francisco for $60, probably on a trip to Stanford to visit Ron Lyon. Forget about a Proustian Madeleine, Mouton does just as good “recalling the past to memory.”