Wine Press March 05

Tom Bonito led our tasting of Chateauneuf du Pape wines last week and I think everyone who attended enjoyed the wines and appreciated Tom’s knowledge of these Southern Rhone masterpieces. Tom gave us good insight on the 2001 vintage and he was pretty clear that it may be the vintage to buy for several years to come. There were two favorites of the evening that essentially tied in our traditional voting. These were the Tardieu-Laurent Vieilles Vignes and the Domaine de la Janasse Cuvee Chaupin, the only two wines with 100% Grenache. Both of these wines are very reasonably priced in the mid $40 range. Interestingly, the Domaine de Marcoux Vieilles Vignes at a price of approximately $250 was towards the bottom of our voting.

Our next tasting will be a tasting of 2002 red Burgundy structured to help us better understand the issue of terroir. The tasting will be led by Howard Menaker and Alan Saroff. The 2002 vintage in Burgundy is considered to be one of the best vintages in a long time. It was a consistent vintage, which means that it was good from the lower level village wines up to the top Grand Cru wines. It was an interesting growing season that we will discuss further at the tasting which produced concentrated acidity and sugar. Usually these are trade off characteristics. Allen Meadows a/k/a Burghound says that the 2002 vintage is a very consistent, wonderfully attractive vintage that will appeal to almost everyone. Pierre-Antoine Rovani (Wine Advocate) says the 2002 vintage will long be remembered for having yielded many of the finest red Burgundies since 1990.

Returning to the issue of terroir, we will have a blind tasting, and we will taste the wines of one commune in Cote de Beaune, Aloxe-Corton. We will compare a village wine, a premier cru and a Grand Cru, Corton-Bressandes by the same producer. Corton- Bressandes is one of five Grand Cru wines produced by this commune.

We will do the same type of tasting of wines from the commune of Gevrey-Chambertin Again, in addition to the village wine and premier cru we will taste the Grand Cru, Latricieres-Chambertin, one of the eight Grand Cru wines produced in this commune.

In this fashion, we will see if we can leave as many factors constant as possible and thus determine the import of the terroir on the wine.

The second part of the tasting will be a selection of premier crus by the same producer from three different communes. In this way we will try to determine if we can see a certain winemaking technique that is common regardless of the terrior issue.

You can see that we will be enjoying at least two Grand Cru wines and five premier cru wines during the course of the evening. This should be a very special tasting.

We also will conduct our annual meeting at our next tasting and we will elect a new trustee for a three year term.

Unfortunately, as we have indicated at past Burgundy tastings the cost of these wines is a little higher and combined with the euro problem we must charge a little more for this tasting to cover our costs. The cost of this tasting will be $68 for members and $76 for guests. Nonetheless we expect this tasting will be very popular and so we urge you to respond quickly to insure that there is a place reserved for you.

In vino veritas and a votre sante,

Bob and Howard