I recently participated with a group of friends in a horizontal tasting of 12 Bordeaux wines, six from the 1999 vintage and six from 2000. Horizontal means that you are tasting wines made from different wineries with the same vintage (year) whereas a vertical tasting would be wines from only one winery with several different vintages.
The Bordeaux region in Southwest France is the second largest wine-growing area in the world. This region is comprised of more than 50 appellations (sub regions) and lies near the Atlantic Ocean Bordeaux wines are all blends and depending on which area the grapes were grown will be either Merlot- or Cabernet Sauvignon-based, with small amounts of Cabernet Franc, Petite Verdot and/or Malbec added to the final product.
A good friend had purchased these wines as “futures,” meaning that the wine is bought before it is released and usually at a much better price than after the bottles hit store shelves. The purpose of the tasting was to determine which of these wines should be consumed now and which could use more time in the bottle. Our tasting group ranged from the novice wine drinker to a wine professional.
The first wine that we tasted was a 1999 Clos St. Martin from the St. Emilion appellation. This wine started with a strong flavor of dark cherry but it quickly faded and, as one of the group said, became “very bland and flavorless.” The vineyard suffered through a hail storm during early September 1999 which caused the winery to harvest the grapes early and most likely was the cause of this wine quickly fading.
The highlight of the afternoon was the 1999 Chateau Monbousquet which is also from St. Emilion. This wine was deep purple in color and contained the aroma of various types of dark fruit. This was the last wine in the line-up and it was clearly the most flavorful.
One member of the group found the wine to have a 20-25 second finish, meaning that after you drink the wine the aromas and flavor remain in your mouth for that length of time.
One of the more popular wines was a 2000 Chateau Haut Batailley from the Pauillac appellation. Most of the tasters agreed that this wine tasted smooth and velvety, most likely because the wine contained very little tannins. Additionally, a 2000 Chateau du Domaine de L’Eglise from Pomerol was well received by everyone. The wine was fairly tannic (dry) and the flavor of black currant was very prominent.
Throughout the afternoon, I found it interesting listening to the different words used to describe the various flavors that were being tasted in these wines and I believe that many of us learned a fair amount about Bordeaux-style wines.
Jim Rawe, a family attorney in Bradenton, is an avid collector of fine wines. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at jimrawe@gmail.com.
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