Wine Outlook

My previous winetasting group is now defunct, what with crazy summer schedules, my no longer working with the majority of its members, and my current job location in the East Bay, with my residential address hopefully soon to follow. Therefore, I was quite pleased to find out about the study session at Rosenblum, where a group gets together weekly to explore different wine regions. Several people have been cramming for the sommelier exam and other such qualifications, and some just want to learn more for the heck of it.

The idea is for each person to bring one or two wines of an approximate value indicative of the area in the attempt to taste liquid representations of the land.

My first venture into this assembly was to be Bordeaux, probably one of my least travelled areas of France. I have not had many opportunities to taste wine from this region in my ten-year span of enological adventures. A couple of cheap-ish bottles here and there that didn’t do much for me and once a very small pour of a rather expensive bottle a couple ordered when I was waiting tables at a fancy little place in Mississippi. They were celebrating the woman’s completion of her thesis and spent the most any two people ever had before at a table of mine—nearly $500 and most of that was the wine: a Chateau Pichon-Longueville, if I recall. And I’ve got one bottle in my little wine fridge. A 2000 Saint-Emilion I almost brought to the tasting but decided to let it keep aging as these wines so often need to do.

Other than that, I’m a newbie to the region. I do know, as most people do, how important to the wine world it is. If I didn’t, I’d probably have figured it out when it’s listed first in Tom Stevenson’s Wine Encyclopedia. I also know that some of the most expensive and most sought-after bottles come from Bordeaux, and that everyone seems to have jumped on the bandwagon. When people with money start collecting, Bordeaux (…and Burgundy) is where they start, payings thousands and thousands at auctions, estate sales and the like.

What’s truly funny to me is how demand manipulates price to such an extent that quality hardly even matters. Case in point: clamor over the less-than-stellar 95 vintage, brought on by word of mouth from consumers.

What’s truly sad is at that rate, someone with my lack of determination and budget (which is really the issue, let’s face it) will likely never get very close to a bottle of one of the first growths….So I must be content to read of Jancis Robinson drinking vintage after vintage at tastings and dinners and learn what I can vicariously.

Bit of history: With my M.A. in poetry going unused these days, it seems appropriate to point out that the first writer to mention wine grown in Bordeaux was the Latin poet Ausonius–who seemed to be the first grower as well. (Chateau Ausone is thus named after him, and like Cheval Blanc is considered a Saint-Emilion first growth.) Skip forward some 1500 years to the 1855 Classification and the establishment of first growths. The main concern here is for the reds, as white wines only make up about 10% of the production (though Sauternes is the only premier cru superieur). Of the five Chatueax listed as first growths, four are from Medoc: Lafite-Rothschild, Margaux, Latour, and Mouton-Rothschild (added in 1973) and one from Graves: Haut Brion. These are all situated on the Left Bank and rely more heavily on Cabernet Sauvignon. On the Right Bank and the middle section referred to as Entre-Deux-Mers (literally between two seas) Merlot is the most planted grape. Cabernet Franc is the third most planted, with some Petite Verdot and less smatterings of Malbec. For whites, the two major varieties are Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon, which when under the attack of botrytis makes such a decadent dessert wine.

Hmmm, I’ve seemed to have gone on and on, so I’ll stop now and give you the results of this tasting in another post.

winetasting group, Bordeaux