Backroom Bordeaux

Imagine me in the back room of a wine store, wine glass in one hand and spit bucket in the other. I’m tasting through some thirty-odd Bordeaux wines as quickly as I can because, let’s face it, I really should get back to work. Vintages range from as recent as 2005 all the way back to 1998. Prices range from $250 (Mouton Rothschild’s Sesquicentennial 2003 vintage) to $8.99 (some generic Bordeaux Superior). Honestly, tasting through as many huge, tannic wines as I possibly can in five minutes pretty much blows my palate.

I really didn’t care for most of the dry whites – I suppose they seem musky or mushroomy. The sweet white Sauternes are quite appealing – one (what was the name?) is incredibly rich and pairs quite well with the almond cookies served. I am pleased to find that some of the more chemical aspects I had noticed at the last tasting I attended are much lesser or completely absent in these Sauternes.

Like I said, churning through all the different reds burned my mouth out and I wasn’t able to really focus on much of anything. I was surprised that, knowing what I do about the 2003 vintage, the Mouton was surprisingly light (or at least less extracted than I expected – it wasn’t really light – perhaps more balanced). Earth and leather dominates these wines, really huge flavors that I’m sure one comes to appreciate more with time (the future of my career more or less depends on it). The Sociando-Mallet 2000 is particularly overwhelmed by underripe green vegetal aspects, more than green pepper, it’s an aspect of the green pepper's vine itself – this is a flawed wine, but my boss says it has devolved. He says it was great when he had tried it about a year before, and expects it to improve again after some extended bottle aging. It didn't "breathe off," as is the often hopeful expectation of such a pronounced flaw.

The fruit tones aren’t absent, they’re masked. They’re harder to pull out from all the other elements, and they’re less (what’s the word - generic?) than some of the more accessible (predictable) wines that I’m accustomed to coming from California. It’s frustrating, because I know that I’m experiencing something great and yet I’m not prepared to appreciate it. Hopefully this type of resource isn’t too infrequent.

Viva la Sweet.

I had the pleasure of attending a lengthy tasting this afternoon featuring wines from the AXA Millésimes – a branch of an insurance company fond of finer wines as well as portfolio diversity. This tasting was a challenge, as similar to a certain port tasting, I faced the danger of developing diabetes from all the sugar. Here are my notes with minimal editing.

Disznókő Dry Furmint 2005
Dry Hungarian
Understated – some mineral, faint fruit. Moderately acidic. Sugarless – more floral/aromatic – no sugar. Not great.

Chateau Pibran 2003
Pauillac – 70% Merlot / 30% Cabernet Sauvignon
Nose – spicy, underripe berries. Low on tannin, possibly thin body. Needs to cellar? Great finish, exploding spice, although short. Tannins not supported.

Chateau Pichon Baron 2002
Pauillac – 65% Cabernet / 35% Merlot
Bigger nose. Spice/Earth – much larger wine (still lighter than expected), more tannic, long finish. The fruit is low in the mix – “finesse.” –

Chateau Pichon Baron 2003
[wine omitted from tasting for lack of availability]

Castelnau de Suduiraut 2001
Nose – honey/nectar/sour tartar sauce (or mayonnaise?) – developing to fingernail polish. Quite sweet, oily feel. Acidity is present but overwhelmed. Mellow pear/honey.

Chateau de Suduiraut 2003
Lighter on nose and palate (less chemical). Less weight, less sugar. Acidity is more forward.

Chateau de Suduiraut 2000
Crystals. Subtle/sweet. Even less chemical. Balanced with a tiny spice (balanced acidity). 30% new oak.

Disznókő 6 putts 2000
Tokaji
Lighter. Brighter fruit, honey (sugar?) Fresh – no oak. Flower petal in fruit and sweeter melon – apricot. Well grounded finish. Aging on lees adds structure.

Noval 10 year old Tawny
Brown. Carmel/molasses. Aged style, fruit is quite subtle, (light) molasses style brown sugar.

Noval 2000
Very dark, bzg nose of “red wine” – large, fruit, spice, bit’o’sugar. Plenty of sediment. Maybe too rich.

Like I said, I felt like I was going to get diabetes from all this sugar. The Bordeaux were somewhat unsatisfying, too light in body for their larger tannins and noticeable oakey spice, almost as if they were unsupported and unbalanced. All three vintages of the Sauternes had a chemical quality that certainly was not alcohol, though nobody else in the room seemed to scrunch up their noses as I did. I even checked the nose on a friend’s glass, to be sure whatever it was wasn’t soap residue in my glass. Aside from the chemical odor, the wine was good, though perhaps a bit thick.

The Tokaji was a welcome change, a little more structured and fresh though it didn’t have the same qualities of, well, quality. The two ports were extremes – the tawny had almost no real richness to speak of aside from brown sugar (though that sounds too harsh, I really did like it) and the 2000 vintage was (I’m assuming) in a ‘dead period’ – too much body with very little sweetness. The good qualities of port were eclipsed by too much standard red wine flavor.

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Before heading to the tasting, I managed to try some Austrian wines – a white blend (good), a gruner veltliner (very good), a strange red (not so good), and a fantastic Austrian ice wine, which frankly, I much preferred over the sweeter wines I would go on to taste later in the afternoon.

Which makes me think. I surely wouldn’t have remarked on these Austrian wines (not blogwise, anyway) had I not taken the time to mention this other tasting. I haven’t posted in almost three months, but I taste wines several times a week. While this is mainly a problem of short-term memory and of lacking the opportunity for taking notes, it’s also a function of language and my own self-criticism. What is there to say about all these wines? They’re all really variations on a theme, balancing different chemical influences, varietal characteristics, and regional tendencies to make something unique beyond the infinite yet finite limitations of the English language, even after the expansion of the language in the form of ‘wine talk’ as well as the systematic stealing of other languages’ words (No word in English means terroir? How about using the word ‘terroir’?). The compensation for this real lack of descriptors can often turn into overly poetic descriptions – but in my case, of wines that don’t quite inspire poetry.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t have a lot to say because in choosing among the options of systematic repetition, poetic hyperbole and silence, I tend to lean toward silence.