by Glenn Mackles » Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:26 pm
Up above I hinted about drinking a Ygay Rioja. It didn't work out that way. A good friend stopped by unexpectedly. He's not a real wine geek but he likes a good red. He told me about a recent business dinner in NY where they started rolling out the $400 a pop bottles of Opus One. He did go on quite a bit about how wonderful that wine was and then he did it. He said that he thought that you had to pay that kind of price to get something that extraordinary these days. I felt a bit challenged.
Sooooo.... I surveyed what I had in the collection and decided on a bottle of Carruades de Lafite, 2000. And yes, I know it is probably too young but I had 3 bottles of that I bought a year or so ago and as I recall paid about $50-60 each. (Not cheap to be sure but a lot less than $400). My thought process was that it would probably still be loaded with fruit and the 2000 Bordeauxs are wonderful, even it they aren't as sublime yet as they will be later.
It met all expectations. The aroma screamed Bordeaux. It was loaded with fruit. It was very well balanced but the tannins and complexity still have a way to go. But the most remarkable thing was the finish. It still tasted strong a minute or more after swallowing. My friend was looking for the socks that had been knocked off. He could barely believe it. And indeed he looked at me like I was crazy when I said it almost certainly would be better if we waited a few years.
Wine folks..... that was fun.
Glenn
P.S. Seeing we started drinking pretty late there was a glass of two left over. I used one of those argon gas spray cans to try to preserve the leftover wine. I drank it the next day. It was still very good but not as stunning as it was the previous evening. This wine was better the first day.
"If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong." Mo Udall
