[title type="h5"]Wednesday, October 22, 2014.
Eight Premier Crus, All In A Row.
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Most of what I know about wine I learned during an eight-year attendance at the Martin Wine Cellar tastings in the 1980s. Every Thursday, a group of several dozen wine lovers gather (they still do) in the tasting room at the city's leading wine shop. These were not free tastings (not that Martin makes a profit beyond good will with good customers), but intensive studies of the wines. The highlight of the tastings is a silent period for concentrating on the wines' qualities, followed by free-wheeling commentary from anyone who has something to say.
I hardly ever missed those tastings. Not only did they keep me up to speed with the wine market, but they were also a major social nexus during my bachelor days. So many of the people there were regulars that we all got to know one another very well. Until being Daddy took over my life, a disproportionate percentage of my friends were people I met at the Martin tastings. Many of those folks are still active wine hobbyists, and now and then we meet up at a wine dinner. Some are involved in informal wine clubs, and they occasionally invite me to their tastings.
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The table in the Windsor Court's wine room.[/caption]
That brings me tonight to the long table just outside the Windsor Court Grill Room's wine cellar, where I am joined by seven other guys, five of whom I know from the Martin tastings. (Three attended my wedding.) Each of them has brought a bottle of wine. As usual, there is a theme, and if you can't bring an example of it, you can't take part.
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Three first-growths.[/caption]
The theme: first-growth Bordeaux wines. No limits on vintage or geography. That made it sound as if I could bring a ruined bottle, as long it was a first growth.
There was a time when a little digging in my wine pile would unearth a good, qualifying bottle. But my wine collection has had a low priority through my child-raising years. What little really good, old wines I had were depleted badly for my sixtieth birthday party.
I was about to give up the search when I found a singularly ugly bottle of Chateau Margaux, 1970. A bottle above it had been dripping on it for a long time. The Margaux itself was dripping, too. Not promising. When I turned the bottle upright, I saw that it had lost a few ounces. The cork must just be hanging on.
That was yesterday. Thoughts of being disgraced by this poor offering ran through my head. I thought I'd better check to see whether I might find a suitable bottle at Martin's. Cedric Martin looked as if he had not answered such a request in decades. Maybe he hadn't. These wines are not easily found anymore. I guess I was still thinking that the case of 1982 Chateau Latour I bought on futures for $40 a bottle was still the standard price. Like I say, I have been out of the market for a long time.
This morning, I dislodge the crumbling cork from the bottle and commence decanting. To get the cork trash out, I ran the wine through an ultra-fine, stainless-steel filter made for brewing tea. I bought it at Jude's favorite tea house when we visited him in September. I didn't know what I was going to do with it then, but now I do.
Then I tasted the wine. To my astonishment, not only was it not ruined, but it was barely past its good years. There was a hint of oxidation, the red colors were enclosed in the proverbial robe of brown, and the fruit aspect was all but gone. But the old-Bordeaux aromas and flavors were there. I would bring it to the wine dinner tonight with fingers crossed that I am not fooling myself. At least, it would probably be the oldest wine on the table.
I checked the Robert Parker ratings for the wine when it first came out. My heart sank. A 73 out of 100? That must have been during that time when Margaux was about to have an ownership change. Great.
I have to get past one more dark moment before getting with the program. An historic Eat Club dinner was held in this very spot at the Windsor Court thirteen years ago. It was limited to fourteen people. All of them showed up--and I was worried they might not. The date was September 13, 2001. Two days after the worst disaster of our times. We tried to talk about the food and the wine, but after a few minutes we were back on Topic A. But we were indeed living our lives, with at least a little courage.
Back in the present, the tasters tonight find ourselves with three bottles of Chateau Margaux. To my surprise, one of them was even older than mine--1967. The other was a 1986. We sampled them vertically. My wine showed well. Two tasters said they thought it was the best of the three, which may have been charitable. As long as it isn't a total embarrassment, I am happy.
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Chef Daniel Causgrove.[/caption]We had no set menu, although Chef Daniel Causgrove offered to do a tasting menu for us with the wines in mind. Nobody went for that--too much food, they said. I agree. Wines like this require focus. I have a creamy soup of pumpkin and pecans, which works nicely with the wines. And a dry-aged, grass-fed beef strip sirloin with chanterelles--a natural with big reds.
A mini-vertical of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild came next--1989 and 1990. Mouton is the first growth I am least familiar with, even though I always found it the apotheosis of Bordeaux wine making. These two certainly stood up to that standard for me.
There was much conversation about Chateau Cheval-Blanc, along the lines that it is always underrated. That was not the case tonight with this 1988. We all loved it. It's a bigger, more masculine wine than the others, but flawless.
Rounding out the octet are 1999 Chateau Latour and 1988 Chateau Lafite. Both were too young to be drunk tonight, I thought, but that's a piddling flaw giving the other merits.
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Dry-aged sirloin strip with chanterelles and company.[/caption]
So here is a tasting I will remember for a long time--assuming I have a long time left. Events like this used to turn up a few times a year back when. They are very rare now. But that's life.
[title type="h5"]Windsor Court Grill Room. CBD: 300 Gravier. 504-522-1994. [/title]
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