Life's great mysteries...
1) The eleven herbs and spices for
KFC chicken. I kidnapped a member of staff from the Oxford Street
Branch three months ago, but despite intense interrogation she is
still refusing to spill the beans.
2) The Bermuda Triangle, although this was solved by Barry
Manilow.
3) 4 8 15 16 23 42
4) Edwin Drood.
5) Black Holes. The atypically bleak 1980 Disney film offered an
answer but unfortunately the concept of immortality and purgatory
went completely over the head of this nine-year old, who was seeking
Darth Vador rather than Dante.
6) Earwax. How? Why? God: you made us, we deserve answers.
7) Loch Ness. The obvious solution is to drain the loch and see if
anything is flapping around at the bottom.
8) The extinction of dinosaurs. My theory is that they died of
boredom; there was very little to do in Jurassic times except grow
large and eat each other.
9) If you dig a hole into the earth, continue until you reach the
opposite side and then jump in, does that mean I will exit into
Australian outback feetfirst?
10) Wine
I can see your raised eyebrow at
the final admission, for surely a supposed "wine expert" would not
describe wine as "mysterious". But it is, in fact the enigma of
fermented grape juice is what spurs me to keep tasting; to continue
asking questions; to find answers. You can read as many weighty
tomes as you want, you could memorize every Burgundy lieu-dit
in alphabetical order or pass the Master of Wine exam with flying
colours; but confronted with a flight of unidentified wines, the
mercurial, unfathomable nature of fermented grape juice can make all
that knowledge seem otiose and redundant.
Blind tasting is a tango between
wine and critic, but wine tends to lead the merry dance.
A wine-critic observes, reports and
arrives at a conclusion and whilst consistency is desirable, one has
to recognize that bottles of identical wine are more hetergenous
than we would like. There are so many intervening factors:
provenance of the bottle, the method of decanting, the type of
stemware, the order in which wines are served, barometric pressure
and so on. Wine criticism is a continuous process, analagous to
observing a building's front facade, then observing the same
building from the sides and the rear, so that one hopes a second
party can obtain a picture of the building from all angles.
(The Eagles, football team not
the 70's super-group, biggest fan Stephen Browett, pours the first
flight despite suffering "man-flu".)
This comprehensive tasting
organized by London wine merchants
Farr Vintners amassed
some great Bordeaux sages (plus myself) in one room and tested their
skills against sixty-one Bordeaux 1996 Left Bank wines served
semi-blind, i.e. the wines' identity were known, but not the order
in which they would be served.
I arrived promptly at 9 o'clock on
a crisp autumnal morning. Unfortunately my mischievious 19-month
daughter had hidden my glasses down the back of the sofa and bereft
of spectacles, everything was a bit of a blur. Nevertheless, I was
the first person to arrive and so helped uncork the flotilla of
bottles and pour the first measures, one bottle in each hand, hence
the reason why many attendees may have noticed their table
splattered with claret before they even arrived (how I wish I was
ambidextrous.)
(James Suckling enjoying
himself. HRH in the background.)
The hegemony of wine critics
arrived: HRH looking pink and perky, Steven Spurrier who is always
attired as if he is off to the Côte d'Azur on the Orient Express and
Wine Spectator's James Suckling with whom I was to share a table. An
observer could tell he was more established than I, since he had a
"PowerMac" whilst I make do with an "iBook". We were joined by
members of the trade from both side of La Manche, including the
inimitable Barry Philips in splash-proof apron and witty
repartee and the man-mountain Bill Baker whose yellow braces
were recently designated a WMD by the United Nations.
The Growing Season
The year 1996 is a pivotal one for
myself. It marked the year I entered the wine trade and the first
major vintage I tasted comprehensively, albeit as a complete
neophyte. I recall a private tasting in Bordeaux courtesy of a
negotiant, confronted by sixty or so echantillons one
overcast afternoon, whereupon my congenial host invited me to
arrange the bottles in the order I would like to sample them. Of
course, I did not have a clue and lined up the bottles feigning
savvy, my host unable to disguise his bemused expression and
politely enquiring why I had chosen such an unorthodox order?
I cannot recollect my reply.
The growing season itself? An
erratic spring with bursts of hot weather in March followed by a
cold snap, then hot and cold again in May though June was hot, so
flowering ended up rapid and even. A large crop appeared on the
cards, except for Pomerol which was affected by poor fruit set (millerandange).
The summer was afflicted by rain, but it was very localized between
communes: both Pomerol and southern Graves suffering the most.
Fortunately, September was not only dry but also unusually windy,
inhibiting the spread of rot after the August rains. October was dry
and the resulting Cabernet was thick-skinned and physiologically
ripe, engendering tannic, potentially long-lived wines.
The Wines
(Vinous-vivisection: sixty-one
bottles of Left Bank 1996 uncorked for analysis.)
Blind tasting. Allow me to
reiterate for the n'th time: it is like volunteering yourself to
enter the lions' den. You hope for verification but can end up with
obfuscation. All those previous notes count for nothing: the
assessment is made at a singular point in time; a snapshot, a
poloroid that will hopefully correlate to previous encounters or
mock them mercilessly. This tasting of Bordeaux Left Bank 1996's did
both and so I will adumbrate the conclusions in point form:-
1) The Left Bank Bordeaux wines are
very good, especially in the northern Médoc, but not in the
same league as 1990, 2000 or the nascent 2005's.
2) The kudos attached the vintage
is largely derived from the exceptional First Growths: all
top-class. However, there was a chasm between them and almost
all the other wines and therefore I question whether the inherent
quality translates down through the hierarchy. The lowest scoring
First Growths still averaged a respectable 18.2/20 whilst the next
best, Chateau
Pichon-Baron scored 16.9/20.
3) Of the First Growths,
Chateau Margaux
1996 shone like a beacon: svelte, velvety, with breath-taking
poise and delineation, whilst
Chateau Haut
Brion performed much better than anticipated and given its price
is usually below other First Growths, makes it the best
value-for-money.
4) Commune-wise, I preferred
Pauillac to Saint Julien. The Pauillacs revelled in the vintage
where the Cabernet was king and they maintained great typicity, with
signature notes of cedar and pencil lead. The commune that is
perhaps under-rated is Saint Estèphe, with great wines eminating
from Cos d'Estournel
and Calon-Ségur
(pictured right) and an impressive
Les Ormes de Pez.
Margaux was its usual erratic self comme d'habitude; the
Pessac's predictably disappointing albeit based on a lowly turnout
at this particular tasting.
5) Where the hell did these babes
come from?
I am talking about the dark horses, the wines that exploited this
blind tasting to prove their merit when label is not a
consideration. The biggest surprise was Chateau Ferrière,
which came an impressive 16th out of 61 wines tasted, equal
to Chateau
Léoville Barton and trumping
Chateau Palmer
and indeed all the others in the Margaux flight. Bravo!
Other notable over-achievers:
Chateau
Batailley,
Chateau Langoa Barton, a respectable
Chateau Talbot,
an superb
Chateau Haut Bailly that out-classed
Chateau La
Mission Haut Brion,
Chateau Lagrange
that many miscontrued as
Chateau
Léoville Las-Cases and for me personally, the aforementioned
Chateau Calon-Ségur
that wowed with consumate ease.
6) Duds:
Chateau d'Issan,
Chateau Durfort
Vivens and a few of the Second Wines of First Growths. Also
Chateau Giscours
1996 that apparently did not wish their wine to be included in
the tasting (mind you, this was around the time of their fraud
case.) I slated
Chateau
Léoville Las-Cases on its first pouring with the Saint Juliens,
finding it rather over-bearing, but a second bottle served as a
"mystery wine" against the first was outstanding, displaying more
vigor and structure.
7) Then of course are the wines
that left me confused and were contrary to form. I simply could not
believe that
Chateau Lafite Rothschild was the first wine of the First Growth
flight. It was outstanding at the Lafite vertical last Christmas so
I do not know why it came across so enervated?
Chateau Montrose
was another culprit, swamped by the delectable Calon-Ségur and Cos
d'Estournel. The Second labels of the First Growths were also
perplexing, since the two that should have done well on paper,
Pavillon Rouge and Les Forts de Latour, were out-performed by the
other three, including the oft-lambasted Le Petit Mouton. (However,
when I perused my own notes for Pavillon Rouge and Les Forts de
Latour, they were appreciative rather than laudatory.)
Conclusions
It was an absolutely fascinating
tasting, one that was a privilege to attend. One thing that I did
notice was an almost tacit concensus between tables. I was on the
grouchy table, predominantly because of James Suckling has
always been apathetic towards the vintage. The Bordeaux negotiant
table appeared far more positive and less parsimonious with the
scores (blind tasting always makes scores parsimonious due the human
nature of erring on the side of caution.) The Brit-pack table were
again more positive, although vehemanently slammed wines that
displayed any faults or weaknesses.
| Wine |
Average Score
(Out of 20) |
| Ch. Lafite Rothschild |
18.6 |
| Ch. Haut Brion |
18.5 |
| Ch. Margaux |
18.2 |
| Ch. Latour |
18.2 |
| Ch. Mouton Rothschild |
18.2 |
| Ch. Pichon Baron |
16.9 |
| Ch. Cos d'Estournel |
16.6 |
| Ch. Léoville Las-Cases |
16.5 |
| Ch. Pichon Lalande |
16.5 |
| Ch. Lynch Bages |
16.5 |
(Left: scores were collated and
average out. There are the top ten wines. Participants used the
twenty point system, although I scored the wines simultaneously
using the 20- and 100-point system.)
Certainly I came away thinking that
this was a vintage more suited to the European palate. Whilst
Suckling lamented the herbaceousness evident in the wines, I
responded by commenting that I welcomed this character up to a
certain degree. Sure, tasting dozens of tannic, slightly herbaceous
wines at ten in the morning is not going to be entirely pleasurable,
yet since their raison d'etre is to be consumed at dinner
with food, I felt that many would taste far superior in that
appropriate context.
Alas, it is impossible to served a
joint of Pauillac lamb with each sample, but my rule is that critics
should appraise for consumers, not for critics.
So does the Bordeaux 1996 vintage
deserve its reputation as one the great vintages of the 1990's along
with 1995? There are strong arguments against it, not least the fact
the it was very mediocre on the Right Bank. The fundamental question
seems to be whether there is sufficient fruit concentration to
balance the tannins. Some felt that the answer to that is a
resounding "No", that many of the Left Bank 1996's will dry out in
the not too distant future; others that underneath that austere
façade lies a powerful, concentrated wine that will see them last
long into the future.
My own feeling is that these wines
need another two or three years to show what they are really made
of. Funny thing is, although my scores are not as high as I
expected, I came away liking these wines, they are my style
of Bordeaux: masculine, tannic, slightly leafy and herbaceous and
yet full of character and personality. This tasting proved that
nestled within them are some real gems that may still be overlooked
by the cognescenti.
Did this tasting solve the mystery
of the Bordeaux 1996 vintage? Not really, but that is the
double-edged sword of wine: the joy and frustration.
Many thanks to
Farr Vintners who
organized this fantastic tasting and no doubt have nearly all these
wines in stock (mention my name when ordering your 100 cases of
Margaux or Haut-Bailly.) You will find all notes in the menu, listed
in the order they were poured within each of the seven flights. Note
that nearly all bottles were sent direct from chateaux cellars,
opened between 9.00am and 9.30am but not decanted; instead poured
into another wine bottle to disguise their identity. The notes were
written directly onto the webpage and includes all the faux pas,
when I incorrectly tried to identify the wine. Forgive all spelling
mistakes: you have to type pretty fast in these situations.
© 2006 Neal Martin. Used by
permission. All rights reserved. Visit
wine-journal.com , an independent site dedicated to fine wine.
