Question of wine

Back to Question of Wine

2011-06-06T04:01:00.000-07:00

After many life changes, I am finally back to Question of Wine to try and spread some knowledge or feelings on the wonderful wines I come across in my work and the great stories I am told by the incredible people that make the wine world so unique and diversified...

A good start will probably be to talk a little bit about Bordeaux. Quite a hot topic at the moment as many of us are waiting for the new release to come. So my next post will cover some of my impressions on this 2010 vintage and what I have seen in Bordeaux.

To all then, cheers!

Working as a sommelier in Singapore...

2010-10-19T06:06:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to sommeliers in search of a new work experience in Asia and particularly in Singapore. The city is booming with new restaurants opening every months and restaurateurs need sommeliers to develop their wine sales.
The wine industry is growing fast here and this is an amazing opportunity for you to be part of it!

Look in my profile for my email and do not hesitate to contact me for more info!

Sante!

QC

Bordeaux En Primeur 2009 - Where to find the wines...

2010-06-28T23:48:00.000-07:00

The en primeur system allows anyone to buy from any merchant around the world and have access to the wines in two years time, just as if you bought them from the caviste next door. So if you are still looking for some cases of Bordeaux 2009, then you can contact me. Based in Singapore we have been offering en primeur at fantastic prices and with reasonnable quantities available!

If you wish to receive the list, send me an email (email is in my profile) and I will revert as soon as possible. There are still some great wines to grab at first release prices!

Sante!

Quentin

2009 Bordeaux En primeur...

2010-05-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

Crisis...?

It is clear that the fine wine world has come out of the crisis as fast as it got in...

Indeed there was a crisis, and we all saw the value of top chateaux going down for a while, following the poor vintage in 2007 and a world wide financial slump in 2007-08, things were not looking bright.

And yet, Auction houses recorded there highest sales in 2008...

What really happend, is many private collectors in the US and Europe were in need of cash and prepare to sell their holdings for lower prices, as long as they can liquidate them. But buyers were not keen to go on a spending campain and prices continue to go downwards. But when it came to auction offerings, the BIG spenders were not looking at slowing down their bids and because so many wines that were hiding in private collectors cellars, came back on the market, it was the best time to buy.

As for the crisis, it did not last very long. 2008 vintage turned out to be quite good, or even excellent for the top properties and the world of $ has slowly recover with the "humongus" bail out from gouvernments. Prices went down on the en primeur, which stimulated sales and all Bordeaux needed, was a great vintage to go back to post 2005 prices.

The 2009 en primeur...

Outstanding weather conditions, great care in the vineyards and wineries, attention to detail on the fruits, tannins and structure of the wines, 2009 was aiming for the bull's eye!

The top chateaux have not yet release their prices, but we can imagine the level of 2005 coming back to be the norm accross the upper end of the properties.

So what wine did perform really well on the first barrel tasting?

According to livex.com this is the list of the best wines, from an average of all critic's point systems:

1. Chateau Latour

2. Chateau Haut-Brion

3. Chateau Lafite-Rothschild

4. Chateau Margaux

5. Chateau Lafleur

6. Chateau Ausone

7. Eglise Clinet

8. Petrus

9. Chateau Mouton Rothschild

10. Chateau Leoville Las Cases

Where are the buyers?

A major shift in the share of the market has been seen recently with asian buyers starting to bid more and more at auctions and buying stock for investment from major UK merchants.

They were however against the purchase of wines at such an early stage. Only when bottled, they would buy what came out to be the best.

But this year, things have change and 2009 will be the Asian 1982's of the US. China will not be the only one, with other countries joining the buying wave.

Should I buy 2009 or 2008?

These two vintages are perfect for two types of buyers. The 2008 "drinkers" and the 2009 "investors". 2008 will be great drinking for the 2 or 3 decades ahead, and that's were the value is. And even though it has great potential for the future, I am afraid it will be shadowed by 2009. Just like 95 and 96 in Champagne.

2009, is and will be a shining star over the next 40 to 50 years for the top chateaux and will definitely be a great investment vintage. And for the lucky ones, a beautiful drinking vintage too!

Tasting Note : Domaine Etienne Sauzet Le Montrachet Grand Cru 1996

2010-04-09T22:11:00.000-07:00

Domaine Etienne Sauzet Le Montrachet Grand Cru 1996

Deep gold colour with orange tint. It looks like the wine has aged a little fast. On the nose, aromas of honey, pineapple, creme anglaise and almonds. There is a slight presence of oxdation. On the palate, the acidity is somehow faded but the structure is still very well balanced. Round with oaky falvours well integrated, it shows more honey and floral aromas on the mid palate. I expected a much longer finish for a Montrachet. The wine seems to have reached is peak.

I am a great fan of Etienne Sauzet whites and one of my favorite white Burgundy, is his Chevalier-Montrachet. This particular Montrachet we tasted was excellent, but I was expecting something a little more mind blowing. I guess after 14 years, some of the bottles have variation and one should be ready to accept that.

Tasting Note : Domaine Rene Rostaing Cote Rotie 'Cuvee Classique' 2006

2010-04-03T03:07:00.000-07:00

Domaine Rene Rostaing Cote Rotie 'Cuvee Classique' 2006

Elegant bouquet of dark cherry on the nose with some subtle spices. On the palate, the acidity is quite high but very well balanced and gives great freshness on the mid palate. The fruits are showing well, with blackcurrant, dark cheeries and blueberries with a second layer of provencal herbs and white pepper. I really like the freshness in this wine. It is joyful, yet has a great presence in the mouth with a solid structure. Soft finish with more spice.

Tasting Note : Chateau d'Yquem 2001

2010-04-03T00:18:00.000-07:00

Chateau d'Yquem 2001

One could spend hours just looking at it. Beautiful golden and orange colour of a youthful wine, starting a long and promising life. With just a gentle swirl for a minute at least, it opens up in the glass and only then you can take a deep smell. Explosion of lemon and orange zest, honey, peach, apricot... so much, it's difficult to recognise them all! The nose is thrilling, it gives you a hint how incredible this wine will be on the palate... The first sip is also overwhelming with flavours and aromas, with more honey, peach, pineapple and then layers of light spices... The sweetness is simply perfectly balanced with the acidity that seems to help the whole structure to stand on the upper part of the mouth. The finish is still in its very early days, but the lasting is luscious, lingering and 'sensual'. I found a stunning feminine touch in this Yquem.

Absolutely amazing!

QC

James Bond and Bollinger...

2010-03-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

Not only famous for its fine taste of women and cars, 007 has also a very fine palate when it comes to Champagne. And Bollinger has used this fantastic marketing tool to become the Champagne of choice of the most famous British spy and continue the dream of very men, to have a sip of Bollinger Grande Annee at a million dollars casino table with a license to kill and Sophie Marceau or Eva Green sitting next to you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUaHHy3dtOc

QC

Where is the world of wine going... really?

2010-03-21T00:07:00.000-07:00

A view of the wine world in a few years...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRL1SeTJ1rk

QC

The Bordeaux 2008 En Primeur campain... Bargain?

2010-03-20T21:27:00.000-07:00

For the top Chateaux, the 2005 vintage had set a new benchmark of pricing for the future. With demand going stronger than ever and the quality of the vintage being outstanding, the negociants knew they had to make the best out of it and prices started to climb up like a rocket in the sky! And in no time, a Chateau Ausone for example would sell at 6 times its price from the 2004 vintage!

For most buyers, 2006 en primeur was going to be hard, as most Chateaux produced excellent wines and prices were unlikely to go down, but on the days of release the negociants and producers lowered their prices as they new it would not be as easy as 2005.

Came 2007. A "bad" vintage for some, an "average" for others, many thought prices will go back to pre-2005's, but it only came down by 30% at most. Chateau Cheval Blanc for example, was 3 times more expensive in 2007 than it was in 2004!

It was in the 2008 En Primeur campain, that the real "bargain" would appear. Indeed, prices were not falling down as one would have liked, but they did hit a low unseen over the last 3 years and most of all, the vintage was pretty good!

Not to mention the obvious, the worldwide crisis was the main and probably the only responsible for this slow down. The usual buyers (Chinese, Americans, Russians, Japanese...) were very cautious and made things a lot harder for negociants.

As a result, everyone would beneficiate from this hit and I have listed below some of the wines that you should look for in the 2008 vintage, because of their decrease in value compare to 2005 vintage and their high quality:

Chateau La Conseillante 2008 (92-94+)

Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 2008 (RP98-100)
Chateau Cos d'Estournel 2008 (94-96+)
Chateau l'Evangile 2008 (RP93-95)
Chateau Haut-Brion 2008 (RP95-97)
Chateau Margaux 2008 (RP95-97)
Chateau Leoville Las-Cases (RP95-97+)
Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 2008 (RP94-96)

The most impressive of all, was Chateau Latour (RP96-98) at 2.8 times cheaper than 2005 and back almost to 2004 released price!

QC
PS: In my opinion 2008 vintage will be a vintage to drink rather than invest.

Tasting Note : Louis Roederer Brut Cuvee Cristal 1999

2010-03-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

Louis Roederer Brut Cuvee Cristal 1999

In one word : Woaw! The nose is full of toasted brioche, apples and roasted hazelnut. The bubbles are very "precise" and fine and give elegance and finesse to the well balanced structure. Incredible depth of flavours with a creamy roudness and just the right amount of acidity. What an impressive wine! The concentrated flavours continue through to the mid palate and are bursting into the mouth to an impressive 3 minutes finish. Superb!

Tasting Note : Joh Jos Prum Riesling Welhner Sonnernuhr Aulese 1983

2010-03-15T02:45:00.000-07:00

Joh Jos Prum Riesling Welhner Sonnernuhr Aulese 1983

From the first smell in the glass, one could tell blind folded, this wine was outstanding! Joh Jos Rieslings are designed to age and I was lucky to witness how they can develop over a 27 years period! A wonderful nose of honey suckle and peach. The mouthfeel is luscious, with a very well integrated sweetness. The acidity is still there and gives even more depth on the back palate. Voluptuous and silky, the wine just keeps lasting in the mouth. The finish is mineral with hints of apricot flavours. Simply Gorgeous!

A must have if you can find it!

Tasting Note : Domaine Vincent Girardin Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru 2005

2010-03-15T02:01:00.000-07:00

Domaine Vincent Girardin Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru 2005

Opulent nose of strawberries and blueberries. On the palate delicate aromas of raspberries and more strawberries. Silky almost velvety structure with a great depth. A powerful but elegant wine that gives its full potential on the mid palate and finish. fantastic expression of the Pinot Noir grape with no sour flavours and a lingering ending. After tasting this kind of wine, we can understand why 2005 is such a great vintage. One of my nicest Pinot's I had in a while. Well done!

Tasting Note : Domaine Leflaive Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru 1999

2010-03-15T01:47:00.000-07:00

Domaine Leflaive Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru 1999

A beautiful nose of hazelnut, toasted wood and vanila. A rich and luscious structure with flavours of pistachios and brioche. The acidity (even though it is a 1999) is lifting the wine on the mid palate giving it a wonderful mouthfeel. Well integrated wood aromas leading to a decadent finish tasting just like a glazed lemon tart... Wonderfully crafted wine!

Tasting Note : Chateau Cheval Blanc 1990

2010-03-13T23:44:00.000-08:00

Chateau Cheval Blanc 1990

Deep ruby colour. The nose exhibits black cherries and herbs. On the palate the structure is nicely balanced with a rich but light mid palate and soft tannins. The wine was a little shy at first, but starts to open up after 15 minutes in the glass. Aromas of cocoa and raspberry come forward and the wine becomes silky... Cheval Blanc starts now to show is true side! The finish last for over 1 minute with plenty of rapsberry flavours.

Tasting Note : Domaine Rene Mure Gewurztraminer Clos St Landelin Vendanges Tardives 2002

2010-03-05T18:29:00.000-08:00

Beautiful golden colour with shades of orange. On the nose, aromas of tropical fruits, lychees and pineapple with a distinctive spicyness. On the palate, it is a well balanced wine. The residual sugar and acidity are perfectly in line. Aromas of caramel, orange zest and candy on the mid palate. The luscious and delicate texture gives a beautiful roundness to the wine. A long finish with hints of citrus fruit.

Opening and keeping Vintage Port wine

2010-03-05T18:15:00.000-08:00

Vintage Port wines are some of the most incredible wines I have ever drunk. Their aromas are unique, they can age for a very long time, they are good value (even 40 years after they have been made!) and even after opening a bottle, they can keep (in the right conditions) for a month or more in your cellar... I personnally don't know many wines with so many qualities. However, their reputation has slowly faded and they were almost forgotten in the 90's. But it seems, they are slowly making a come back and should you decide to open a bottle one day, here is how you can get the best out of it.

Opening the bottle: Before you decide to open the bottle, place it upright for a few hours in your cellar to help the sediment to settle at the bottom rather than the side. Do not shake or move the bottle too quickly in order to avoid the solids to mix too much in the wine.

Remove the foil entirely and assess the quality of the cork. Depending on the age of your bottle, they will be more or less damp. With very old Port (over 50 or 60 years old), the cork might drop in the bottle as you try to screw the bottle opener. Don't worry it is normal. (In this case, you will not be able to use the bottle for double decanting, unless you manage with water to catch the cork and push it out of the bottle)

If you can pull it, do it ever so slowly and re screw the pig's tail of the bottle opener to give some guidance to the fragile cork.

Filtering: Once the bottle is opened, you will need to filter the solids using a funnel and a fine metalic filter. (if you don't have one, a white paper napekin can also do the job. Try not to use a coffee filter as they remove too much colour and flavours)
Pour slowly the Port wine from the bottle to the decanter until all solids and liquid are out. The end of it is usually just a black paste, but it contains some very flavoursome wine.

Double Decanting: Once the wine is decanted, rinse the bottle with cold tap water. Do it a few times to ensure nothing is left in the bottle. Pour back the Port wine from the decanter to the bottle. The reason you want to keep it in the bottle and not the decanter, is that Port bottles are opaque and thick which keeps best the wine away from light. It also limits the air contact which starts oxidation.
For closure, I use plastic vaccum stopper. They allow you to pump the air out in a few seconds and seal perfectly the bottle.
With this technique, you can enjoy your Port up to 1 month or more!!!

QC

What has been happening in the fine wine market over the last 12 months?

2010-02-25T02:24:00.000-08:00

As some of you might be wondering if the fine wine market has crashed as badly as the financial one, here is a little overview of the evolution of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild over the last 12 months.

The best % return can be awarded to the 2004 vintage with around 72% return per case of 12 bottles (75cl). The Lafite 2000 has seen its price climbing up to 14,000 per case, making it the second best vintage for Lafite in the period with a % return of 51%.

2005 and 2006 are the least with respectively 18% and 14% return.

As a good bechmark of the fine wine market, Lafite has been showing some incredible returns even though the world has gone through one of its worst financial crisis. With China and the rest of Asia opening its door slowly, such wines have an almost endless clientelle ready to spend the extra thousands of $ to drink them or to invest in stock that will come back on the market in a few years.

As the number of bottles diminishes every day, it is safe to say that blue chips labels will continue to be one of the most reliable source of alternative investment.

Tasting Note : Masi Amarone 1967

2010-02-19T03:57:00.000-08:00

Masi Amarone 1967

At first the nose was very close and on the palate the wine was short with a strong port-like flavours. But after a few minutes it started to develop. Aromas of ground coffee, liquorice with some toasted wood on the mid palate. The acidity was not there anymore and the sweetness was coming forward more and more as I was tasting it. The length was quite short.

A wine that had oviously passed its best a while ago, yet showing some old but typical flavours of Amarone after a few minutes of opening.

Tasting Note : Chateau d'Yquem 1906

2010-02-19T03:33:00.000-08:00

Chateau d'Yquem 1906

(and my dear wife)

Dark opaque black colour. The cork dropped inside the bottle as soon as I tried to pull it out. The nose was showing burned coffee beans, leather and distinctive Madeira aromas. As it was sitting in the glass, the wine changed slowly to an attractive caramel aroma, as if the wine was finally awaken! On the palate, the sweetness was overwhelming and the wine had a strong Madeira style, but we could still detect some fragant flavours of mint or herbs. The alcohol and acidity had disapear, but there was still freshness in this wine with a nice lingering finish, bringing more toffee.

As the oldest wine I had ever drunk, I wasn't sure what to except from a Chateau d'Yquem with a black opaque colour of over 100 years old. But it was an amazing experience to actually see it evolving in our glasses as we were drinking it. Far from being shy, it actually had a lot of power and sweetness to show. A once in a lifetime tasting note I guess...

Here is a picture of the Chateau d'Yquem 1906 compared with Chateau d'Yquem 2001.

Tasting Note : Louis Michel & Fils, Chablis Grand Cru Vaudesir 1989

2010-02-15T05:23:00.000-08:00

Louis Michel & Fils, Chablis Grand Cru Vaudesir 1989

A lovely golden colour with shades of orange. The nose presents some honey, orange zest and pronounced farmyard aromas. On the palate, the wine has a suprising freshness and shows a good minerality. The structure is round and generous with creme brulee falvours. The acidity has disapeared with age, but I enjoy the overall balance of the wine. It was a very nice experience to taste this wine after 21 years of ageing but it should be consumed now as it has reached its plateau a little while ago.

The Wines of the Titanic...

2010-02-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

The Legend of drinkable vintage Champagne from the Titanic stays a mystery. The cellar contained upon departure over 1000 bottles of wines and Champagnes, it is therefore very likely that a few have survive the incident and some might probably be still drinkable.

In 1987, the US Senate banned the sale of any artifacts that was retrieve from the wreck of the Titanic. But in 2002, an Australian company called Wineflyers International, whose regular customer includes people like David Bowie, announced it had sourced 6 bottles of wine from the Titanic to a high profile customer in Asia.

Quentin's Tip : Opening a Bottle of Champagne

2010-02-05T08:39:00.001-08:00

They are a few ways to open a bottle of Champagne. And when some may think of the "chivalrous" Knight Sword bottle neck's cutting or in today's world a large kitchen knife, there is in fact only one "good manner" to open a bottle of the beloved bubbly liquid.

The most important for me is to ensure no one gets hurt! After many years of watching people with a few drinks already finished, taking a bottle of champagne by the neck and "bang" the cork is flying into some one's face! Not a pretty picture.

So, to ensure everyone will be able to enjoy their favorite bottle, the most important is to always keep the bottle facing up to the ceiling and always keeping your thumb over the cork. This way no matter what happens, it won't happened fast and it won't happened in some one's face!

The first step is to remove the foil. Some may be easy to remove and others might give you grief. (No one I know has ever been able to remove the foil of a bottle of Dom Perignon in one piece!) Anyway, once the foil is removed we can move to the second step.

The metallic cage wrapped around the cork is meant to hold it into place as the pressure inside the bottle is about the same as the car tyre. Therefore, it is very important to unfold slowly the metallic cage and with your thumb securing on the top, you want to gently loosen the grip by pulling it from side to side until it come off on its own.

The next step is to remove the cork. most of the time, the pressure will push out the cork and all you need to do is to let it go slowly. (ensure not to let the big pop happen... it's a little much) If the cork does not move, then you will need to get some air in by twisting the cork clockwise and the bottle anti clockwise. Do not apply too much pressure on it, otherwise it might break.

If you are opening a really big bottle, such as 9 L or 15 L, it will be near impossible to open it this way. My suggestion is to break the top of the "mushroom" and using a corkscrew, pulling it out like a normal bottle of wine.

Once the cork has been removed with a "pcchhhh" start serving. Always the guest of Honor to taste, the ladies and then the rest of us, and finish by the person that tasted.

You may find sometime, the champagne is flat in one glass and not in another. This happens when they are some residual rinse additive on the inside of the glass. The reaction simply remove all the CO2 in the Champagne almost instantly. Always give a little polish with a dry, clean cloth before serving Champagne in the flutes.

Tasting Note : Domaine Le Sang des Cailloux, Vacqueyras Cuvee Lopy 2004

2010-02-05T05:53:00.000-08:00

Domaine Le Sang des Cailloux, Vacqueyras Cuvee Lopy 2004

On the nose, the wine has a sensual fruit aromas with some herbs and spices. The alcohol is very present at the first smell. Aromas of Plum and dark cherries on the mid palate with some well integrated tannins and acidity. The fruit are becoming riper after 6 years of ageing. The finish is leathery, soft and long. A wine that is really worth exploring!

Tasting Note : Vinoptima Gewurztraminer Gisborne 2004

2010-02-04T02:29:00.000-08:00

Vinoptima Gewurztraminer Gisborne 2004

On the nose, developed aromas of white flowers and honey. The wine seems to have lost with time its tropical fruit style and aged with rounder aromas. The residual sugar is quite hgh, but not overly which gives an enjoyable luscious structure in the mouth. A good presence of acohol on the mid palate, followed by a lasting length of honey and orange flavours.

Tasting Note : Thornbury, Pinot Gris Waipara 2009

2010-02-04T02:20:00.000-08:00

Thornbury Pinot Gris Waipara 2009

Fresh on the nose with caramel and orange aromas. On the palate the wine has a structure medium built with some a distinctive acidity, probably still high due to the vintage. We can also taste some nice residual sugar which balance itself with the acidity. The finish is of medium length.

Tasting Notes : Chateau Simian, Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2007

2010-02-01T00:10:00.001-08:00

Chateau Simian, Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2007

This small domaine is run by Jean-Pierre Serguier, and produces some of the most attractive Chateauneuf-du-Pape I have come accross recently.

Beautiful aromas on the nose of leather, toasted wood and dark berries. On the palate, the concentration is great with balanced tannins (even though the wine is super young!) and acidity. The alcohol is high, but does not over shadow the finesse and softness of the wine. The length is long with a beautiful silky texture. A must try!

Tasting Notes : Vin Perdu, Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvingon 2005

2010-01-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

Vin Perdu, Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

This is the second wine of the famous, Amuse Bouche from the joint venture, Heidi Barrett and John Schwartz. This wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc.

The nose is round and attractive with liquorice and blackcurrant. On the palate the wine is well balanced with a great integration of the tannins and the acidity. Plenty of fruits on the mid palate with some raspberries, probably coming from the Cabernet Franc. The soft texture leads to a great finish!

Tasting Note : Chateau Cheval Blanc 1967

2010-01-15T21:08:00.001-08:00

Chateau Cheval Blanc 1967

Aromas of raspberry on the nose with tobacco and cedar wood. The leafy style, due to its age, gives the wine a pleasant farm yard character. On the palate, the wine has a suprising level of acidity that you would not expect for an 43 years old wine from a vintage like 1967. The fruits are still present, however we can see the wine has reached is peak a while ago and starts now to decline.

I must admit that trying this Cheval Blanc blind, I was not expecting it to be so aged and it was a nice surprise to see it could still stands its grounds in the glass and was a real pleasure to drink.

Tasting Note : Chateau Latour 1998

2009-12-18T20:23:00.000-08:00

Chateau Latour 1998

A friend ask me once if he should purchase some of the Latour 1998. My first answer was no, but after the seller gave him an extra discount on the wine, he thought at this price, there's no arm. So, last night, he kindly brought a bottle for us to try and even though this was not the finest Latour ever made, I have once again realise, that with good company and good food, the first great growths are always (no matter the vintage) simply great wines.

The nose was slightly close at first, developing aromas of blackcurrant, tar, dark chocolate and coffee. The structure is fairly light and silky with tannins still a little dry, but well integrated. Alcohol levels are not overwhelming, but balanced with some acidity on the mid palate. More flavors of blackcurrant, dark cherries and coffee bean.

The length is short and probably the major disapointment on this wine, missing the impressive finish of Latour from greater vintages. A wine to enjoy now and for another 3 to 4 years.

Grape variety : Riesling

2009-10-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

Riesling

Originated from the Rhine region of Germany, Riesling can produce some of the greatest, most complex and fine white wines and still these wines are widely understated! And on top of this, most top Riesling have an amazing potential of ageing thanks to its great acidity and fruits. However, Riesling is also influenced by the Terroir where it is grown (especially weather) and one must be careful as all Riesling are not equal and Germany, France or the New World often produce average or below average quality wines.

Aromas of white flowers and fruits, fine acidity and just the perfect balance of sweetness.

Tasting Note : Domaine Rene Rostaing Cote Rotie Cote Blonde 1996

2009-10-06T07:41:00.001-07:00

Domaine Rene Rostaing Cote Rotie Cote Blonde 1996

During a recent trip to Siem Reap (Cambodia) we had the pleasure to celebrate Darryll's birthday at the Raffles. A lovely hotel offering a nice range of local dishes as well as the western (especially French) classics. We started the dinner with a bottle of one of my favorite Champagne, Billecart-Salmon Blanc de Blancs 1998. (see tasting notes in the Champagne label) Then we moved on to the red and even though I would drink the cote Rotie a little younger, the choice was an excellent one:

The nose was a complex mix of blackberries, black cherries and spice. On the palate, the alcohol was present but not overwhelming. The structure was very well balanced with still some acidity and fruits. More spice on the mid palate with leather, blackcurrant and more black cherries. The finish was not very long and slightly mineral.

I truly enjoy Rene Rostaing wines and Cote Blonde1996 was another great example of the great potential of Cote Rotie.

The legend of wine...

2009-09-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

The Legend of Chambertin vineyard.

The legend of the Chambertin vineyard... The legend has it, a peasant by the name of Bertin was planting his Burgundian field (Champ in french) with vines. The grapes were so ripe and beautiful, they quickly were recognised as some of the finest of the all of the Burgundy and people were refering to the wines made from the Champ de Bertin. Slowly with time, the name was shorten and became Chambertin.

White Grapes : Chasselat

2009-08-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

It has been discovered that Chasselat grape came from Egypt and was brought on the European continent by the Romans conquest. Although unknown to many, Chasselat is probably one of the oldest grape variety cultivated by man. Today, Chasselat is mainly a Swiss and French, where it is used in the Pouilly-sur-Loire blend to produce sweet wines. product, but has also been planted in California, New-Zealand and Australia.

White Grapes : Albarino

2009-08-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

This is definitely the grape of sun with a citrus attack and a fresh after-taste. No surprising that it is widely planted in Portugal (known as Alvarinho) and Spain. More surprising is its origin supposed to be a clone of the Alsace Riesling (Northwestern France).

QC

A great evening...

2009-08-14T01:05:00.001-07:00

I received a text message a few days ago, sent by my boss, to tell me he had discovered in his cellar a couple of nice bottles. He kindly asked me if I wanted to join him for a little degustation and gratefully I accepted.
An hour later, I was poured my first glass of the evening and the show began...

Domaine Leflaive, Puligny-Montrachet Les Combettes 1992
(see Tasting Notes : Burgundy - Puligny-Montrachet)

Paul Jaboulet Aine, Hermitage La Chapelle 1990 (in half bottle)
(see tasting notes : Rhone - Hermitage)

Domaine Groffier, Bonnes Mares Grand Cru 1993
(see tasting notes : Burgundy - Bonnes Mares)

What I liked the most (after the wines of course!) is that there was no special occasion or celebration, just the pleasure of drinking beautiful wines and sharing them with people passionate about it.

This little story of life tells us that sometimes the special occasion of drinking beautiful wines, is simply to open them...

An evening my palate will definitely remember.

QC

Tasting Note : Domaine Groffier Bonnes Mares Grand Cru 1993

2009-08-13T18:59:00.000-07:00

Domaine Robert Groffier Bonnes Mares Grand Cru 1993

A beautiful nose of ripe fruits and hints of leathery aromas. The palate is complex and powerful, but not explosive. Flavours of red berries and rotten vegetables gives a rustic style on the palate. Slowly as the wine unfold in the glass, the aromas become more delicate but the wine keep is muscular style. the length is quite long and well balanced.

Tasting Note : Paul Jaboulet Aine Hermitage La Chapelle 1990

2009-08-13T18:58:00.002-07:00

Paul Jaboulet Aine Hermitage La Chapelle 1990

Well, well, well. I have add a few La Chapelle in my life, but it was the first time I had the chance to taste the 1990. Decanted from a half bottle, the wine was only open twenty minutes before I tasted it. The colour is still opaque and even after 19 years, it seems the wine has not even started to change in colour! On the nose, a complexity of layers : Blackcurrant, dark cherry, leathery, smoky and spicy. But what surprise me the most, is the freshness of the fruits still developing. On the palate the wine is generous and concentrated with tannins well integrated in the structure, but still in their youth though. More aromas of black berries and spice with round flavours of toasted wood. The acidity lifts the wine and gives it balance. It has great power, but no heaviness. The finish is long and dense. I was hoping for a slightly more explosive finish, but this will come with many more years of cellaring...

Tasting Note : Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Combettes 1992

2009-08-13T18:58:00.001-07:00

Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Combettes 1992

For me a great Combettes is when they offer a round structure and at the same time minerality. And the 1992 Domaine Leflaive is no exception. The nose is attractive with a nutty character and plenty of white fruits. Round and generous on the palate it offers delicate flavours of peach and apricot with oak and honey towards the mid palate. The minerality is in perfect balance with the fruits and leads to a nutty finish.

Tasting Note : Les Vins de Vienne, Chateauneuf-Du-Pape "Les Oteliees" 2005

2009-08-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

Les Vins de Vienne, Chateauneuf-Du-Pape "Les Oteliees" 2005

The nose is fairly complex with chocolate, leather and wood tones. On the palate a well structured wine with balance. This 2005 develops red berries, tobacco and chestnuts flavours with a classic blackpepper spice. Medium tannins and a good acidity that seem to be fading slightly after half an hour of opening. The length was persistent and quite round.

Tasting Note : Chateau Haut-Brion 1995

2009-08-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

Chateau Haut-Brion 1995

Dark ruby colour. I have tasted this wine along the other four 1st great growth and Haut-Brion seems rounder with more vanilla extract. On the palate it is lightly spicy and presents flavours of balckberries, dark cherry and toasted wood. The acidity is still high but well integrated with the fruits. The wine posses great balance with soft tannins and lingering finish.

Tasting Note : Chateau Mouton-Rothchild 1995

2009-08-09T03:49:00.000-07:00

Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1995

Deep purple colour. The nose is very impressive! Truffles, coffee and liquorice, it was all over... On the palate, even more impressive with great finesse and yet power. Plenty of black and red berries, more truffles and a rich texture. The wine is full bodied and gives a beautiful long length. Can be enjoyed already, but will go for quite some time! A great wine!

Tasting Note : Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1995

2009-08-09T03:22:00.000-07:00

Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1995

Ruby colour. The nose was made of a large aromatic bouquet. On the palate, the acidity was a little high at first, once settled in the glass for a few minutes, the wine start to show some exceptional flavours of cassis, wood and roasted nuts. It is much more balanced than the first time I tried it. It is now developing slowly a mineral style which gives a wonderful texture to the wine. A classic Lafite. Beautiful.

Tasting Note : Chateau Latour 1995

2009-08-09T03:14:00.000-07:00

Chateau Latour 1995

I have tasted this wine after one hour of decanting. Dark Ruby colour. Shy on the nose at first, it came to life after a few minutes in the glass. Plum, cherry and a rich texture it was well balanced but might need some more time to develop. The palate was elegant and the tannins not overwhelming. I am convince this Chateau Latour will have much more to say in the next 5 years. (tasted in August 2008)

Tasting Note : Domaine Rene Rostaing Coteaux du Languedoc Rouge of Domaine Puech Chaud 2003

2009-08-05T06:08:00.000-07:00

Domaine Rene Rostaing Coteaux du Languedoc Rouge of Domaine du Puech Chaud 2003

A deep ruby colour; it already tells you how muscular this wine is going to be. Full of dark cherries, cassis and bull's skin on the nose with a good presence of alcohol. On the palate the wine is smoky, spicy with undertones of leather. This is a fine example of how good a wine can be even in the entry level appelation.

However, the 03 must be drunk within the next few months.

Tasting Note : Kofererhof Muller-Thurgau Valle Isarco 2006

2009-08-04T00:09:00.000-07:00

Kofererhof Muller-Thurgau Valle Isarco 2006

Fresh and quite intense on the nose, it has a nice perfumed bouquet. On the palate the wine is well balanced with subtle acidity and a lovely round and aromatic style. Flavours of peach, white flowers and citrus, it is a perfect wine for lunch time.

Red grape : Tempranillo

2009-08-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

Arguably Spain's most noble grape, Tempranillo produces complex wines with scented bouquet. It can be responsible for wines of great structure and power when young with dark berries and leathery flavour, to smooth and lingering wines with age. It is often said that Tempranillo is for Spain, what Pinot Noir is for France.

Tasting Note : Domaine Louis Moreau chablis Grand Cru Valmur 2005

2009-08-03T06:06:00.001-07:00

Domaine Louis Moreau Chablis Grand Cru Valmur 2005

A complex nose of white fruits and subtle aromas of seaweed. On the palate, the Valmur shows all of its aristocratic style. A well built structure, with a strong character. Complex, with a mid palate of apples and pears, it develops flavors of shellfish and sea water. This is a beautiful trademark from this vineyard and this is a very good representation of its terroir. This wine will need probably another year to fine tune itself in the bottle and be ready for drinking.

Tasting Note : Seghesio Barolo La Villa 2004

2009-08-03T01:08:00.001-07:00

Seghesio Barolo La Villa 2004

La Villa 04 is one of the most elegant Barolo we have tasted. Still young, it showed great finesse and purity. Floral on the nose, it develop a marked toasted wood and spicy style. The red berries come on the mid palate with grace, giving the wine great complexity and finesse. A great effort from Seghesio!

Tasting Note : Marengo Barolo Le Brunate Vecchie Vigne 2004

2009-08-03T01:02:00.000-07:00

Marengo Barolo Le Brunate Vecchie Vigne 2004

The Vecchie Vigne Brunate 04 has very similar flavours to the straight Brunate but with a more concentrated style. The minerality is therefore lower than the latter. The finish is pure & the lenght fairly long. First vintage.

Tasting Note : Marengo Barolo Le Brunate 2004

2009-08-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

Marengo Barolo Le Brunate 2004

Impressive on the nose, this wine is opulent & well structured. Spice, menthol, dark cherries & hints of cumin, it is still at its very early stage of development. This wine should go a long way & will be superb after some cellaring.

Tasting Note : Marengo Barolo 2004

2009-08-02T21:36:00.000-07:00

Marengo Barolo 2004

This lighter style of Barolo comes as a real surprise & is very well done! Elegant with a balanced acidity, it is also slightly mineral on the mid palate. The length is medium with floral tones. Great value Barolo!

Tasting Note : Giacomo Grimaldi Barolo Le Coste 2004

2009-08-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

Giacomo Grimaldi Barolo Le Coste 2004

Attractive nose with wood & spice. The earthy style of this medium to full bodied Barolo is elegant and layered with dark fruits, taosted oak & herbs. Superb wines with silky tannins & extended length!

Tasting Note : Giacomo Grimaldi Barolo 2004

2009-08-02T21:29:00.000-07:00

Giacomo Grimaldi Barolo 2004

The nose is pure with fruits & floral notes. The palate is sweet, with marked acidity. A wine that opens up quickly and will be perfect drinking for some time.

Tasting Note : Paolo Scavino Barolo Cannubi 2004

2009-07-30T20:23:00.001-07:00

Paolo Scavino Barolo Cannubi 2004

The nose is full of menthol and ripe fruits. On the palate a much sweeter style is accompanied by some round flavours of dark cherries. The acidity is well maintained all the way giving the wine a certain purity. Beautiful finish!

Tasting Note : Paolo Scavino Barolo Bricco Ambrogio 2004

2009-07-30T20:18:00.001-07:00

Paolo Scavino Barolo Bricco Ambrogio 2004

After a few minutes of opening the Ambrogio develops & soften. Plenty of fruit with some spice. Violet flavours are persistent & continue on the mid palate. The length is medium.

Tasting Note : Paolo Scavino Barolo Bric del Fiasc 2004

2009-07-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

Paolo Scavino Barolo Bric del Fiasc 2004

Big, big, big! Plums, licorice, dark fruits, the wine is very muscular on the palate! Full bodied, yet super elegant, the acidity & minerality gives this wine a superb texture. Great length with a superb lingering finish!

Tasting Note : Paolo Scavino Barolo Carobric 2004

2009-07-30T20:13:00.001-07:00

Paolo Scavino Barolo Carobric 2004

Cherries, violet & herbs on the nose. The typicity of the Carobric is well represented here, with a muscular style. Leather & toasted oak with well integrated minerality. Will age very well!

Tasting Note : Paolo Scavino Barolo 2004

2009-07-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

Paolo Scavino Barolo 2004

Well develop nose with blackcurrant and dark cherries tones. Firm on the palate with present tannins. The acidity is lifting up the wine towards the end. The finish is quite silky with a long length.

Tasting Note : Elio Altare Barolo La Morra 2004

2009-07-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

Elio Altare Barolo La Morra 2004

At first, the wine shows dark fruits and menthol flavours, giving it an unexpected lightness. Then on the mid palate, the richness, spice, oak & silky tannins surface to give a full wine superbely done!

Tasting Note : E. Pira Barolo Cannubi 2004

2009-07-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

E. Pira Barolo Cannubi 2004

Chiara Boschis is one of the few female winemaker at this level in the Barolo area. Her wines are of great elegance and finesse, especially from her parcel of the Cannubi Cru. The 2004 has a great concentrated bouquet on the nose with fruits, spice & oak. Rich, yet well defined with a classic Character from the Cannubi vineyard. Silky tannins & long finish... A wine for the long run.

Tasting Note : Domenico Clerico Barolo Pajana 2004

2009-07-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

Domenico Clerico Barolo Pajana 2004

Ample on the nose with perfume of spice & dark fruit, Pajana actually shows great finesse and superb acidity that gives great balance to the wine.

Tasting Note : Domenico Clerico Barolo Ciabot Mentin Ginestra 2004

2009-07-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

Domenico Clerico Barolo Ciabot Mentin Ginestra 2004

The nose is intense with dark cherries & chocolate. On the palate, the finesse is very well defined, with deep spicy flavors and menthol on the finish. Beautiful!

Tasting Note : Giovanni Corino Barolo Vigna Giachini 2004

2009-07-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Giovanni Corino Barolo Vigna Giachini 2004

Great elegance again for this wine. Pure and well define with spice, liquorice and some oak on the mid palate. The finish is lingering with silky tannins.

Tasting Note : Giovanni Corino Barolo Arborina 2004

2009-07-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

Giovanni Corino Barolo Arborina 2004

The terroir is very well represented in this Arborina, with concentred spice, chocolate, dark fruits and hints of toasted oak. A wine for the longer term, yet already showing really well.

Tasting Note : Azelia Barolo Margheria 2004

2009-07-29T19:37:00.000-07:00

Azelia Barolo Margheria 2004

I have tasted the whole range of Azelia Barolos upon release in Arpil 2008 and Margheria is no exception to the excellence of Luigi Scavino's work. The wine is opulent & shows superb aromates on the nose. Liquorice, blackcurrant, leathery style at first it continues on the mid palate with plums and more violet. Present tannins with a beautiful menthol fresh finish.

Tasting Note : Azelia Barolo San Rocco 2004

2009-07-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

Azelia Barolo San Rocco 2004

Blasting on the nose, this wine has plenty of red berries, liquorice, violet & spice. Fruits, acidity and tannins are all very well balanced! A great effort!

Tasting Note : Azelia Barolo Bricco Fiasco 2004

2009-07-29T19:32:00.000-07:00

Azelia Barolo Bricco Fiasco 2004

Spicy and aromatic on the nose. The palate is muscular, yet not overwhelming. Superb acidity and silky tannins. This wine will last for a long time!

Tasting Note : Azelia Barolo 2004

2009-07-29T19:27:00.001-07:00

Azelia Barolo 2004

The Colour is deep and opaque. Intense on the nose with plenty of fruits. Black cherries & violet flavours. Present acidity with great balance. Firm & opulent with a medium finish.

White Grape : Chardonnay

2009-07-27T20:22:00.000-07:00

Chardonnay is definitely the most widespread and famous grape in the world today. The wine connoisseurs are so in love with wines produced from this grape that Burgundy winemakers have to allocate their chardonnay Grand Crus rather than to sell them. Easy to grow and robust grapes, Chardonnay is suitable for any weather conditions and for any countries. Rich in sugar, it yields alcoholic wines with either a crisp and mineral style such as the Champagne region or a buttery, almost sweet style from the Burgundy region. Chardonnay is the white grape which suit the most with oak barrel ageing and its home, Burgundy is probably where we can find the finest examples. Its golden skin gives a natural wonderful dress to the white wines. This is indubitably a noble grape and produces arguably the finest white wines in the world. In cool climate, it may lack aromatic strength and piercing flavor. As a result it is used as a base for the blend of others wines.

Red grape : Cabernet-Franc

2009-07-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Loire valley is its home but you can find it now everywhere in the world. Some will say that it is a less prestigious clone of Cabernet Sauvignon but in fact it succeeds in developing its own identity, and one of the greatest example will be the renown Chateau Cheval Blanc which uses on average 60% of Cabernet Franc in its Blend.

Lower in tannins it is supple and perfumed with raspberry and blackcurrant aromas. In the northern part of France the wines tend to be more herbaceous. Nicolas de Bourgueil or Saumur Champigny are good example of the quality of this grape.

Red grape : Barbera

2009-07-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

One of the most widely planted grape in Italy, Barbera is well known for it's high acidity and cabernet-like fruit character. Mainly planted in the northern part of Italy in the Piedmont area, it yields simple, light wines to be enjoyed in their youth. Barbera has been widely exported to the New World wine regions now where it is used in blends for its acidity, especially in hot regions.

White Grape : Airen

2009-07-25T00:09:00.000-07:00

In Spain, it is the most widely cultivated grape used to lighten some dark red wine grapes. This grape is in fact perfectly adapted to hot and sunny weather conditions such as the one in spain and produces fresh and lively white wine made to be drunk young.

The origins of Champagne : Le dejeuner d'Huitres

2009-07-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

Le Dejeuner d'Huitres
(the oyster's lunch)

This painting was ordered by Louis XV to Jean-Francois de Troy in 1735. The King of France wanted it for the main dining room of the apartments at Versailles Palace in Paris. It was there that the King would eat in privacy, often coming back from hunting.

On the left hand side, the domestics are watching the Champagne cork flying (left column) whilst the Gentleman around the table are eating Oysters served with garlic, butter, salt & pepper. It was amongst the favorite dish at the end of the XVIIIth century. Henri the fourth was known to eat up to 300 of them in one dinner!

The painting shows us some of the customs of the time. The table was dressed with a white table cloth. It was round to avoid any etiquette... The cutlery was made of solid silver and the tableware of fine porcelain probably from China or Japan. The bottles of Champagne were kept cold in cool water (at the front).

The story of Fouche and Talleyrand's cognac experience...

2009-07-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

Napoleon 1er's ministers. Fouche and Talleyrand.

It is the end of the dinner and Talleyrand serve a nice glass of Cognac to Fouche whom drinks the precious liquid in one single motion. Tayllerand surprised, intervene : "allow me, it is not the correct way to drink Cognac. Please let me show you. We take the glass in the palm of our hand and warm it up slowly. We swirl the Cognac in a nice circular motion in order to release its perfume. Then we take it to our nostrils and smell the aromas...
"and then?" ask Fouche.
"Then..." replies Talleyrand. "We put it back on the table and talk about it."

QC

Tasting Note : Domaine de la Mordoree Lirac Blanc Cuvee La Reine des Bois 2008

2009-07-23T01:50:00.000-07:00

Domaine de la Mordoree Lirac Blanc Cuvee La Reine des Bois 2008

This wine is a blend of Viognier, Roussane, Marsanne, Grenache Blanc, Picpoul, Bourboulenc and Clairette. Clear and light lemon colour. Young and intense on the nose, it is a complex mix of almond, caramelised sugar and a good presence of the alcohol. (14%) 25% of the wine is fermented in oak barrel, which gives a lively and complex palate of white peach, violette and apricot. The toasted wood flavours are well integrated and give a round finish.

Tasting Note : Pierre Andre St Aubin 1er Cru Les Frionnes 2007

2009-07-23T01:27:00.000-07:00

Pierre Andre St Aubin 1er Cru Les Frionnes 2007

Light yellow straw colour. The nose is round with aromas of chestnuts and toasted wood. On the palate, the wine is well balance with a good acidity and well integrated wood flavours of vanilla. A medium bodied chardonnay that develop some roasted oak character and an almost lemon-sweet finish. Very enjoyable indeed.

Tasting Note : Domaine David Duband Nuit St Georges 1er Cru Aux Thorey 2004

2009-07-16T00:55:00.001-07:00

Domaine David Duband Nuit St Georges 1er Cru Aux Thorey 2004

I double decanted this bottle before tasting it, as I prefer this type of Burgundies to have some air first to get rid off any "sharp edges". The nose is complex and full of ripe fruits. The wine is very attractive on the palate with subtle acidity and tannins, well integrated to the flavours of herbs and red berries. The finish is round and generous with a medium length.

Tasting Note : Domaine de la Mordoree Tavel Rose La Dame Rousse 2008

2009-07-16T00:46:00.000-07:00

Domaine de la Mordoree Tavel Rose La Dame Rousse 2008

Deep rose colour. Intense and rich on the nose, with plenty of candied aromas. "Zesty" on the palate, this rose is a classic Tavel, with a full bodied structure, good presence of alcohol (14.5%) and great flavours of strawberries, raspberries and roses. The finish is soft and long.

Drink this wine well chilled for optimum pleasure.

Tasting Note : Domaine Vincent Girardin Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes 2005

2009-07-13T00:51:00.000-07:00

Domaine Vincent Girardin Gevrey-Chambertin vieilles Vignes 2005

"Dark cherry aromas and toasty on the nose, this Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes has classic tones of earth and red berry fruit on the palate. The structure is rich with a well integrated acidity and attractive flavours of strawberry and raspberry. The finish is medium and lingering." QC

The incredible story of Koch's Jefferson's bottle of Laffite 1787.

2009-07-13T00:42:00.000-07:00

Part 8.

Text from The New Yorker, by Patrick Radden Keefe.

"In April, Koch wrote to Rodenstock again, asking whether the two could meet, “over a good glass of wine, at a place of your choosing,” to discuss some of his concerns about the bottles. Rodenstock declined. “From a legal point of view the purchase and the sale are barred by the statute of limitations,” he wrote. The person who sold him the bottles in 1985 was in his sixties at the time, he continued, and might no longer be alive. Questions about the bottles’ authenticity were “grist for the mill of the yellow press.” When the suit was filed, Rodenstock moved to dismiss it.
Koch’s lawyers flew to London in October to interview Michael Broadbent, who was by then seventy-nine years old but still active on the international wine circuit. Broadbent said he had asked Rodenstock “over and over again” to divulge the address where the bottles were found. But he continued to maintain that the Jefferson bottles were real.
In a way, Broadbent had little choice. He had based hundreds of tasting notes in his books and auction catalogues on wines supplied by Hardy Rodenstock. The notion that twentieth-century connoisseurs could testify to what an eighteenth-century wine tastes like depended on the integrity of Rodenstock, one of the primary suppliers of those wines. If Rodenstock was exposed as a fraud, the credibility of Broadbent, who had repeatedly certified Rodenstock’s findings, would suffer a considerable blow. When asked why he had not done more research into the Th.J. Lafitte before the auction, he replied, “We are auctioneers; we are like journalists on deadlines. I did not have the time.” The lawyers asked whether Christie’s had prepared any written evidence back in 1985 to buttress the wine department’s claims about the bottles. Broadbent responded that it never occurred to him to put anything in writing. “With Christie’s we are all perfect gentlemen,” he said.
Last fall, Richard Brierley, the head of Christie’s wine sales in the United States, told John Wilke, at the Wall Street Journal, that while he wasn’t involved in the 1985 authentication of the Jefferson bottles, “looking back, more questions could have been asked.” (Christie’s contends that Brierley was quoted out of context.) Hugo Morley-Fletcher, who, in 1985, was the head of Christie’s ceramics department and was one of the glass experts Broadbent consulted about the authenticity of the Forbes bottle, told me, “My opinion at that time, within my experience, was that it was correct. . . . The trouble is we are engaged in an activity which is not a precise science.” He explained that he had judged that the bottle dated to the eighteenth century, and that the engraving dated to the same period. When I asked whether there was any possibility that he could have been mistaken about the engraving, he replied, “Of course,” and added, “One has to come up with an opinion. It is possible that one was conned.” Despite numerous attempts, I was unable to reach Michael Broadbent, but a Christie’s spokesman told me that “Mr. Broadbent’s decision to go forward with the sale represented his considered opinion based on all of the facts available to him at that time—a decision that we would not speculate upon twenty-two years later.”
Still, Christie’s fine-and-rare-wine auction in New York in December, 2006, featured a 1934 Pétrus accompanied by a description, taken from Broadbent’s book, of a 1934 Pétrus imperial that he had tasted years earlier. “Where Hardy Rodenstock finds these wines I know not,” it read. “There are simply no records of production, of stock or sales prior to 1945. All I can say is that the big bottle was delicious.” Koch did not know whether Rodenstock had consigned the bottle (Christie’s told me he had not). But he was angry that even in the face of the allegations in his suit the auction house would promote wine with Broadbent notes on Rodenstock bottles. He telephoned the auction house to complain, but Christie’s proceeded with the auction. The wine was offered at twenty-two hundred dollars. It went unsold.
No one knows how many bottles of wine—real or fake—Hardy Rodenstock has sold over the years. His deals were often in cash. (“If you pay in cash, then people don’t have to declare the sale for tax purposes,” he once told an interviewer. “Two hundred thousand dollars in cash can sometimes be better than a million-dollar check.”) Protective of both his suppliers and his buyers, he did not volunteer information about particular sales. Jim Elroy thinks that, at ten thousand dollars a bottle or more, Rodenstock could have sold ten bottles a month and made more than a million dollars a year. As Koch was launching his suit against Rodenstock, a Massachusetts software entrepreneur named Russell Frye filed a lawsuit against the Wine Library, a distributor in Petaluma, California, alleging that it had sold him nineteenth-century Lafite and Yquem, along with dozens of other rare old wines, that were counterfeit. Frye’s complaint notes that one of the defendants in the case “has recently informed plaintiff that many of the bottles that plaintiff alleges are counterfeit or questionable were ultimately obtained from Hardy Rodenstock.”
Koch owns some forty thousand bottles of wine, stored in three cellars. In May, I visited one, a refrigerated warren of dark-wood racks underneath his house in Osterville, on Cape Cod. Jim Elroy had sought the help of two experts, David Molyneux-Berry and Bill Edgerton, to go through the cellar and identify suspicious bottles.
Molyneux-Berry worked at Sotheby’s for years before becoming a private wine consultant, and it was he who rejected Hans-Peter Frericks’s bottle of Th.J. Lafitte. In Frericks’s cellar, he had identified one obvious fake after another. According to the collector’s detailed records, they had all come from Hardy Rodenstock. Molyneux-Berry was also suspicious of Rodenstock’s many colorful discoveries. As a representative of Sotheby’s, Molyneux-Berry had made frequent official trips to Russia. “I went to Kiev and saw the cellar there,” he told me. “I went to Moldova and saw the cellars there. I had the highest introductions you can get. Yet Rodenstock goes to Russia and finds the tsar’s cellars somewhere else. And it’s the entire first growth of Bordeaux. . . . And he found magnums. In volume.”
From a sample of three thousand bottles of pre-1961 vintages of often counterfeited brands, Molyneux-Berry and Edgerton identified about a hundred and thirty suspicious or obviously fake bottles in Koch’s collection. “You get to know what bottles look like,” Molyneux-Berry told me. “Obvious fakes stand out like a sore thumb.” They put a white sticker on each suspicious bottle. The next day, a professional photographer took high-resolution pictures, which, if necessary, could be introduced in court.
In some cases, the bottle, the label, and the capsule all appeared genuine, but the rarity of the wine alone was ground for suspicion. Koch owns two magnums of Lafleur from 1947, for instance. “Forty-seven is the great Lafleur,” Molyneux-Berry said. But, he continued, he has heard that in 1947 the vineyard bottled only five magnums. “What’s the chance of him having two out of five?” he asked. Edgerton maintains an online database that tracks auction sales and prices. Nineteen magnums of ’47 Lafleur have sold at auction since 1998.
Serena Sutcliffe, of Sotheby’s, told me that most wealthy collectors would rather not know about the fakes, or, if they do know, would rather not make it public. She said that on a number of occasions she has inspected a cellar that a collector was interested in auctioning and rejected it, in whole or in part, because of the preponderance of fakes, only to learn that the collector sold the phony wine through one of her competitors. The collectors “don’t want to take the hit,” she said.
“The case is much bigger” than Rodenstock, Koch told me. “When I get finished going through all the wine in my collection, I’m going after all the people who sold it to me,” he said. “The retailers, they know they’re doing it. They’re complicit.”
One of Koch’s problem bottles is a magnum of 1921 Pétrus that he bought for thirty-three thousand dollars at an auction organized by the New York wine retailer Zachys, in 2005. Koch believes that the wine originated from Rodenstock; he mentions the bottle in his lawsuit. (Zachys says it has no evidence to indicate whether the wine originally came from Rodenstock.) It was another magnum of 1921 Pétrus that Robert Parker had awarded a hundred points and pronounced “out of this universe” at Rodenstock’s Munich event in 1995.
Last spring, Jim Elroy took Koch’s magnum to Bordeaux to have it inspected at the winery. The Pétrus staff ultimately concluded that the cork was the wrong length, and that the cap and the label appeared to have been artificially aged. Pétrus confirmed that they had doubts about the authenticity of the bottle. And the cellar master, in his interview with Elroy, said that he had never heard of a magnum of 1921 Pétrus and did not believe that any were bottled at the vineyard.
This raised an interesting question. If Pétrus made no magnums in 1921, what was Parker drinking at the Rodenstock event? Parker’s nose is insured for a million dollars; it seems almost pathological that Rodenstock would invite such a man to his table and serve him a fake. Elroy sees this as further proof of Rodenstock’s guilt, maintaining that this kind of risktaking is not unusual in a counterfeiter. “I know a lot about fraudsters,” he said. “I put a lot of them in prison. They feel, I’m so smart. I’m smarter than anyone in the world. Rodenstock feels that way.”
If indeed Parker’s hundred-point 1921 Pétrus was a fake, such hubris might not be misplaced. Could Rodenstock have become so proficient at making fake wine that his fakes tasted as good as, or even better than, the real thing? When I asked Parker about the bottle, he hastened to say that even the best wine critics are fallible. Yet he reiterated that the bottle was spectacular. “If that was a fake, he should be a mixer,” Parker said. “It was wonderful.”
Early this summer, Hardy Rodenstock fired the Manhattan lawyers he had engaged to contest Koch’s suit. In a letter to the trial judge, he objected that the court had no jurisdiction over him, as a German citizen; that Koch had bought the bottles not directly from him but from third parties; and that the case should be barred by the statute of limitations. It might be Koch’s “hobby to take actions against people for years,” he suggested, but he wanted no part of “such ‘silly games.’ ” After spelling out his objections, he announced, “I get out of the procedure.”
Rodenstock would not agree to be interviewed for this piece, but in a series of faxes, most of them in German, he maintained his innocence and fiercely objected to Bill Koch’s portrayal of him, denouncing Koch’s “concoctions and shenanigans.” He acknowledged that his legal name is Meinhard Goerke, but insisted that many people change their names, pointing to Larry King as an example. Rodenstock denied telling Tina York that he was a member of the Rodenstock family, and maintained that he was indeed a professor, writing, “That is a fact! Verifiable!” He disputed accounts that he found a hundred cases of Bordeaux in Venezuela, observing, “That would be 1200 bottles?!?!?!” As for Andreas Klein’s allegations about finding empty bottles and labels in his basement, Rodenstock wrote that it was not uncommon for wine connoisseurs to save empties after a wine tasting. “I take the labels from old bottles to have them framed,” he said. “This looks very nice!” He denied supplying any bottles to the Wine Library, or the magnum of Pétrus that Koch mentioned in the lawsuit, and insisted, “My 1921 Pétrus bottles were always absolutely genuine!!!” He cited Parker’s hundred-point review, and asked, “Is there any better proof that the wine was genuine when world-renowned experts described it as superb and gave it the highest possible grade?”
Rodenstock took particular exception to Bill Koch’s account of their one meeting, in 2000, at Christie’s Latour tasting. “I was not late!!” he insisted. “I neither looked uncomfortable nor did I run away from him fast. My facial expression was, I am sure, full of pleasant anticipation of the wonderful Latour tasting. I was in a very good mood!!!” In Rodenstock’s recollection, Koch said that he owned some Jefferson bottles, and Rodenstock replied, “Good for you, but you didn’t get them from me.”
When it comes to the authenticity of the Th.J. bottles, Rodenstock offers a number of sometimes contradictory defenses. “If Christie’s had the slightest doubt about the authenticity, they would not have accepted the bottle of 1787 Lafitte,” he wrote. “I am therefore beyond reproach!” He suggested that Koch’s analysis of the initials was performed not by scientists but by “amateur engravers” who were friends of Koch, and were being paid for their conclusions. But in his letter to the court he entertained the possibility that the initials were modern, hypothesizing that whoever originally sold him the wines “had some bottles re-engraved over the old engravings . . . because they were no longer clearly legible.” He has also suggested that Koch himself or one of his staff may have had the bottles reëngraved, and added, “A great deal can have happened to the bottles in twenty years!!!” (When Hans-Peter Frericks sued over his Jefferson bottle, Rodenstock made a similar claim, suggesting that Frericks had tampered with his own bottle in order to frame Rodenstock.)
On August 14th, the magistrate judge, who has supervised pretrial procedural issues, recommended that the court enter a default judgment against Rodenstock, because of his refusal to participate. The trial judge must now decide whether or not to accept Rodenstock’s various procedural defenses. But even if he is handed a default judgment Rodenstock insists that German courts will not enforce it.
Meanwhile, Jim Elroy has turned over the findings of his investigation to the authorities, a grand jury has been convened to hear evidence, and the F.B.I. has begun issuing subpoenas to wine collectors, dealers, and auction houses. “It’s going to have a salutary effect on the whole industry,” Koch told me. “And if the judge throws the lawsuit out for some technical reason I’ve got five others I could bring.”
In the back of his Palm Beach wine cellar, past rows of priceless bottles, behind elegant cast-iron grillework, is a closet in which Koch keeps his very oldest bottles, many of which he now believes are fake. I picked up a bottle of the 1787 Th.J. Lafitte. It was cold and surprisingly heavy in my hands, and I ran my fingers over the letters. Could a shared passion for the rarest old wines have blinded everyone—the collectors, the critics, the auctioneers—to the sheer improbability of those initials? Jefferson had asked in the 1790 letter that his wine and Washington’s wine be marked, but surely he was referring to the cases and not the individual bottles.
Koch uncorked a bottle of 1989 Montrachet, and we walked upstairs and settled into comfortable leather chairs in the cowboy room. The wine was crisp and minerally; to my untutored palate, it tasted pretty good. As we discussed the case, I noticed that Koch seemed anything but aggrieved. He has thrown himself into his battle against Rodenstock and phony wine with the same headlong enthusiasm that he devoted to collecting wine. “I used to brag that I got the Thomas Jefferson wines,” he said. “Now I get to brag that I have the fake Thomas Jefferson wines.”
Outside, the sun was beginning to set, and Koch’s chef informed him that dinner would be softshell crab and venison. Koch flipped through his cellar book, a hefty binder listing his wines. Upstairs, one of the children was bouncing a basketball. Bridget Rooney walked in, with the couple’s one-year-old daughter, Kaitlin, in her arms. “We’re talking fake wine,” Koch said. “Want to join us?”
Rooney took a seat next to him. She wore a rope of enormous pearls around her neck, and didn’t seem to notice that Kaitlin was chewing on them. She reached for Koch’s glass and took a sip.
“Mmm,” she murmured. “That’s not fake.” "

The end.

The incredible story of Koch's Jefferson's bottle of Laffite 1787

2009-07-10T01:52:00.000-07:00

Part 7.

Text from The New Yorker, by Patrick Radden Keefe.

"Skeptical of both parties’ tests, Elroy sought out Philippe Hubert, a French physicist who had devised a method of testing the age of wine without opening the bottle. Hubert uses low-frequency gamma rays to detect the presence of the radioactive isotope cesium 137. Unlike carbon 14, cesium 137 is not naturally occurring; it is a direct result of nuclear fallout. A wine bottled before the advent of atmospheric nuclear testing contains no cesium 137, so the test yields no results for older wines. But if a wine does contain cesium 137 the short half-life of the isotope—thirty years—allows Hubert to make a more precise estimate of its age.
Elroy flew to France, with the Jefferson bottles packed in two bulletproof, impact-resistant cases, which he carried as hand luggage. (He had obtained a carnet, a sort of passport for objects, so that he would not have to pay any duties while crossing borders with a half million dollars’ worth of wine. When airport security scrutinized the bottles between flights at Heathrow, Elroy deadpanned, “You just can’t get a good bottle of wine on the airplane.”)
The lab where Hubert and Elroy tested the wine is under a mile-high stretch of the Alps on the French-Italian border. The bottles were placed into a detector that was surrounded by ten inches of lead and were subjected to a week of tests.
Elroy was confident by now that he and his investigators were closing in on Rodenstock. “With the evidence I’m seeing from Monticello, combined with what I’m seeing from Germany, I’m ninety-nine-per-cent sure this guy is a fraud,” he recalled. When Hubert completed the tests, however, he identified no cesium 137 in the bottles. “I don’t know whether it’s 1783 or 1943,” Hubert told Elroy. But the wine predated the atomic age.
“I can’t tell you how disappointing it was,” Elroy told me. “I’ve got the historical evidence, but if we’re going to do this criminally there’s got to be more than that. I’ve got to have some kind of scientific or other evidence, or it’s not going to be prosecutable.”
On the plane back to the United States, Elroy took one of the bottles down and held it in his hands. “I’m looking at the capsule and the glass itself,” he said. “I run my hand over the engraving. I can feel it. And then I think, This is a tool mark. This was done with a tool.”
When Elroy landed, he called the F.B.I.’s laboratory, in Quantico, Virginia. The lab’s ballistics experts specialize in tool-mark examinations, noting the telltale impression that a gun barrel leaves on a bullet, or a screwdriver makes when it pries open a window. The lab gave Elroy the names of some recently retired specialists. He also visited the Corning Museum of Glass, in upstate New York, where he was referred to an expert glass engraver, Max Erlacher, an Austrian-born craftsman who had done work for a number of American Presidents.
Several weeks later, Elroy hired Erlacher and a retired F.B.I. tool expert named Bill Albrecht to examine the bottles at Bill Koch’s estate in Palm Beach. Elroy wanted to know whether the writing on the bottles had been done with a copper wheel, the sort of tool used in the eighteenth century to engrave glass. In Jefferson’s time, the copper wheel, usually operated by a foot pedal, spun in a stationary position, and the engraver moved the bottle around it.
Erlacher and Albrecht inspected the bottles, examining the ridges of the engraving under a powerful magnifying glass. Letters engraved by a copper wheel tend to vary in thickness, like the strokes of a fountain pen. But the lettering on the bottles was strangely uniform, and it slanted in a way that a copper-wheel engraving would not. The initials could not have been made in the eighteenth century, Erlacher concluded. Instead, they looked as if they might have been done with a handheld tool like a dentist’s drill or a Dremel—a tool powered by electricity. This was “a quantum leap,” Elroy thought. As it happened, he had a Dremel tool at home. “I get a bottle of wine, and I screw with it,” he recalled. “And in an hour I can engrave ‘Th.J.’ ”
On August 31, 2006, Bill Koch filed a civil complaint against Rodenstock (“a.k.a. Meinhard Goerke”) in New York federal court. Although it was the Chicago Wine Company and Farr Vintners that had sold Koch the wines, the complaint alleged that Rodenstock had orchestrated an “ongoing scheme” to defraud wine collectors. “Rodenstock is charming and debonair,” the complaint read. “He is also a con artist.”
Before filing the suit, Koch’s lawyers were interested to see whether Rodenstock would acknowledge a personal connection to Koch’s Jefferson bottles (given that Koch had not bought them directly from him), and whether he might effectively continue the alleged fraud by still insisting that they were real. So Koch faxed Rodenstock a cordial letter, in January, 2006, saying that he was trying to authenticate his Jefferson wines, and asking Rodenstock to send a letter indicating that he had “every reason to believe” that the bottles “once belonged to Thomas Jefferson.” Rodenstock replied on January 10th, saying, “The Jefferson bottles are absolutely genuine and . . . come from a walled up cellar in Paris.” He pointed out that Christie’s had vouched for the bottles’ authenticity, and enclosed a copy of Bonani’s report. “You will surely understand that the discussions on the genuineness of the Jefferson bottles [are] herewith closed for me,” he wrote. "

to be continued...

Tasting Note : Billecart-Salmon Brut Grande Cuvee 1996

2009-07-10T00:09:00.001-07:00

Billecart-Salmon Brut Grande Cuvee 1996

The nose is biscuity, with complex aromas of ripen fruits. Apricot, peach and toasted chestnuts. The palate is very fine and delineated with a rich honey and brioche style. Balanced and well integrated acidity with a floral and silky finish.

Tasting Note : Veuve Clicquot Cuvee La Grande Dame Rose 1998

2009-07-10T00:03:00.000-07:00

Veuve Clicquot Cuvee La Grande Dame Rose 1998

At first the nose was clearly marked by citrus notes fading slowly after a few minutes. Almond, peach and herbal flavors were nicely integrated in its lacelike structure. The finish is clean with plenty of red berries. Nice Rose, yet not as impressive as I thought. Maybe it will need some time to come up to the expectations. Acidity was quite present, meaning a long life ahead!

Tasting Note : Salon Le Mesnil Blanc de Blancs 1996

2009-07-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Salon Le Mesnil Blanc de Blancs 1996

Scents of delicate aromas, citrus, vanilla and grass with an amazing yeasty style. The bubbles are fine and enhanced the medium bodied creamy style on the back of the palate. Then more citrus and mineral tones are developing with great depth and finesse, leaving all senses to a rich finish.

Tasting Note : Perrier Jouet Cuvee La Belle Epoque 1996

2009-07-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

Perrier Jouet Cuvee La Belle Epoque 1996

Tasting from Magnums. Perfume of roasted chestnuts and floral notes. The palate was delicate, yet firm with beautiful citrus aromas and a well balanced, but still high acidity. The finish was long and re-enforced the nutty elements. Somehow the format made a big difference and the Champagne had a higher acidity and will obviously age longer than the bottle format.

This Champagne is also referred as Fleur de Champagne in the United-States.

Tasting Note : Domaine Vincent Girardin Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Folatieres 2005

2009-07-09T21:08:00.001-07:00

Domaine Vincent Girardin Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Folatieres 2005

Impressive nose after a few seconds of opening. Beautiful scent of vanilla and wood. Irresistible! The acidity is well integrated to the aromas. Apricot, peach, citrus and nutty flavors are all balanced in this fatty style Chardonnay that shows a great structure even so young! The fruit is very much present and exotic! Superb!

Tasting Note : Giovanni Corino Barolo Vigna Arborina 2003

2009-07-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

Giovanni Corino Barolo Vigna Arborina 2003

After less than 1 hour decanting. (shame we didn't have more time) The wine was opaque. Deep Ruby colour. Complex aromas on the nose. Raspberries, strawberries and cassis. Slightly minty at first, it shows a wonderful silky palate with present but not overwhelming tannins. A full body wine that has a long life to live. Acidity is there, but the wine is very powerful and gives the palate sometime to tune to the even more complex finish! Try this now or in 10 years, it's to die for!

Tasting Note : Paul Jaboulet Aine Hermitage La Chapelle 1997

2009-07-09T20:52:00.001-07:00

Paul Jaboulet Aine Hermitage La Chapelle 1997

Controversial. That will be the best word to describe this wine. It has gone through many phases in the bottle and last time I tried it (this year) I discovered a totally changed wine. We open the bottle for a mere 24 hours before giving it a try! It filled up the room with its scents and needed that much time to untighten...Leathery, smoky, minty, herbal, aromatic, such a complex wine! Full of suprises on the palate, with a spicy tone that unveil more fruit on the back of the mouth. Big, very big, it last for a good 30 seconds! Not a typical La Chapelle, but a wine that will be enjoyable for another 15 years at least!

Tasting Note : Bollinger Cuvee RD 1996

2009-07-09T20:46:00.000-07:00

Bollinger Cuvee RD 1996

Complex and aromatic on the nose! Roasted nuts, coffee and Thyme aromas. I couldn't resist to take a mouthful of it and my senses awaken once again to a big and powerful palate, yet with an incredibly well balanced acidity. Medium to full bodied, it was fresh, sophisticated and round. Full of energy with a beautiful lingering finish that lasted for a long long time. Impressive work from Bollinger.

Tasting Note : David Duband Nuit St Georges 1er Cru La Richemone 2004

2009-07-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

David Duband Nuit St Georges 1er Cru La Richemone 2004

Warm and attractive nose of rose petals and red berries. On the palate, intense flavours of raspberry and blueberry. The acidity is still high for a 5 years old wine, which means it should age very well over the years. Would be very interesting to try this wine over the next 10 years to see it evolve. The finish is quite long and keeps the complexity of the wine 'til the end.

A well crafted Nuit St Georges, in a classic form. This 100% pinot noir is all about subtlety.

Etienne Guigal, Cote Rotie. The 3 masterpieces.

2009-07-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

Good investment wines currently on the market:

Etienne Guigal did it again and manage in 2005 to score on his three top Cote Roties 100 points each from Mr. Robert Parker Jr.

2005 was indeed a fantastic vintage for Northern Rhone and even if April brought a little snow around Hermitage, the growing season was nearly perfect. The great fruit and good acidity of the wines will give these wines amazing ageing time, therefore are perfect for investment.

My advise will be to get the three together and put them aside for a few years.

E. Guigal Cote Rotie La Landonne 2005 RP100

E. Guigal Cote Rotie La Mouline 2005 RP100

E. Guigal Cote Rotie La Turque 2005 RP100

As the 2005 vintage is as good or better than 1999 for Guigal, we should expect a 100% growth within 6 years if the market conditions are picking up.

Price evolution of the 3 E. Guigal Cote Rotie 1999:

E. Guigal Cote Rotie La Landonne 1999 (RP 100) : 2003 = $433 /2008 = $789

E. Guigal Cote Rotie La Mouline 1999 (RP 100) : 2003 = $432 /2008 = $812

E. Guigal Cote Rotie La Turque 1999 (RP 100) : 2003 = $408 /2008 = $777

As we can see on the graphs, the price growth is around 100% from 2003 to 2008.

Price in US$ per 75 cl bottles.

Graph source: 90pluswine

QC.

The incredible story of Koch's Jefferson's bottle of Laffite 1787

2009-07-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

Part 6.

Text from The New Yorker, by Patrick Radden Keefe.

"The forger’s greatest advantage is that many buyers wait years before opening their fraudulent bottles, if they open them at all. Bill Koch told me that he owns wine that he has no intention of ever drinking. He collects bottles from certain vineyards almost as if they were baseball cards, aiming to complete a set. “I just want a hundred and fifty years of Lafite on the wall,” he said. He would hesitate before consuming the harder-to-come-by vintages, because to do so would render the set incomplete, and also because the rarest old wines often come not from the best vintages but from the worst. Historically, when good vintages were produced, collectors would lay them down to see how they would age, Koch explained. But when renowned vineyards produced mediocre vintages people would drink them soon after they were bottled, making the vintage scarce. When I wondered why he would buy old wines that he never intended to drink, Koch shrugged. “I’m never going to shoot Custer’s rifle,” he said.
The second great advantage for wine forgers is that when collectors do open fraudulent bottles they often lack the experience and acute sense of taste to know that they have been defrauded. To begin with, even genuine old wines vary enormously from bottle to bottle. “It’s a living organism,” Sotheby’s Serena Sutcliffe told me. “It moves, it changes, it evolves—and once you’re into wines that are forty, fifty, sixty years old, even if the bottles are stored side by side in similar conditions, you will get big differences between bottles.”
Studies suggest that the experience of smelling and tasting wine is extremely susceptible to interference from the cognitive parts of the brain. Several years ago, Frédéric Brochet, a Ph.D. student in oenology at the University of Bordeaux, did a study in which he served fifty-seven participants a midrange red Bordeaux from a bottle with a label indicating that it was a modest vin de table. A week later, he served the same wine to the same subjects but this time poured from a bottle indicating that the wine was a grand cru. Whereas the tasters found the wine from the first bottle “simple,” “unbalanced,” and “weak,” they found the wine from the second “complex,” “balanced,” and “full.” Brochet argues that our “perceptive expectation” arising from the label often governs our experience of a wine, overriding our actual sensory response to whatever is in the bottle.
Thus there is a bolder kind of forger who actually substitutes one type of wine for another. He often works with genuine bottles bearing genuine labels, obtaining empties from restaurants or antique shops, filling them with another type—or types—of wine, and replacing the cork and the capsule, assuming that the status-conscious buyer will never taste the difference. And, in many cases, this assumption is right. Sutcliffe believes that the vast majority of fake wines are happily enjoyed. Rajat Parr, a prominent wine director who oversees restaurants in Las Vegas, told me that several years ago some of his customers ordered a bottle of 1982 Pétrus, which can sell in restaurants for as much as six thousand dollars. The party finished the bottle and ordered a second. But the second bottle tasted noticeably different, so they sent it back. The staff apologetically produced a third bottle, which the diners consumed with pleasure. Parr closely examined the three bottles and discovered the problem with the second one: it was genuine.
If the Th.J. bottles were counterfeit, the question facing Jim Elroy was whether someone else’s genuine eighteenth-century bottles had been passed off as Thomas Jefferson’s or whether the wine had actually been adulterated. The fact that Broadbent and other connoisseurs had tasted several Jefferson bottles and declared them authentic seemed to suggest that the wine in the bottles was the real thing. Jancis Robinson, another Master of Wine and the wine columnist for the Financial Times, had attended the 1998 Yquem tasting, and found the two Th.J. bottles “convincingly old,” slightly moldy initially, but then, as “the miracle of great old wine began to work,” opening up, with the 1784 giving off a “feminine fragrance of roses” and the 1787 “autumnal aromas of burnt sugar and undergrowth.”
But Brochet told me that, in tastings, experts are more susceptible than average drinkers to interference from their own experience and presumptions. And these endorsements seem to be disputed by the scientific test commissioned by Hans-Peter Frericks, which found that nearly half of the wine in his 1787 Lafitte dated to sometime after 1962. Following Frericks’s test, Rodenstock had commissioned his own, on another bottle of 1787 Lafitte, from Dr. Georges Bonani, a Zurich scientist. Bonani carbon-dated the wine and determined that no wine in the bottle dated to 1962 or later, thus contradicting the specific finding of Frericks’s study. Rodenstock frequently referred to Bonani’s results as “conclusive” in their authentication of the bottle. But it seems difficult to consider any of these tests truly conclusive. For one thing, the different tests were conducted on different bottles, and it seems rash to extrapolate from the results of one bottle anything about the authenticity of the others. Further, carbon dating can’t provide a reliable determination of the age of wines bottled during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and an examination of Bonani’s lab report reveals that his findings reflected a considerable margin of error. While the test might have ruled out the presence of late-twentieth-century wine, it did not provide absolute proof that the wine dated to 1787. “The test says only that the wine is from somewhere between 1673 and 1945,” Bonani wrote in a recent e-mail."

To be continued...

The incredible story of Koch's Jefferson's bottle of Laffite 1787

2009-07-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Part five.

Text from The New Yorker, by Patrick Radden Keefe.

"Broadbent wrote letters to Monticello as well, standing by Rodenstock and the bottles. Some unbridgeable philosophical gap seemed to separate the historians in Virginia and the connoisseurs in Europe. Broadbent, like Rodenstock, expressed confidence that the sensory experience of consuming a bottle of wine trumped historical evidence. In June, 1986, he noted that he had just tasted a bottle of Rodenstock’s 1787 Th.J. Branne Mouton. The wine was “sensationally good,” Broadbent wrote. “If anyone had any lingering doubts about the authenticity of this extraordinary old wine, they were completely removed. . . . Admittedly, there is no written evidence that these particular bottles had been in the possession of Jefferson, but I am now firmly convinced that this indeed was the wine that Jefferson ordered.”
It wasn’t only the researchers at Monticello who raised doubts about the wine. Before Christie’s auctioned the bottle to Forbes, Rodenstock had offered a bottle of the Th.J. Lafitte to a German collector named Hans-Peter Frericks, for around ten thousand Deutsche marks. After Forbes spent forty times that sum, Frericks decided to auction his own bottle and approached Broadbent. But Rodenstock intervened, saying that he had sold the bottle to Frericks on the condition that Frericks not resell it. (Frericks denies that such a condition existed.) Frericks turned to Sotheby’s, but, after examining the evidence, the auction house declined, citing the bottle’s uncertain provenance.
Rodenstock’s efforts to stop the sale, along with Sotheby’s doubts about the bottle, made Frericks suspicious, and in 1991 he sent the bottle to a Munich lab to have its contents carbon-dated. All organic material contains the radioactive isotope carbon 14, which exhibits a predictable rate of decay; scientists can thus analyze the amount of the isotope in a bottle of wine in order to approximate its age. Carbon 14 has a long half-life, and carbon dating is relatively imprecise for evaluating objects that are several centuries old. But nuclear atmospheric tests in the nineteen-fifties and sixties offer a benchmark of sorts, since levels of carbon 14 rise sharply during that period. In this case, the amounts of carbon 14 and of another isotope, tritium, were much higher than one would expect for two-hundred-year-old wine, and the scientists concluded that the bottle contained a mixture of wines, nearly half of which dated to 1962 or later. Frericks sued Rodenstock, and, in December, 1992, a German court found in his favor, holding that Rodenstock “adulterated the wine or knowingly offered adulterated wine.” (Rodenstock appealed, and sued Frericks for defamation. The matter was ultimately settled out of court.)
In addition to the former MI5 agent, the indefatigable Elroy employed two private investigators in Germany, who discovered that Hardy Rodenstock was a fictitious name. The investigators visited Rodenstock’s home town, Marienwerder, in what is now Poland. They reported to Koch that Rodenstock had started out as Meinhard Goerke, the son of a local railroad official. They interviewed Rodenstock’s mother and visited his elementary school. The investigators told Koch that Rodenstock had trained as an engineer and taken a job with German Federal Railways; they could find no evidence to support his claims of being a professor. They also interviewed Tina York, a German pop singer with whom Rodenstock was romantically involved in the seventies and eighties. York told them that during her decade-long relationship with Rodenstock he hid the fact that he had two sons from an earlier marriage. “He always talked about two nephews,” she said.
Rodenstock had adopted his new identity at about the time he met York, the investigators said, and told her that he was part of the famous Rodenstock family. It was while he was with York that he first became interested in wine. She didn’t share his devotion to the hobby. She remembered placing a bowl of potato salad in his air-conditioned wine cellar one day, to keep it cool. “Rodenstock just flipped out,” she said.
Rodenstock was known for his discerning nose and his ability to identify wines in blind tastings. Elroy wondered whether he might possess the skills of a mixer, the type of expert that vineyards employ to achieve a precise blend of grapes. There are no scientific tests that can reliably determine the grape varietals in a bottle of wine, and Elroy speculated that Rodenstock might have concocted forgeries by mixing various wines—and even a dash of port, as forgers have been known to do—in order to create a cocktail that tasted like the real thing. Pursuing these suspicions, Elroy’s team of investigators asked several people they interviewed whether they had any recollection of Rodenstock’s having a laboratory where counterfeits could be made. Then, last October, a German named Andreas Klein approached Koch’s team and said that Rodenstock had lived for several years in an apartment owned by his family. The two had quarrelled over Klein’s desire to add an apartment above Rodenstock’s, and ended up in court. In 2004, after Rodenstock abandoned the apartment, Klein entered his former tenant’s cellar and discovered a collection of empty bottles and a stack of apparently new wine labels. In response to these claims, Rodenstock has initiated legal proceedings against Klein.
There are two types of wine counterfeiters: those who do not tamper with what is inside the bottle and those who do. Because the price of a great vintage of fine wine often dwarfs the price of an indifferent one, many forgers will start with a genuine bottle of, say, 1980 Pétrus and simply replace the label with one from 1982. (The ’82 vintage is especially coveted and expensive.) With a good scanner and a color printer, labels are easy to replicate—one former auctioneer I spoke with called it “desktop publishing.” The cork in the bottle is marked with the year, but forgers sometimes scratch away the last digit, assuming that the buyer won’t notice. Moreover, because corks tend to deteriorate after decades in the bottle, some vineyards offer a recorking service, so a bottle with a newer cork might not immediately arouse suspicion. In any event, the cork is generally concealed by the foil capsule until the buyer opens the bottle. "

To be continued...

Tasting Note : Dominique Laurent Clos St Denis 2005

2009-07-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

Dominique Laurent Clos St Denis VV 2005

On the nose the Clos St Denis exhibit concentrated black fruits and provence herbs. This is a precise wine with clean flavors of ripe fruits. The alcohol and acidity are well integrated in the structure of the wine. This is a wine very well made with good ageing potential.

Europe's Legendary Wineries : France

2009-07-04T19:35:00.000-07:00

Chateau Lafite Rothschild

Lafite was founded in the fourteenth century. Established as a medieval seigneury, the land already bore vines, yet it was not until Jacques de Segur in 1670, that the vineyards were organised and cultivated. His son, Alexandre de Segur will take over the property and in 1695 married Chateau Latour 's heiress and united the two Domaine with the birth of their son, Nicholas-Alexandre de Segur.

In 1732-1733, Robert Walpole, Prime Minister of her Majesty, buys one Barrique of Lafite every three months, despite the fact that in France nobody is interested in red wine from Bordeaux!

Indeed, French were only drinking the rose wines from the region. The term clairet (meaning pale in french) represented the light colour of these wines and was the origin of the English word Claret.

The reputation of the wine's quality quickly grew and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Chateau Lafite was brought to London by the Royal Navy in Barriques. The wines were sold to the finest families of the Kingdom and at auctions.

From 1716, Nicholas-Alexandre de Segur started to develop the Lafite's name at the King's court in Versaille. He was often called the Prince of vines and after a discussion between Louis XV and the Marechal Richelieux, the King of France decided to gratified the wines of Lafite as the King's wine. Needless to say, that everyone in France wanted to buy and drink the wines of the now famous Chateau and most dinners were accompanied by a few bottles.

Since Nicholas-Alexandre de Segur had no heir and his four daughters inherited the Domaines (including Latour). In 1784 a distant cousin Nicolas Pierre de Pichard took over the Chateau and eventually Lafite left the Segur family, when Nicolas was executed by the French Revolutionaries.

The Domaine changed hands several times during the nineteenth century, until it was bought over by the Baron James de Rothschild in 1868.

Until the second world war, the Domaine is shining above the rest and after 5 years of difficult war times, Elie de Rothschild is in charge of bringing back the reputation of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild to its former glory. A succession of incredible vintages helped the process : 1945, 1947 and 1949.

Until today, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild remains one of France's finest winery and the vintages to come will continue to be nothing but excellence.

Chateau Lafite-Rothschild's top vintages:

1945, 1947, 1949, 1953, 1959, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006.

Contact details:

Chateau Lafite-Rothschild

33250 PAUILLAC FRANCE

Fax : +33 5 56 59 26 83

visites@lafite.com

Tasting Note : Reserve de la Comtesse 2003

2009-07-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

Reserve de la Comtesse 2003

Deep ruby colour with opaque core. On the nose, aromas of creme de cassis and black cherry. The palate is soft with a good presence of tannins. Once the wine opens up (after 15 minutes in the glass) the tannins start to fade away and complex flavors of candy, cassis and black cherry develop around the well balanced acidity.

This wine will benefit ageing.

I tasted it from a 50cl bottles.

Tasting Note : Billecart-Salmon Brut Reserve non vintage

2009-07-02T19:44:00.000-07:00

Billecart-Salmon Brut Reserve non vintage

Fine bubbles are the trademark of this great Champagne house and their Brut Reserve cuvee is no exception. The nose has a biscuity style with exotic fruits and hints of white flowers. The palate presents a good structured Champagne lifter as it should by the fine bubbles. Aromas of bread and biscuit are in the front with a sweet background. The acidity is well integrated. The finish is soft and mineral yet rich enough to last.

I have tried this Champagne many times with food and the best match I have experienced will be with sushi and sashimis. Really worth the treat!

Tasting Note : Chateau de la Font du Loup, Chateauneuf-du-Pape "Le Chateau" 2005

2009-07-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

Chateau de la Font du Loup, Chateauneuf-du-Pape "Le Chateau" 2005

The colour is deep with purple stripes under the light. The legs are thick and shows a good sugar concentration as well as a good alcohol content.

On the nose, a powerhouse with complex aromas of spice, liquorice and black cherry. The alcohol is showing off on the upfront but stay in line with the structure of the wine.

The palate is suprisingly soft, for such a powerfull wine, with beautiful aromas of blackberry, tobacco and more black cherry. The tannins are well integrated and even in early development remain soft and balance with a present acidity. The finish is long with some background of chocolate and menthol.

A wonderful wine with most of the great characteristics of a great Chateauneuf.

Tasting Note : Hospice de Beaune Savigny les Beaune Cuvee Fouquerand 2002

2009-07-02T18:44:00.000-07:00

Hospice de Beaune Savigny les Beaune 1er Cru Cuvee Fouquerand 2002

The Colour of this Pinot Noir seems still too deep even after 7 years of maturing. The nose is very upfront and developed, yet attractive with overly pronounced aromas of strawberries and raspberries. On the palate, it shows a good structure with sweet and round edges. The acidity is still a little at the back as I think this wine might need another 6 months to fully develop. The finish is lingering and last longer than expected.

A wine to enjoy with some food.