The Official Wine Thread

[Manton]

Dbl. Lag!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[gomestar]

Originally Posted by Manton

Gome, that is the second wine of La Mission Haut Brion, one of the Big Dogs of Bordeaux and a virtual, might-as-well-be first growth. I am thinking we should be a bit less ... ambitious with this experiment for the time being.

Potensac, de Pez, Sociando-Mallet, Tour Haut-Caussan, Meyney, and the like.

I know, you are just seeing my excitment as I've never had La Mission.

I am by no means a frequent Bordeaux drinker (a shame, I just need more salary), but I've had Potensac, Haut-Caussan and Meyney in the past. All have been excellent for the money, and oddly enough there's a 2003 Meyney in my cellar right now. Would drink again with pleasure.

 

[Manton]

Meyney is not a long-termer so drink that bottle soon.

 

[ryansmith]

Let's do 2005 Potensac

 

[kwilkinson]

For the record, I'd be more than willing to do a threak-wide wine tasting on the same day and the same bottle. would be pretty epic, IMO. I can do anything under $45 delivered.

 

[Piobaire]

Tonight's wine.

Okay, we're going to get "wine circle" jokes, but you know I'm in for a virtual tasting.

 

[Mark from Plano]

Has anyone popped one of the 2005 Havens Reserve Merlot's from WTSO yet? If not probably best not to for a while. Just popped one tonight to try. I bought 6 and could only fit five in my cellar. I think this is going to be a nice wine. Kind of a dark garnet color in the glass. I'm getting fruit and a bit of funk on the nose. The tannins are really strong in this one though. Reminds me of biting into a green persimmon. Quite the pucker factor. Some good dark fruit underneath though. I just opened up the bottle, maybe it will settle down after a while. I think it will be really good if it softens up some.

 

[Piobaire]

Originally Posted by Mark from Plano

Has anyone popped one of the 2005 Havens Reserve Merlot's from WTSO yet? If not probably best not to for a while. Just popped one tonight to try. I bought 6 and could only fit five in my cellar. I think this is going to be a nice wine. Kind of a dark garnet color in the glass. I'm getting fruit and a bit of funk on the nose. The tannins are really strong in this one though. Reminds me of biting into a green persimmon. Quite the pucker factor. Some good dark fruit underneath though. I just opened up the bottle, maybe it will settle down after a while. I think it will be really good if it softens up some.

I always let my stuff sit at least a month after shipping. You're thinking this needs more time, in terms of years?

 

[Mark from Plano]

Originally Posted by Piobaire

I always let my stuff sit at least a month after shipping. You're thinking this needs more time, in terms of years?

I'm a bad judge, but I think so.

 

[kwilkinson]

The Cindy wine today looks really damn exciting. I want to buy 3 just to save on shipping....

 

[gomestar]

nice discount on that Cindy wine. I won't be buying, but nice.

 

[kwilkinson]

Originally Posted by gomestar

nice discount on that Cindy wine. I won't be buying, but nice.

Indeed.
One main thing that keeps me from buying Cindy wine is the shipping price. For you guys, it's only like $7 for a single bottle, bringing something like this up to $30. But for me, it's $13 for one freaking bottle. That almost makes it not even a good discount anymore.

 

[Manton]

OK, in lieu of drinking wine tonight, I will make a know-it-all post.

Bordeaux is the most underappreciated wine in this threak, which is outrageous since it is arguably the world's finest wine, inarguably the most famous, and also the largest producing wine district in the world. Therefore I will bring some of my crusty old English taste to you rubes.

I will be making lots of generalizations. The first thing to say is that while all these generalizations have their uses, there is an exception to every single one of them, including this last one.

80+% of the wine made in Bordeaux is red. Actually, it may be closer to 90% at this point. Two significant whites are also produced: a dry white and a profound sweet white. Interestingly, both are made principally from Semillion and some Sauvignon Blanc (the sweet may have some Muscadelle as well). Obviously, how the wine is made and blended makes a huge difference, because a dry white from Graves tastes nothing like a sweet white from Sauternes.

But red is the real story here. The key grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. Some places also use Malbec and Petit Verdot. All Bordeaux red is blended. One of the above big three will typically dominate the blend. There has long been a resistance on the part of producers to stating exactly what the blend is. They view it is a trade secret and none of the consumer's business. If you like their wine, the Chateau's attitude is, "Trust us to get the blend right." The blend will change every year, because of various factors (weather being the most important) but the winemakers are very adept at making sure that the Chateau's style comes through regardless.

Bordeaux can be and is divided many ways. But the basic distinction is Left Bank v. Right Bank. This is a tad misleading, however. The main river is called the Gironde, and it is quite wide, almost like bay. But north of the city of Bordeaux it splits into two, the Dordogne and the Garonne. The Left Bank refers to everything west of the Gironde and the Garonne, the Right Bank is everything east of the Dordogne. In between is called Entre Deux Meres, and lots of wine is made there, but nothing famous or great. Cabernet Sauvignon dominates on the Left Bank, Merlot and Cabernet Franc on the Right Bank. But, as noted, all the wines are blends; Left Bank wines typically have all three, but a Right Bank wine may have no CS at all. Surprisingly, all these wines are still recognizably "Bordeaux" as compared to (say) a California Cab.

The Left Bank is hotter than the right bank, so Cab Sauv. (which ripens late) does best there. The Right Bank is a lot cooler, so it is riskier to plaint CS, hence it is mostly Merlot and CF.

In my Burgundy Primer I wrote that bad soil makes good wine. This is true in Bordeaux too, but for a different reason. In Burgundy, the great wines tend to come from hillside vineyards on the mountains that run down Burgundy's spine. Bordeaux is not mountainous and hardy hilly, though there are some low lying hills and some great vineyards on those hills. What makes for great Bordeaux is gravel. Gravel = drainage. Drainage makes the vines struggle. The best vineyards are all in gravelly soil, either close to one of the rivers, or to a drainage channel that empties into a river.

Bordeaux is not nearly as complicated as Burgundy. The great estates/chateaux have mostly been together for hundreds of years. Though some have been broken up, but not like in Burgundy, with one vineyard having 80 produces. An example would be Leoville. There used to be one great Chateau Leoville which made very famous wine. But parts were sold off over the years, and the new owners would attach their own last name. So today you have Leoville Las Cases, Leoville-Barton and Leoville-Poyferre"”all separate chateaux but once part of the same estate. This is the exception rather than the rule, however. And, anyway, it's easier to keep track of three rather than 80. Also, they really have been separate for more than a hundred years, it's not like Burgundy where the vineyard still has one common fence and entrance and everyone works his little plot.

There are also a lot fewer appellations. First, of course, you have basic "Bordeaux." That means that the wine could be from anywhere within a very large area and from those five grapes, but in practice what it means is that it is from more than one appellation and so can't claim one alone. Most "Bordeaux" is actually from a smallish radius.

The important ones to remember are Medoc, Graves, Sauternes/Barsac, Pomerol and St. Emillion. This is where all the really great wine comes from. The Medoc is further breakable into the Bas-Medoc (low medoc) and Haut-Medoc (high Medoc). The Haut-Medoc also has four "village" appellations: St. Estephe, Pauillac, St. Julien and Margaux. Medoc, Graves, and Sauternes/Barsac are the Left Bank. Pomerol and St. Emilion are the Right Bank.

Like I said, those are merely the most important. I am not going to list them all, but there are only 60 or so appellations in Bordeaux, 22 largish communes (e.g., "Graves") the rest villages. Piece of cake compared with Burg.

As noted in the Burg post, the French like to classify things. Well, the 1855 Bordeaux classification is the granddaddy of them all. It was not done by the government but by the local merchants, based on average price over the preceding decades. It covered only the reds of the Medoc and only those in the four villages mentioned above, and also the sweet whites in Sauternes & Barsac. The one exception was that it included Chateau Haut-Brion in Graves, south of the Medoc, because it was so famous and expensive.

The classification of the Medoc reds divided the wines into five categories or "growths." The one for Sauternes only has three categories. The top spot only has one wine in it, the very famous Chateau d'Yquem, which some believe is the greatest Bordeaux of any color there is.

The 1855 Classification has been changed only once. The legendary Baron Philippe de Rothschild, after years of lobbying, convinced the merchants to upgrade his Mouton-Rothschild to first growth status in 1973.

Much talk always surrounds the classification. It will almost certainly never be changed because it is too entrenched at too many have too much to lose. But there is consensus around some things. For instance, the very best second growths are often called "super seconds" and considered on a par with first growths, even if their prices never quite catch up. Leoville Las Cases would be a good example. Some low scorers from 1855 fare much better today. For instance, most agree that Lynch Bages, officially a fifth growth, performs more like a second growth. Conversely, Lascombes"”a second growth in 1855"”is really more deserving of fifth growth status today.

More recently, classifications have been done for Graves and St. Emilion, but only two categories each. Then another classification was done for the "other" wines, that is, wines from the Medoc not classified in 1855 and also wines from elsewhere in Bordeaux (though not Graves or St. Emilion). No one pays much attention to this classification. It was updated in 2003, but so many vintners got upset that they sued and effectively overturned it. As a practical matter, the ones for Graves and St. Emilion are not that useful either, because they cram a lot of wines into only two categories. For example, the Graves classification has no ranking, just a list of wines deemed worthy of classification. Hence Chateaux Oliver and Haut-Brion are both on the list. Oliver is very nice wine"”I have bought a lot of it"”but it is a joke to compare it to Haut-Brion. Something similar at first happened in St. Emilion, but its classification was revised to reflect the fact that Ausone and Cheval-Blanc are the gods of that commune.

There has never been a classification of Pomerol, but everybody knows that Petrus is king there. Le Pin is maybe its only peer.

More soon.

 

[audiophilia]

Loving all the posts and learning a lot, esp. about Burg and Italians.

Just drinking daily drinkers for a while after I calculated what we spent on wine in '09. Holy crap!

Kenwood Vineyards Pinot, J Lohr Cab, etc...gud enuf

Edit: And now Bordeaux. Hmmmm

 

[Piobaire]

Here is the shoot out I shall be having in a few weeks. In this corner, the Old World: DIDIER DAGUENEAU Pouilly-FumÃ

Pur Sang 2005 Shows a humus hint in the aroma, with lots of fresh herb, lemon peel, grapefruit, macadamia nut and floral notes. Long and very stony on the finish, with herb and fleur de sel notes that refuse to quit. Hangs together perfectly, leaving a mouthwatering impression. Drink now through 2012. 1,600 cases made. WS 97 In this corner, a lady wine maker from the New World: MERRY EDWARDS Sauvignon Blanc Russian River Valley 2007 A rocket beam of vibrancy, with effusive honeysuckle notes and ripe honeydew melon, citrus, pear and apricot flavors that have amazing structure, depth and body. Ripe flavors end with a mouthwatering finish, where the mineral and spice details echo on and on. Drink now through 2012. Tasted twice, with consistent notes. 3,880 cases made. WS 96

Just got Peay email for menu at Cyrus. Will. Not. Be. There.