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.