Probably Gonna Wish I Hadn't Posted This....

[stevebody]

Under the thread "2000 Vintage", I got a reply that said that our tasting of 2000 Vintage BOrdeaux at Esquin in Seattle should have been held ten years from now. Quote: "Unless you're Suckling or RP and know what to look for, you have no shot at getting anything out of them".

Jeez...Friends, this is what drives me batty about Bordeaux. Who, then, besides Suckling or RP, is going to be able to judge whether to buy the damned things? That's two of us out of 10,000,000+ wine lovers, which means the rest of us either pony up BIG dollars on the say-so of those two or we trust our own palates and miss out on great wines. My alternate suggestion: let the vintners issue the stupid things TEN YEARS FROM NOW, when a normal human can see for him or herself what the wine actually is.

I actively discourage friends, sometimes, from buying Bordeaux because, lets's face it, a lot of the lesser ones are simply wimpy crap and the better ones will have been snapped up by collectors long before we mere mortals have a chance to try them. As a chef for over 30 years, I've been complimented endlessly on my palate and my wine-trade friends say the same thing. I'm not claiming it's great but I do know what's in a flavor curve and the great mass of Bordeaux, vintage to vintage, tastes quite a bit better IF you are the sort of person who has wholeheartedly bought into the worship of the Bordeaux culture. I've been to six different blind tastings over the past ten years at which fine Bordeaux was arrayed with a ringer bottle of something else: a bottle of '90 Caymus Cab at one, a Barolo at another, a Vega-Sicilia at a third, and a Peter Lehmann Cab at another, and five times out of the six, the clear favorite was the ringer, which was ID'ed as some fabulous Chateau or another and embarrassed hell out of all the Bordeaux freaks when it was revealed (I've never seen so much back-peddaling outside of bears on unicycles at the Ringling Bros.)

The simple fact is that, yeah, probably the finest wines ever made were various Bordeaux that are whispered about in reverent tones but what is the chance that 99% of us will EVER taste one of them?

Many of my customers assume that, because I sell wine, I must love Bordeaux. I don't deliver this rap to them. I simply say that I am not a Bordeaux guy and let it go at that. We have a Bordeaux guy and he thinks I'm crazy, too. But the very notion that, in order to make buying decisions on wines, we must simply swallow hard and gamble huge portions of our hard-earned $$$ reeks of a preciousness and arrogance that even a lot of the French find hard to take.

I'm not challenging anyone's buying habits. People should spend money as they choose. But, although you're right, IK, about waiting ten years, it asks a lot of those wine lovers that might like to savor and learn Bordeaux and have the financial resources to do it (especially true here in plugged-in Seattle) to just
say, "Don't trust what you taste. Trust the Advocate and the Spectator."

I'm absolutely willing to believe that my own tastes simply haven't evolved enough to appreciate Bordeaux but I've been passionately involved in wine for over a decade and it ain't happened yet, despite tasting over 100 of the things every year. My own tastes have broadened in every other area but Bordeaux still strikes me as a lifestyle twitch and is beginning to lose its luster with younger wine drinkers who, according to James Laube in the Spectator, are starting to regard it as passe.

I may get dumped on for this and that's okay. Nothing I ain't heard before. But the leap of faith involved in saying that we should taste the things "ten years from now" means that SOMEBODY -0 you, me, Esquin - has to BUY the stuff and ride out the taxes and space demands in order to have...what? I think the wines MUST be judged on their merits and potential NOW, by each taster, and those who trust Suckling and RP should. The rest of us...we may just think they're not very good.