“A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson had it right about special wines being eminently memorable, though he forgot to add the part about how wine tasting, like a hot date, owes so much to anticipation.

And as much as I like to think that I am inching ever closer to the Zen mystery, it’s really difficult not to put expectations on a tasting in which magnums of 1995 Champagne and Graham’s Vintage Port (1977), as well as bottles of 1981 Vieux Chateau Certan, take second billing.

Which is exactly what happens when you have a bottle of (genuine) 1929 Haut-Brion in the lineup.

That’s because the 1929 Haut-Brion is one of those extremely rare triple threats: world-class producer, renowned vintage (before every other release was deemed “vintages of the century” in Bordeaux) and rare old wine (in decent condition).

Or so we had hoped, anyway.

As it turns out, that fabled bottle that had me (and several other guests at the Columbia Firehouse restaurant in old town Alexandria, VA) buzzing with anticipation last week had apparently leaked at some point in it’s 81-year history.

Uh-oh.

We (a group of about 15 people) were assembled as the hand-picked guests of my buddy Jason Whiteside, DWS (Washington Wine Academy instructor, friend of the Dude and frequent guest poster here) to celebrate the achievement of his WSET Diploma in Wine & Spirits (a pre-req for entrance into the Masters of Wine program).  It’s a difficult and hard-earned achievement, well-worthy of opening some special bottles.  As our generous host put it after inspecting the most special of that night’s bottles, “this wine could be deader than Lincoln”…

Haut-Brion, of course, has been special for a long time, having first come to the attention of the wine-loving public outside of France in the 1600s – or so goes the story as taken from the diaries of Samuel Pepys, who on April 10, 1663 recorded his first encounter with HB:

“…a sort of French wine called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most perticular taste that I never met with.”

Haut-Brion kept up its reputation into the 1800s, being classified as a First Growth in the oft-cited but never-intended-to-have-any-staying-power 1855 classification of Bordeaux wines (the only producer outside of the Medoc to be included in the top tier).  Most  modern critics agree that Haut-Brion has been consistently stellar since the mid-seventies.

1929 is widely regarded as a special and superb vintage for Bordeaux, and it’s been speculated that the dry and warm conditions that year created an almost “cooked must” situation during fermentation that is partly responsible for the longevity and aging potential of that year’s wines.  Rainfall was about half of its normal amount that year, and the temperature sum was 103% of the average at the time.  According to HB itself:

“A hot, extremely dry year, the driest since the start of the century. The juices were very concentrated and the wines characterized by an enormous richness of tannin. Wines slow to mature, but with exceptional structure.”

Now, you’re patiently waiting for the tasting note on that `29, right?

But the theme of this article is anticipation, remember?  So, you’re gonna have to wait.  I know, I’m incorrigible…

Retail prices of the 1929 Haut-Brion reflect its rarity and the general perception of the vintage’s quality.  Expect to spend somewhere around three grand USD for a 750ml bottle (if you can find one).

It was a long lead-up of excellent wine and food pairing courses to the “main event,” and we tasted several stellar wines from Jason’s stash; not that you care, but here’s the list (you see, not unlike those really lengthy and dramatic Catholic weddings, I’m all about keeping you as long as possible from the “consummating act” of this article):

• Bollinger NV Special Cuvee Brut (tasted from magnum) – Green apple, bread, and a ridiculously luxurious finish
• 1995 Pierre Moncuit Champagne Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru (tasted from magnum) – Sour red apple dominated, still very fresh & fruity
• 2005 Domaine William Fevre Chablis Grand Cru – Refined and smooth, with citrus & tons of minerality; beguiling, really, apart from some unpleasant reduction notes
• 2006 Bouchard Père et Fils Santenay – Stellar; very “feminine” with a light touch of bright red cherry fruit and smoke
• 1981 Vieux Chateau Certan – Major-league earth, cigar & tobacco, with a killer palate of savory soy sauce
• 2002 Geyser Peak Reserve Alexandre Meritage (tasted from double magnum) – A little heavy-handed but I found it quite solid with good black fruit notes and not too extracted; it was clearly despised by a majority of my Francophile dinning partners, however, for its blatant “California” / New World style
• 1977 Graham’s Vintage Port (tasted from magnum) – Dried fig flavors were prominent, but it lacked the velvety texture you’d expect, and was very “spirty”on the palate

Which leaves us with that `29 HB.

Fortunately, the tales of this wine’s demise were greatly exaggerated.  Improbably, the wine was not only still drinkable, it was downright lively and it still had perceptible fruit.  At 81 years young.  I know, right?!??

Here are my (expanded) tasting notes:

“Visibly aged but still has some shine. The first sniff is a huge whiff of crushed walnut shell that I will probably never forget and will clearly be a reference point for any long-aged wines that I taste from this point onwards.

Seems impossible but there are notes of dried cherry fruit still on the palate once the walnut action calms down, and the fruit is very pure.  A hint of soy on the nose, with smoke and some game, followed by truffle.  Palate is very, very savory and the mouthfeel is really smooth.  “Elegant” and “stately” come to mind.

The most improbable aspect of all is the acid. This wine, at 80+ years on, has enough acid that it could easily be paired with food, which is by any practical measure a chemical miracle. I’m shocked – and would have considered it an impossibility after seeing the crumbled cork and leakage when the bottle was opened.

Still strong after about 20 minutes, but the savory notes are beginning to take over.  Will be gulping the last remnants down before it turns into vinegar in the glass.”

And I did, in fact, gulp the remaining bit down in one big slurp – better to do it then, I figured, and enjoy it, than to wait until it was nigh-undrinkable.

I’m tempted to say that this was a once in a lifetime experience, but I think that Jason has a second bottle in even better condition… so I plan on staying on his good side for the foreseeable future…

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Tasting A Legend: Going to Head-to-Head with Haut-Brion 1929 from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

This is a guest post from frequent 1WineDude.com contributor Jason Whiteside, who recently attained his WSET Diploma in Wines & Spirits (with Merit).  Jason recently returned from a trip to Argentina, cataloged below, in which he went inside Bodega Catena Zapata to answer the question “How Well Does New World Malbec Age?”  His trip recap. coinincides nicely with an interview I recently gave for WineSur.com, in which they asked me about the state of Argentinian wine in the U.S. (for some reason, they left out my comment that Argentinian Malbec needs to prove its high-end age-worthiness… oh, well…).  As an added bonus, Jason also gives us a peek inside the mind of your physician in the era of health care debate.  Enjoy!

I recently spent a week in Mendoza, Argentina on a singular, secret mission assigned to me by The Dude: find out how well Argentine Malbec will age. The assignment seemed simple enough; I was headed to Mendoza anyhow as guests of Winebow and the Catena family. If anyone knew about the age-worthy qualities of high-end Malbec, it was the folks at Catena. What I didn’t know is how hard I would work to find the answer, and that I would have to rely on years of elite training in a secret language to get the answer.

Laura Catena isn’t just the President of Bodega Catena Zapata. Even with all of the responsibility that alone entails, she has a life outside of wine. She is also Laura Catena, MD, and an Emergency Room Physician at UCSF. When I uncovered this little fact about her, I knew I’d leave Mendoza with an answer to our collective Malbec question. You might not know this about me, but I was trained to speak DOCTOR.

It has been many years since I was a professional doctor-botherer. I don’t speak about it much, but it is indeed a part of my pre-wine life. Before my career in wine sales and education, I was a Pharmaceutical Salesman. Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca; I was trained by the best. Almost nine years of my life were spent charming receptionists, nurses, and anybody else in the way, just so I could get 45 seconds of a doctor’s time, in order to tell him/her some science stuff he/she already knew. The job was a big waste of time, but the sales training was priceless. And learning how to speak DOCTOR sometimes really pays off…

On day two of my trip, Laura led a tasting of six current-release wines at their beautiful winery facility. At the end of the tasting I scurried to catch up with her. Still weary from my 28 hour journey to Mendoza, I caught her attention and blurted out the question that was my mission: “How do you think your high-end malbecs will age?”

She hit me with the Doctor-standard response, the old ‘question with a question’: “How do you think high end malbecs will age?”

I should have seen that coming. Standard procedure for physicians: Scenario #1 Patient:“Doc, my foot is killing me. It hurts every time I move.” Doctor:“Why do you think your foot hurts?” A precisely placed question to a question can give physicians a lot of answers. But I didn’t take three sweaty flights and two bumpy buses halfway around the world length-wise just to answer my own damned question. So I reverted back to drug salesman mode, and used the secret language.

Simply put, doctors think in terms that can be summed up with an acronym that spells SOAP. It stands for Subjective – Objective – Assessment – Plan. Doctors are incredibly complex creatures; brilliant, dedicated, hardworking. It is difficult to sum up the way they diagnose in four words, but the essence of differential diagnosis is contained within this framework. For example:

• Subjective [how the patient describes their feelings] I’m in agony; my foot is killing me!
• Objective [from the physician’s objective point of view]. He is in obvious pain. Swelling in one foot; tender to touch, but no obvious signs of trauma.
• Assessment [let’s ask questions and run some tests] What do you think is wrong? (“It might be gout. I have a family history and love port wine and lobster”). [See why the questions are helpful?] More assessment: “Let’s get an X-ray just to be sure you didn’t break anything, and we’ll do a blood test to check and see if your uric acid levels are high, which could help confirm gout.” X-ray is negative, uric acid is through the roof.
• Plan – Treat for Gout. Prescribe pain and anti-gout medication, plus rest. Limit lobster and wine port wine.

So how did I use this divine logic to unlock the mystery of Malbec and its ability to age. After Laura turned the tables on me, I paused, composed myself, and asked the question again, in SOAP fashion:

[S] JW: “Many serious wine collectors who get to try Catena’s vineyard designate bottles absolutely love them in youth. The lingering question is how these wines will age. If at all possible, could we try an older Malbec, and answer this question?”

[O] LC: “In my experience, these wines age beautifully. They contain the polyphenols and polysaccharides and fruit character to improve for decades. I’ll try and pull an older one and let you assess for yourself.”

[A] Later that evening, Laura Catena appears next to me with a 2000 Catena Alta Malbec. While not necessarily the oldest Malbec in her cellar, she wanted to show one with age that was representative of their current style of winemaking. My assessment is as follows: After 10 years, still an intense purple color, indicative of youth. The wine had a medium intense, slightly developing nose of blackfruits, black plums, violets, and a sweet spice like star anise. The only real sign of development was a hint of dried lavender. On the palate this wine had the same blackberry and plum skin, with a medium body and ripe but firm tannins supported by a refreshing acidity. There were also lingering notes of baker’s chocolate and dark minerals on the finish that lasted longer than expected.

[P] There is no denying that the well made Malbecs coming out of Mendoza are big, fruit forward wines. I drank a lot of them, for a straight week. The very best, such as the Catena Alta level and the vineyard designates (Adrianna, Nicasia), are well balanced, but you won’t mistake them for Chinon or Beaujolais. Diagnosis: If this is the style of wine you enjoy drinking and collecting, buy with confidence and hold onto them for 15+ years. These wines don’t develop quickly. Wines saturated with natural anti-oxidants that possess alcohols in the range of 14% (and up) develop their tertiary characteristics slowly. In my firsthand observation, I can assure you of two things: wine made from this new rock star of a grape will not deteriorate quickly (as some feared), and they will provide extra layers of development as they age over a long period of time. If you like luxurious wines with dark fruits, these vineyard-designate wines represent a great deal of relative value for money, and they are well-suited to long term care.

/JW

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Mission: Mendoza – How Well Does Malbec Age? (Guest Post) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

That’s when they plan on selling the wines from the cellar of famed wine collector and way-cool-eye-patch-wearer Lloyd Flatt.

Long-time 1WineDude.com readers will recall Flatt and his extravagant cellar when they were covered here in a guest post by long-time friend-of-the-Dude Jason Whiteside (who had the honor of pouring some of Flatt’s collected wines at a party held in his memory).  Saying that Flatt’s wine collection was amazing and expensive would be a bit like saying that a nuclear war might "tickle a bit" – in other words, a huge understatement.  As Lloyd’s widow, Lauré Flatt, put it:

"There was the rebuilding of Europe, the rebuilding of Atlanta and then there was the rebuilding of Lloyd Flatt’s wine cellar."

Flatt’s cellar contents reads like a Who’s Who of France’s most celebrated wine labels (see the full list for auction after the jump).  While he clearly enjoyed the most celebrated of French wines, he seems to have harbored a pretty down-to-earth approach when it came to wine tasting.   Recalls Lauré:

" ‘Must be present to win’ – of all of Lloyds quotes, this is my personal favorite. This was the order of the day whenever opening an important bottle to share with family and friends. Many times it was just he and I at our kitchen table or in the garden. Top hats, morning coats, a jazz band through the French Quarter or pajamas in the garden, Lloyd said the dress did not change the taste of the elixir. He had a hunger for fine foods; however he was not one to follow the food to wine match; ‘if the wine is good enough the food will follow.’  He often enjoyed Dom Pérignon and Dominos pizza, or a Lafite with a cheeseburger."

I can get behind the cheeseburger, but Dominos?  Really?!??

Anyway, the list of Flatt’s wines on auction is below.  Enjoy, and try not to salivate too much on the keyboard…

Bordeaux:
1 x 4.5l Jero, 1959 Lafite Rothschild, est. $20,000-30,000
1 x 4.5 Jero 1961 Lafite Rothschild est. $12,000-20,000
1 6L Margaux 1983 est. $4,000-6,000
1 x 15L 1989 Lynch Bages est. $4,000-6,000

White Bordeaux:
12 bottles 1989 Haut Brion Blanc est. $10,000-15,000
1 6L 1985 Haut Brion Blanc est. $3,000-5,000
12 bottles 1982 Haut Brion Blanc est. $3,000-5,000

Burgundy:
DRC:
2 x 6L 1983 Montrachet est. $8,000-11,000 each
9x 3L 1983 Jero La Tâche est. $3.000-4,000 each
2 x 750ml 1947 La Tâche est. $8,000-12,000
1 x 1.5L 1962 Grands Echézeaux est. $4,500-6

Bouchard Père et Fils:
1 bt 1865 Chambertin est. $1/1,500
1 bt 1865 La Romanée est. $4/5,500
1 bt 1861 Romanée St. Vivant est. $4/5,500
1 bt 1864 Montrachet est. $4/5,500
1 bt 1869 Montrachet est. $2,750/4,000

Champagne:
2 x 6L 1990 Louis Roederer Cristal Millennium Mathusalem est. $10,000-15,000 each
2 x 1500ml 1971 Salon le Mesnil est. $4,000-6,000
1 x 1500ml 1969 Krug Collection est. $2,250-3,250
1 x 1500ml 1962 Dom Pérignon est. $2,000-3,000
3 x 750ml 1959 Salon le Mesnil est. $4,500-6,000
1 bottle 1949 Salon le Mesnil est. $1,000-1,500

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at "Must Be Present To Win": Sotheby’s To Sell the Cellar of Lloyd Flatt from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

The rage is relentless
We need a movement with a quickness
You are the witness of change
And to counteract
We gotta take the power back

Sometimes I wonder if the Internet should have a theme song.  I’d nominate Rage Against The Machine’s Take The Power Back, given the possibilities of democratization that the connected economy presents to us nearly every day.

That’s an overly-dramatic introduction to a couple of on-line surveys… but what the hell, why be afraid to revel in our time, right?

Anyway… frequent 1WineDude readers will know my good buddy (and uber wine-geek) Jason Whiteside, who is currently finishing up the challenging WSET Diploma program (the stepping-stone into Master of Wine qualification).  Jason is taking on a bit of wine consumer research as part of his WSET work, and he needs your help!

Below you will find links to two (very, very quick) surveys that Jason is running to collect consumer’s views on two hot topics in the wine world.  The first, rising alcohol levels, is a topic that generates just about as much passion as any other being discussed around wine today. The second is a more specific exploration into what wine consumers think about Sauvignon Blanc (which surprisingly also brings out strong opinions among true wine geeks).

I’ll defer to Jason to introduce the surveys:

“These surveys represent a small amount of consumer research, which is being done for the WSET Diploma (the Diploma is divided into six learning Units, and one of them is on “The Business of Wine”). Both surveys are about ten questions each, and should take less than three minutes to complete. Consumer preference doesn’t garner the attention that Wine Critic preference does, but surveys like this can help swing the power back to the people. Thank you very much for your time in filling out the surveys. Your answers will remain confidential; even I will not be able to see who answered what.”

The results will be published in a future 1WineDude article, so do us a favor and take 5 minutes to tell us your thoughts!

Have your say about Alcohol Levels and Wine:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=phsAHStgKrfzRRTWFmGFoQ_3d_3d

Tell us what you think about White Wine and Sauvignon Blanc:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=95Sodl9Wgd0d2i9iTu2gXw_3d_3d

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Take The Power Back: Have Your Say on Hot Wine Topics! from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!