Sometimes, I get to taste really ridiculous wines.  The other night, the Associations des Sommeliers de Paris ate at Frank Putelat’s restaurant Le Parc in Carcassonne.  Philippe Pares, an organizing member of the association, brought four fantastic bottles of wine for us to share. One of the bottles was an 1861 Chateau Lafite.  Ya, that’s not a typo.

I don’t do many tasting notes, but everybody keeps asking me about this bottle in particular.  Understandably.  And I guess that, on some level, I have a responsibility to share the experience since that might have been the last bottle of that wine on earth.

Tasting Notes

So we tasted it blind.  Only Philippe knew what he brought, and the head sommelier at Le Parc, Thomas Brieux, might have known too.  Philippe opted to decant it an hour or so before service.

Coming out of the decanter, it looked almost like American coffee (read: watered down).  Or Florida pond water.  A deep brown color.  If you left it in your glass for a while, the sediment would all go to the bottom, and some of the color would sink too, leaving a very watery transparent rim.  It was like the wine could separate from the water.  I’d never seen anything quite like it.  Anyway, we knew we working with something old.

Nose started off with something like a touch of oxidation.  Then it had pretty intense tertiary notes.  A sense of coffee/roast could emerge every now and then.  Lots of black truffle which came out more and more as it stayed in glass.  It had us all guessing that we were tasting a miraculously well-preserved wine from the 1920s or 30s.  Little did we know.

Taste was of a mature and composed wine.  Again, dominated by tertiary notes of forest floor and mushroom.. bit of a gamey leathery component in there.  Surprisingly together.  None of us thought it was so old.  But then again, even in a group of experts like the Association des Sommeliers de Paris (who are used to tasting first growth Bordeaux and can tell you all about each vintage in the Medoc from 1960 to the present day), very few people have references that go back to 1861… We have little experience in evaluating such a unique wine.  And it was a very very distinguished group of sommeliers, so it’s impressive to see something stump them in a blind tasting.  And the look of awe when we all became aware of exactly what we were drinking.

Was it worth it?

This is the next question people have been asking.  “Was it worth it?”  And the short answer is yes.  I will remember this night forever.

It probably wasn’t the best-tasting wine that night (lots of consensus around the 1964 Palmer).  But that’s not the point.  This was one of the few groups of people on earth who are so steeped in the history and culture of wine appreciation that they could truly enjoy the historical importance of opening a bottle of wine like this.  It’s about experience, tradition, our forefathers, and so much more than just drinking the wine.

This thing was 150 years old!!  Generations of winemakers have passed since its bottling.  (Interestingly, this is one of the last vintages produced before Rothschild bought Chateau Lafite and appended his name to the property in 1868.)  A bottle like this is a glimpse into French history.  Wine is one of these magical drinks that can be so natural and long-lived while at the same time being a one-time ephemeral experience like theater.  Tasting this bottle with esteemed professionals was like getting the opportunity to travel back in time with Kenneth Branagh to see an original performance of Hamlet.

Plus the wine actually tasted great.  That’s sort of surprising.  We probably would have all appreciated it even if it had been broken, corked or just weak.  But it was actually good.

Finding a group of people who can share something so special is an important cultural moment.  It’s best not to ask for the monetary value …. just know that a dozen people will remember this moment for their entire lives.  And every time we open a bottle of wine, we hope to capture a sliver of the magic that we found on nights like these.

Another chapter unfolds in the Grands Crus du Languedoc story.

A recent article in the Revue du Vin de France about the terroirs they believe to be Grands Crus du Languedoc shows disagreement with the CIVL classification.  Notably, they include the Cabardes (my appellation and the subject of my book “Wines of Carcassonne“) as a grand cru.  It makes me happy that the Cabardes made it onto the VIP list.  And while the disagreement between the prestigious wine magazine and the interprofessional organization seems like it could damage the promotional efforts of the “grands crus” system, it will only be noticed by wine nerds like me.

In more detail

So the RVF decided to name their top 11 grands crus. I was excited to see my own appellation named as one of the grand crus of the Languedoc. GO CABARDES! There’s a nice little portrait of one of my neighbors, Clement Mengus and they talk briefly about how we are the westernmost appellation in the Languedoc and we’re doing interesting things.

Now where this gets weird is that the CIVL doesn’t actually consider us a grand cru. And we don’t have the legal right to use the trademarked phrase “grand cru du languedoc” on our labels even though my wines meet all the requirements for the grands crus status. And apparently, experts agree that the Cabardes is a grand cru.

Part of me is a little worried about the mixed messages of this initiative. On the other hand, I should repeat that this worry is silly because only the nerdiest wine geeks will even notice discrepancies like the RVF-CIVL disagreement. The important part of this article is that people will read about my beautiful appellation and may be inspired to try our wines or to read other books about the Cabardes. Just as the important part of the CIVL grands crus initiative is that people will see “grand cru du Languedoc” on a wine label and some people will be inspired to try a bottle of Languedoc thanks to that initiative. That is the important thing. It’s much more important than the nervous rambling I get into when people start asking me serious questions about it.

Differences between the RVF and CIVL Grands Crus du Languedoc

PS, since people will ask, the RVF’s Grands Crus du Languedoc are:

Aniane-Puechabon (part of the terrasses du larzac)

Terrasses du Larzac

Saint Chinian

Faugeres

Pic Saint Loup

Pezenas

Corbieres Boutenac

Minervois la Liviniere

Fitou

La Clape

Cabardes

Notable differences include the strange specificity of Aniane-Puechabon, a part of the terrasses du larzac. This is especially odd since the terrasses du larzac themselves are just a specific cru within the AOC Coteaux du Languedoc. And so their number 1 grand cru is actually a subset of their number 2 grand cru, neither of which is technically an AOC. It’s also notable that the RVF included ALL of Saint Chinian instead of specifying certain crus within it like the CIVL did (eg roquebrun). Inclusion of Cabardes, as mentioned before, defies the CIVL’s initiative and makes me gleeful because I know we deserve to be a grand cru. The omission of Gres de Montpellier from RVF’s list might shock a few winemakers in the Herault since the Gres have been on the list since the CIVL’s earliest drafts back in the summer of 2010. Limoux’s still wines are also omitted although I’ve seen them on and off the list lots of times.

If somebody has the official CIVL list that got released recently, please send it to me so I can repost. I’m having an absurdly hard time finding the official CIVL list.  Here’s an article from December that has a CIVL list that seems very accurate based on what I’ve heard in aoc meetings.

I want to share another trend in wine journalism that has piqued my curiosity: nonverbal wine reviews.  Talking about wine without words.  If you think any of the following are cool, please review my wines without words! Or review some of your favorite wines nonverbally.  You don’t even need a blog since you can use sites like Petrogasm to post your own wordless reviews.

Pictorial Reviews

The prime example that has me thinking about this all the time is Chateau Petrograsm, a blog where anybody can register and review a wine by posting a picture.  You don’t get to explain why the photo is representative of the wine.  “Readers” must use their imaginations to connect the dots between the picture and the wine being reviewed.

Sometimes, it’s fairly obvious.  A picture of crisp golden apples because the wine reminded the reviewer of crisp golden apples.  Other times, it’s less obvious.  People will sometimes pick a celebrity whose character matches the wine.  Or they’ll pick a landscape that is very complicated and almost as nuanced as the wine itself.  Here, a new user characterizes a wine from La Negly with a dark and brooding coastline.  These reviews are often less judgmental and nitpicky than verbal reviews.

I used this photo to the left for a wine I tasted once.  I don’t want to explain my choice because I think that ruins the fun and gets unnecessarily intellectual.  But suffice it to say that a photo like this can give multiple and almost conflicting images at the same time.  And that’s how taste works sometimes.

By getting away from words and going back to a more symbolic review of wine, we free ourselves from the tyranny of language and expectations!

I just really love the concept and I think it reminds us that some pictures are worth far more than 1,000 words.

Body Language

I very frequently feel like I’m at a total loss for words when talking about wine in a foreign language.  And hell, even in my native language, a wine can have so many apparently opposite traits at the same time!  It’s hard to talk about it naturally.  The reason I rely so much on video in my wine reviews at Love That Languedoc is because I think you can easily convey a ton of information through body language and spastic hand gestures.  Sometimes, it would take far longer to convey the same information in words.

And I’m not alone.  Right, Gary?

Gary Vaynerchuk is a guy who talks with his whole body when he reviews a wine.  And it’s great. Because he can deliver a lot of surprisingly nuanced descriptions with a little nudge of his shoulder or by throwing his hands up in the air as he talks about different layers of a wine.

And occasionally you can spawn catch phrases that go along with a little body language and then you make tshirts and the whole nine yards.  Oak Monster!

Music and Wine

I’ve also seen a few efforts to pair music and wine.  Some of these music and wine pairing attempts actually do get very wordy.  I know I commented on a blog the other day that did this with much less pretense, but I can’t find it!! The author would just post  the title of a song at the top of the wine review.  And it begs the question, does he think the wine is like that song or that the wine pairs with that song? After all, some people swear that a wine’s quality can change drastically based on what music you listen to.

And it might be interesting to see if there’s a site that tries to actually embed audio so that it can truly be nonverbal. BottleDJ is a blogger who tries to pair music and wine to interesting effects.

We were actually talking about a similar concept at VinoCamp Paris.  Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a website like last.fm that looked at your musical tastes and predicted what kind of wines you’d enjoy?  I wonder how effective it would be!

What music does O’Vineyards go with or what songs does it remind you of?!  TELL ME.

spur pruning or cane pruning for the Merlot vines?

Welcome to another episode of wine making 101. Due to the continuing frigid May weather the progress of the vines is not nearly as impressive as I had expected. So, I have elected to try to show you the difference between spur pruning and cane pruning. The object is to get delicious types of red wine no matter what method you choose.  The spur pruning  method (cordon royat) is when you leave a branch attached to the supporting wire year after year and you trim the shoots down to one or two eyes which will give you new growth each year. We use what is called a double cordon royat where two branches, one in each direction, remain attached each year. We generally try to limit the shoots to not more than four on each side which helps us limit our yields. You can see by the photos that double cordon royat (spur pruning) has shoots that are generally equal in size  from one end to the other which will give us a relatively consistent grape quality come harvest time. In comparison, with cane pruning method, (guyot) we select a new branch each year and generally go to just one side with it. We try to limit the length to 8 eyes (potential shoots). When you look at the picture illustrating this method you will notice that the growth at the end of the cane is superior to the shoots closer to the trunk of the vine. This unbalanced growth will continue throughout the entire growing period and the grapes at the furthest point from the trunk will be larger and generally less well balanced. This is why we have chosen the spur pruning method for the vast majority of our vines. One down side to the spur pruning method is that it is not recomended if you choose to harvest by machine because it could significantly shorten the life of the vines. We prefer to hand harvest when we can,  so it does not bother us. By the way , anyone interested in harvesting for food and delicious red wines can sign up any time this summer. Harvest runs from late September to mid October and we go from 7AM to about 1PM to make sure we get the grapes in at a cool enough temperature. Then we eat and drink and I have not seen anyone leave disappointed in the past 5 years. OK that’s it for this week. I don’t have my son here to correct my babblings because he is at the London international wine fair, so I hope this is legible.

We got reviewed in the guide Hachette. I’ll add this to the media portion of the website eventually but it’s pretty low priority since it’s in French and in the middle of harvest. The 2009 Guide Hachette talked up our wine a good deal. We weren’t quite the Coup de Coeur for the region, but nobody expects a wine called “Les Americains” to wine the favored spot in such a prestigious French review. It’s an honor to be in the pages of this renowned wine publication.

Here’s a link to the actual article for anybody who reads French:

Guide Hachette

As always, the rest of the media clippings can be found in the Press section of the website:Press