VinoDuo is Lisa & Gary. Engaged in Sonoma. Honeymooned in Napa. Vacationed in
Temecula (CA), Woodinville (WA), and other off the beaten path wine regions. We’ve married our love of wine with our passion for travel, visiting lesser-known wine regions throughout the United
States. We’ve got strong opinions about the pros and cons of each wine region and this is our forum for airing and sharing them.
A Bordeaux Tasting by Invitation
Categories: Boston Posts, Tasting Notes, Reds in Review, French Wine
Being a wine blogger often has its privileges. Sometimes it’s in the form of free entry to a mass wine tasting or, even better, to a small gathering of other wine snobs, I mean aficionados. And then there are the super-perks, like getting an email from a PR firm asking if we’d like free wine! Us, free wine? Well, ok, sure, if you insist.
That’s the invitation that landed in our in-box last month from Planet Bordeaux’s PR agency. We were invited to sample some of the wines of Bordeaux from the lower-priced $10–$20 a bottle range. Planet Bordeaux had a couple of goals in mind:
- Introduce less celebrated—and less expensive—Bordeaux wines displaying the “character that has made Bordeaux one of the most well-known and well-respected wine regions of the world.” (their quotes)
- Illustrate to Americans that Bordeaux wines are “about more than classified growths and wine reviews… that they are about the place, the people and the lifestyle of Bordeaux.”
The folks at Planet Bordeaux (www.planet-bordeaux.com) provided us with a generous list of roughly 35 wines from the 2005 to 2008 vintages, suggesting that we select no more than 10 samples for evaluation. So we chose carefully and were told that we have “excellent taste.” Gary said “we’ll see…”
Our shipment from Planet Bordeaux arrived with 7 of the 10 wines we requested. We immediately broadcast the availability of free wine to our friends next door—knowledgeable wine lovers in their own right—and scheduled a tasting. As with any wine tasting event, the food was central to the experience. Drawing on our (albeit limited) knowledge of Bordeaux, we selected a variety of cheeses and ordered some delicious barbecued chicken from Blue Ribbon BBQ in Arlington, a VinoDuo favorite. Yes, Lisa would have preferred ribs with her Bordeaux, but a high cholesterol reading has curtailed this avid carnivore.)
Our basic approach for the tasting involved bracketing wine by year: To 2005’s, 2006’s and one each of 2007 & 2008. All wines were allowed to breath for 3 hours prior to the tasting.
What We Tasted, What We Thought
Year Composition Retail Price Tasting Notes Ranking 1=Excellent 7 = Poor Chateau Bois-Malot* 2005 50% Cabernet Sauvignon,30% Merlot 20% Cab Franc $10 “Limestone notes with spicy palate,” “Thin and not enough fruit in the mouth,” “light and pleasant,” “I imagine that this would be a good pizza and burger wine,” “old world without the complexity… taste is equal to the price; disappointed” 5. Domaine de Cantemerle* “Grains du Terroir” 2005 Merlot, Cab Sauv, Cab Franc, Malbec, Petit Verdot $15 “Excellent with food-barbecue…some spiciness, some anise and licorice, vanilla and oak…nice balance and longish finish… I would buy!” “Smooth, velvety and nice finish…a favorite already!” 1. Chateau Bellevue Peycharneau* 2006 65% Merlot, 20% Cab Sauv, 15% Cab Franc $15 “Bottle was tainted as we got the tell-tail signs of coconut, passion fruit and sour cherries…too bad,” “this wine had some potential with a nice earthy nose, but no pay-off and it tasted funny” 7. Chateau Malbec 2006 Merlot, Cab Sauv, Cab Franc, Malbec $10 “Yech…Smelled like low tide at a polluted beach” “thin with no complexity no discerning characteristics” “Had high hopes for this wine; perhaps this bottle was tainted as well” 7. Chateau Haut Chatain* 2006 60% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon $15 “Deep, dark, beefy with hints of cherry ganache,” “old world with cherry compote toasty oak and a long, smooth finish…very good” “I would buy” 2. Chateau Montlau* 2007 Merlot $10 “Earthy nose with hints of vanilla… sharp palate with big tannins and notes of black fruits… tannins are too tight—wine needs time” “beautiful nose with earthy vanilla notes… rustic and old world—needs time” 3. Chateau Les Vergnes 2008 55% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc $12 “Amazing nose with explosive cherry notes on the palate—tannins still too tightly wound needing more time to settle out,” “Tastes like jug-wine… needs lots of time” 4.
Conclusions:
- With two out of seven wines rated a "must buy," we think Planet Bordeaux is on the right track introducing wine lovers to some well-priced options.
- The $10-$20 price point is pretty crowded with very good wine from Argentina, Chile, Spain, and Portugal. Bordeaux will have to fight hard to get Americans to migrate from crowd-pleasing vintages from the New World (and Iberia) to French wines with complicated labels.
- If Planet Bordeaux was looking for quick feedback on its wines, it shouldn't have shipped vintages that weren't ready for consumption. Perhaps we should have pulled the 2007 and 2008 bottles out of the tasting and laid them down for a minimum of 6 months prior to opening.
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