Great Wine, Greed, and Truth in Drinking

Among wine lovers, certain bottlings enjoy a mythical, almost mystical status: Cheval-Blanc '61, Lafite '82, and Petrus '47 immediately come to mind when considering the wine pantheon of the last century. And it’s the last bottle, reputedly the greatest Pomerol ever produced, that concerns us today.

In January, Mike Steinberger published a piece on Slate.com dealing with this and other wines that most people will never have a chance to see in person, much less taste. What makes the article so interesting is its dealing with the intersection of connoisseurship, investigative journalism, and that oldest of all motivating factors, greed.

As with so many stories about counterfeit wine these past several years, this one involves Hardy Rodenstock, the man who may or may not be responsible for the presence of countless fake bottles of great old Bordeaux, including the so-called Jefferson bottles made famous in the excellent Ben Wallace book, The Billionaire’s Vinegar.

Rather than paraphrase Steinberger’s wild ride of a column, I’ll just strongly recommend carving out 15 minutes of your day to read it. While it may deal with wine that most people will never lay a single taste bud on, it’s fascinating stuff, seriously entertaining storytelling, and in unexpected meditation on the nature of greed, reputation, and how the pleasures of the senses are affected by them. It’s linked up right here.

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Wine Review Wednesday: Blackbird Vineyards

Every once in a while, a wine project comes along that makes connoisseurs and collectors snap to attention. We all know the names: Sine Qua Non in California, Maggie Harrison’s Lillian in Oregon (she also owns and makes the wine at Antica Terra), and the like. They’re difficult to find bottlings that, regardless of the effort required to get them, are more than worth it.

Add Blackbird Vineyards to that illustrious company.

Started just a blink-of-an-eye ago in 2003, Blackbird Vineyards has already made its way to the top of the California food chain, and its astounding collection of Pomerol-inspired wines, based on my recent tastings, are among the best in the country.

As is the case with so many of the world’s top performers, Blackbird relies on sustainable farming, noninterventionist vinification, rigorous fruit selection, and a willingness to produce less wine if that means raising its quality and staying true to the vintage.

I recently had the chance to taste the new releases, and was utterly blown away by the wines’ expressiveness right now and potential for evolution in the long term. My notes are below.

Blackbird Vineyards "Arriviste" 2009

The nose is charmingly subtle here, showing restrained notes of strawberry, rhubarb, flowers, spices, and watermelon. Very elegant, as is the palate with its silky mouthfeel and perfectly calibrated acidity adding lift to sweet fruit notes of smaller, riper strawberries, hints of cranberry, watermelon, cherries, and something a touch floral and spicy on the finish, like peppercorn cracked on fraises de bois. This is a subtle, structured rose with enough backbone to age for a season or so but irresistible right now.

Blackbird Vineyards “Arise” 2008

This leads off with a very rich, expressive nose, and though the oak is readily apparent right now, it’s balanced and soft enough to integrate seamlessly in the years to come. Plum and cherry marmalade aromas complicate things, as do violets and a touch of something exotically spicy that reminds me of coriander and peppercorns. Great depth here; I could smell this all day and be happy. The palate, for all its lavish plum and cherry fruit, is remarkably subtle, enhanced with flavors of spicy tobacco, rich chocolate ganache, and coffee, and ending on a gentle whiff of eucalyptus throughout a finish that lasts a full minute. Mesmerizing.

Blackbird Vineyards “Paramour” 2007

The role of the cabernet franc here comes right out and manifests itself in the perfume of cigars, mint, and fresh Provencal herbs that I typically associate with great-vintage Cheval-Blanc. This breed follows through to the palate, with its serious structure that will require time to allow the full potential of this wine to emerge but that even now, this early on its life, pulses with tightly wound sweet dark berry fruit, black cherries, chanterelles, and violets. A wine for the cellar and very special occasions, this is at the far end of what Right Bank-style Napa reds wines can do. It's a serious achievement.

Blackbird Vineyards “Contrarian” 2007

The 2007 Contrarian smells like walking through a forest after the rain as rosemary and mint and black raspberries grow all around you. Wonderfully reminiscent of a young Pomerol on the nose. On the palate, however, this is a bigger, more mouth-filling wine whose oak and other elements need more time to integrate, but whose deep well of dark berry fruit sings through with a masculine sense of purpose. More tannic and reserved than the wines that preceded it, there’s also an aromatic lift and a propulsive power undergirding it all right now. This big, mouth-staining wine promises a very long life ahead.

Blackbird Vineyards “Illustration” 2007

Sweet, clay-flecked red plum, black raspberry, sun-warmed blackberry, white truffle, maduro cigar, and fraise de bois define the nose here, and lead to a palate every bit as complex. Sweet, chewy, chocolate-enrobed fruit, kirsch-filled German chocolate, caramel, and strawberry preserves are balanced by spice, earthiness, and the sort of dusty tannins that make you want to drink more and more. Impossible not to love now, and it should easily evolve for the next decade or two in the bottle.

Blackbird Vineyards “Illustration” 2006

The aromatics here are just so evocative of Pomerol, with warm clay, perfumed mushrooms, and cherries in abundance. If you’ve wandered around Pomerol itself, this is as Proustian an evocation of the smell of the place as you’ll find in California. It’s dense and rich on the palate, with sweet black plum, blueberry compote, chamomile tea, and licorice limning the black cherry fruit. The tannins really make themselves known on the finish, though they certainly don’t cover up the lingering memory of the fruit or the fabulous flutter of demi-glace that develops and then slowly, languorously vanishes. Drink over the next ten years or so.

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Sometimes, Enjoyment is the Key...

Last night, at The Four Seasons Restaurant for the Wine Media Guild’s annual Hall of Fame dinner, an interesting thing happened: The notebooks, in general, stayed in the guests’ pockets.

This is exactly the opposite of what you’d expect: A roomful of wine writers, PR and marketing experts, representatives of various producers, and other professionals with their hands in the wine business should have been reduced to a thoughtful--if enthusiastic--murmur, the scrape of pens against paper as pronounced as the tinkle of forks-tines on plates.

Instead, the dominant sound was--and I really can’t come up with a better way to describe it--a sort of white noise of joy: The passing of bottles from one table to the next, a constant thrum of contented humming (as in: “Mmm, that’s drinking great...”), all of it punctuated by the regular popping of corks.

This is the part of the wine business that most people don’t see, but that I wish the wine-drinking public were far more aware of.

The perception, it seems, is that when wine writers gather, they will always--or almost always--assess wines in ways that border on the dispassionate. And while that’s wholly necessary much of the time (it’s what tastings are for, after all), it is certainly not how wine professionals consume wine ourselves.

Herein lies the difference between tasting and drinking. And last night, despite all the great wines littering the tables--come to think of it, because of all the great wines littering the tables--there was far more drinking and enjoying going on than there was highly analytical assessment.

So: After missing the Champagne-and-hors d’oeuvres hour and walking into dinner half an hour late--traffic coming into the city was inexplicably brutal--the glasses of Morey Chevalier-Montrachet 2000 that were offered to us needed to be enjoyed, not picked apart. It was like a variation of that line that Al Pacino’s character utters during the airplane scene toward the beginning of Scent of a Woman: “...It’s like that first swallow of wine after crossing the desert.”

And what a wine to swallow: Still vibrant with ripe stone fruit, deep minerality, almond skin, a flutter of flowers in the background, and all of it strung up high by a sense of what can only be described as some sort of inner energy--a characteristic that, for me, is as telling of a great white Burgundy as any other.

One sip, and the entire commute vanished: Exactly what great wine should do.

There was three-decades-old California Zinfandel, all concentration, spice, and macerated plums. Nine-year-old Pomerol, still young and vibrant but with its dead-giveaway clay and mushroom notes starting to shine through. Petite Sirah from 1986 that, despite all the amazing complexity and layering that two-and-a-half decades of cellaring had given it, remained fresh like a wine a decade younger. The Catena and the O. Fournier Alfa Crux that, with their perfect balance between fruit, earth, and exuberance embodied all that is to be loved about the wines of Argentina. The 1974 Spanna that tasted like the early-morning air during truffle season in Piedmont. A gorgeous 2004 Banfi Brunello di Montalcino "Poggio alle Mura" with years of promise ahead of it. A side-by-side of 1994 Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon and 1994 Cos d’Estournel. 1997 Huet Vouvray. And, as we were leaving, a mystery pour that turned out to be 1949 white Port--a rare treat, to be sure. And more. And more.

This is why I think most of us got into this line of work in the first place: Because we love wine. And last night’s combination of longtime colleagues, new friends, great bottles of wine, and excellent food was a powerful reminder of how seriously delicious and life-affirming this juice can be.

Sometimes, the best way to appreciate great wines is to drink them. A statement of the obvious, perhaps, but one that we all could be reminded of from time to time.

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St.-Emilion with the Baillarguet Brothers

A good friend of mine, Miguel Lecuona, recently posted a beautiful video on CityWineJournal.com that he produced (and shot and edited!) for Vignobles & Chateaux, the excellent wine shop and school in St.-Emilion, in Bordeaux. Miguel was responsible for arranging many of our visits and tours during the Wine School of Philadelphia’s trip to Bordeaux this May; indeed, his work as our “man on the ground”--he’s lived and studied there recently--gained us access to some of the most important people and chateaux in the world of wine.

This video, which he shot during one of our days in St.-Emilion, features Bruno Baillarguet, the owner of Vignobles & Chateau, and his brother Philippe, winemaker at the famed Chateau Ausone. Over the course of a day, we got a fantastic “insider’s view” of two of the most interesting, exciting appellations on the planet: St.-Emilion and Pomerol.

In fact, the timing of City Wine Journal releasing this video couldn’t be better: Wine Spectator’s latest issue includes ratings for the 2007 vintage of Bordeaux, and Chateau Ausone, Philippe’s wine, received the second-highest score among the region’s reds in that difficult year, behind only such stalwarts as Mouton, Leoville Barton, Petrus, and Lafleur (the latter two of which are also Right Bank properties).

Take a look at the video--it's linked up right here. It’s a stellar St.-Emilion education, and flat-out beautiful to look at.

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Chateau Le Bon Pasteur 2002

So many of the 2002’s that I tasted during my travels in Bordeaux impressed me more than I expected. Indeed, for such an overlooked vintage, these wines are showing remarkably well right now. So are the 2004’s, though most wine people have been coming around on those for about a year now.

But the truth is that there are plenty of excellent bottlings to be had from the 02 vintage, not least of which is the fantastic Chateau Le Bon Pasteur in Pomerol.

I found its gently maturing nose reminiscent of the beef cacciatore my mother used to make, with its tomato vine and meat notes. The dense, silky-smooth texture of the palate carried warm-tasting flavors of sweet ripe berry fruit and cream that led to a toasty finish perfumed by leather and hinting in the sweet-savory direction of a chocolate pot de crème. Delicious, fully integrated, and supremely enjoyable right now.

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