Saturday was the annual Bordeaux tasting hosted by John Rimmerman of Seattle's Garagiste Wines. All wines were 2002 vintage, decanted two hours prior, then poured back into their bottles.
After teasing us with an e-mail listing a dozen or so labels, John handed out a note sheet with 21 "potential" wines. There were only 16 bottles on the tables, all of them wrapped in foil to ensure a blind tasting. His system: Taste them all, rank them from 1-16. Also, turn in a sheet ranking your top five.
There were approximately 50 participants, ranging from novice tasters to wine writers to wine makers. A wide range of palates, to say the least.
Here is how the wines finished in the voting.
- Pape Clement
- Mouton Rothschild
- Latour
- Osoyoos Larose. This year's ringer turned out to be the new release from British Columbia!
- Palmer
- Leoville Barton
- Lafite Rothschild
- Margaux
- Lynch Bages
- Haut Brion
- Cheval Blanc
- Pichon Lalande
- Leoville Las Cases
- Cos D'Estournel
- Vieux Chateau Certan
- Montrose
My top five choices were:
- Mouton Rothschild (#2)
- Lynch Bages (#9)
- Pichon Lalande (#12)
- Pape Clement (#1)
- Cheval Blanc (#11)
Just under those I ranked the Latour, Osoyoos, and Margaux, which, if I'd tasted at some other point in the proceedings, I might have ranked higher. I don't know what that says about my palate compared with the other tasters, but I nailed down the overall top two in my top five, with overall numbers three and four barely trailing. (I didn't assign point values to any of the wines.)
John said he expected the Pape Clement to be the #1 pick, but when asked his favorite, he surprised many of us by citing the Palmer. Though it finished as 5th overall, I thought the Palmer had way too much funk. I lumped it in with the Vieux Ch. Certan (some complexity, but too much alcohol), the Lafite (well-balanced, but an odd finish) and the Montrose (took one sip and almost gagged, tried another sip and dumped it) as my bottom four.
My biggest surprises:
Let's start with the 2002 Cos. Holy moly! This is the wine Parker raved about, gave it a 95-100! I tried to buy this wine a week ago from Premier Cru at $60 pre-arrival, and it was scooped up before I could respond to their e-mail. Now I'm wondering why. My notes: "Immediate nice hit in the nose, dissipates fast; watery; no flavor."
The Margaux fooled me. It was big alright, but I thought it had a lot more cab franc than the 8% listed by the winery. Conversely, I thought the Cheval Blanc had Margaux qualities about it, and was well-balanced.
JJ