Blind Tasting 2009 Bordeaux Value

The wines hidden inside brown paper bags came from Fronsac, Castillon, and the Haut Medoc. There were two token wines, one from St. Julien and the other St. Emilion.  The most expensive bottle of 2009 Bordeaux in the lineup was $33 retail, insuring that the evening’s foundation would be poured and hardened sans pedigree. Besides [...]

Strategy & Debate for 2009 Bordeaux

Let’s not debate the greatness of the 2009 Bordeaux vintage as the top wines make their way to US markets.  For now, squelch all lamentations over price inflation for first and second growths on the heels of their runaway futures market.  Turn a blind eye to Parker’s very recent The Empire Strikes Back article where he wrote ”this is unquestionably [...]

Top Three Wines: Saint-Emilion and Rhone Valley

One quick scan of my January tasting notes and I immediately knew which three wines produced greater reward than any other.  All are French, two from the southern Rhone Valley and one from Saint-Émilion.  Besides common French ancestry, all three rank as intense values in their own class. The 1994 Vieux Telegraph recompensed fifteen years [...]

Case For Tasting Bordeaux, Barolo, and California Syrah

Tasting wine in peer groups always feels clinically informative, digging around for distinguishing nuances against identical backgrounds of grape variety, vintage, or appellation. It trains my palate and sharpens a vocabulary of descriptors. Tasting a potpourri of unrelated wines from completely different vintages, continents, countries, and varieties can be as discerning in different ways.  I [...]

Bordeaux First Growths Fund Alternative Wines

In early 2006 the Bordeaux price-value line was breached and began its transgression towards complete collapse, erasing all justification for drinking the first growths and other similarly coveted wines that sat in my cellar for decades.  Just look at the blue line to the right, representing relative fine wine price escalation compared to the major [...]

Top Three Wines of January: Spain and Bordeaux

Anointing three top January wines cast a cloudy challenge on WineZag’s monthly ritual.  The first thirty-one days of this new year provided ample opportunity to taste a surfeit of over-the-top wines that unavoidably skew the aggregate three bottle price skyward, approaching $450. Plaguing fact of wine enthusiasm: Great wine can be expensive and detours are occasionally [...]

2008 Bordeaux Vintage Tasting

The Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux just rolled across America on a four city press and trade tour with more than one hundred different Chateau owners, representatives, and wines representing and promoting the 2008 vintage from thirteen different appellations.  Normally, for fun, context, and some learning I’ll pour two different vintages of the same [...]

Top Three Wines of November

The “Top Three Wines” of November includes one remarkable New World Mourvedre from California’s Central Coast sandwiched in between two Old World Bordeaux and Rioja showcase wines.  I was unfamiliar with the claret from Saint-Estephe and the Rhone Ranger from Paso Robles until tasting them last month; both excellent new discoveries.  Unfortunately, the oddball auction [...]

US Wine Labels and Hong Kong Wine Auctions: Tale of Two Wine Worlds

While the US domestic wine industry continues its painful recessionary adjustments in response to the $50-plus wine category implosion and the consolidation of its distribution channels, the picture looks very different in Asia where this year’s Sotheby’s and Christie’s Hong Kong wine auction sales will outstrip their own combined New York and London volumes.  As [...]

Questioning the Sensibility of Bordeaux’s New Found Irrelevance

Eric Asimov helped me feel old, out of the loop,  and crusty today simply because I prefer Bordeaux.  Please do not crucify me en masse, and allow me to cling to a hard earned 51-year-old point of view that many of the world’s finest wines are products of Bordeaux as you join me on a visit [...]

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