Merry Christmas from the Short Cellar! I hope all our readers are well, happy, and breaking out the good stuff for the holidays. I certainly am.
A couple nights ago, my girlfriend and I celebrated the season by taking ourselves out to Cowbell, where we enjoyed an excellent if very beefy meal. We took advantage of their $25 corkage fee to bring our own wine: a bottle of 2003 Bordeaux from Chateau Cabaron (Vintages, #035600, $22.95 [Ed. note: No longer available]). Bordeauxs are usually blends of various grapes, but this one is made entirely of Merlot. Merlot lacks the power of the more popular Cabernet Sauvignon, but can makes up for it with a plush texture and a ripe fruitiness. The Cabaron was a beautiful example of the Rubenesque qualities of some Merlot. It had a velvety feeling in the mouth, with a perfect balance between the mellow tannins and the juicy acidity. Though the flavours 
were not too complex, they were well-integrated, which made the wine harmonious and easy to quaff. There are only a few bottles of the 2003 left in stores now, but hopefully the 2004 vintage will be appearing soon. Watch out for it because this wine should be much more expensive than it actually is.
Last night, I had a dinner with my father where the old rogue uncellared a bottle of 1999 Pomerol that he had somehow kept out of the hands of his rapacious son. Pomerol is a subregion of Bordeaux which is famous for being the home to one of the most expensive wines in the world, Chateau Petrus ($4000 for the 2000 vintage, for example). Fortunately, at least for the purposes of my inheritance, we were not drinking Petrus last night.
Rather, my Dad produced an “Esprit de L’Eglise”, which retails for a cool $65.00. This was a lovely contrast to the Chateau Cabaron of the night before. The Espirit de L’Eglise is also made of Merlot, with a good helping of Cabernet Franc, adding a sharper fruit flavour and a little more tannin. However, the main difference between the two wines was the age. The Pomerol was already showing what eight years in the bottle can do, especially to Merlot, which matures faster than Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines. Its flavours of violets, blackberries and blueberries were faded but elegant. Age had made it austere, meaning that as the fruity flavours recede, the skeletal structure of the pure acids and tannins stand out in relief. This was not a Rubenesque wine like the Cabaron – it was fine-boned and aquiline.
Well, onwards and upwards to Christmas dinner. The turkey always presents a lovely dilemma: a powerful white or a lighter red? Or to hell with them both: turkey with Champagne is a knockout. This year, we’ll be trying a Pinot Noir with the bird (last year’s fantastic Le Clos Jordanne 2004 Village Reserve Pinot Noir from Ontario). E-mail me or leave a comment and let me know what you had with your turkey (if you had turkey) and how it turned out.
Matthew Sullivan is a lawyer with the Department of Justice in Toronto. He writes a weekly blog entry here on lawandstyle.ca. The Short Cellar column appears in the print edition of Precedent. Matthew can be reached at matthew@lawandstyle.beta-site.ca.