Our Wine Cellar

Our Wine Cellar - deep and diverse - horizontal, verticals, large formats and favorite styles and labels ...

I regularly refer to our wine cellar in these pages. I expose and feature it here. Each month the leading wine publication, Wine Spectator, features a collector in their Collecting column. We and our cellar collection were the feature in the June 15th, 2001 issue.

A highlight of the feature was our collection of birth year vintage wines for the birth years of our children, coupled with our collection of large format bottles of those wines - magnums, 3 liter double magnums, 5 liter Jeroboams, 6 liter Imperials, and a 9 liter Salmanazar.

Indeed, we served fine wines from those large format bottles at our all our childrens' weddings, and we're holding more for the others' upcoming weddings, anniversaries, and for other gala celebrations and events to come.

 

See links to Big Bottles, Birthyear Bottles, and Family celebrations: 

• Big Bottle Birthyear wines for Wedding Celebration, 
• Wedding Wines - Birthyear and Big Bottle Extravaganza Continues 
• Big Bottle Birthyear mania for Wedding Celebration
  
• Big Birthyear bottles at wedding rehearsal celebration dinner 
• Birthyear Bordeaux bottle celebrates new grand-daughter

See my feature page Wine Bottle Sizes Explained on the different size bottles for different wine types. 

 

Large format, birth year vintage wines served at
our daughter's wedding.

Our cellar - Its not fancy, its functional, for a purpose. People often ask me about cellar design. Its a cellar - for wine storage. If you're creating a showroom or tasting or dining room, then so be it.. But who wants to dine in 58 degrees?

Racks? There are all kinds of racks and kits and professional designs and installations. Again, our cellar is utilitarian and the racks were somewhat of a 'family affair'. In fact, most of them were father-son projects over a period of time where we designed and built a wine storage rack as part of a fun, teaching, bonding, collaboration project. 

 

Each section and project provided an opportunity to spend time together and teach basic woodworking as well as project planning and management with my three sons. 

Hence, we have several wine racks of various  bespoke designs, not perfect, but uniquely 'ours', and each a special memory, and functional for the long run, especially those over-engineered or excessively designed, all purpose built for our cellar. 

Our cellar contains racks that were designed and purpose built for standard size 750 ml bottles - some for bulk storage and some for 'display'. 

We also built racks for our large format bottle collection - some for 1500ml or 1.5 liter 'magnum' bottles, 3 liter 'double magnum' bottles, and larger format bottles as well. 

We also have bulk storage racks designed to hold full original wood cases (OWC's) of wine - a format used for many premium and ultra-premium wines as well as many Grand Cru Classe and other quality Bordeaux wines. 

Also, many large format bottles have their own individual OWC's. Shown right are six liter bottles of 90BV6L - Silver Oak Bonny's Vineyard 1990 - one bottle per OWC, note serial numbers 41 and 47.

Temperature and humidity control - If building a cellar to store wine for more than the shortest term, temperature and humidity control are essential. Once again, there are residential and commercial grade units for temperature and humidity control. It's best to have these professionally installed as they can be complicated with needs for special wiring, water supply and water disposition. 

Our cellar employs two methods of temperature and humidity control. First, it is a true cellar, placed in a basement under the house at nine feet deep below grade. It is sided by concrete walls on three sides that are exterior below grade. So the basic temperature is naturally moderate and rather stable. 

Additionally, we have a passive temperature control system. Living in an unincorporated location without municipal services, we have our own well for water service to our home. As part of that system, we have a large well water tank to pressurize and supply our property with water. That well tank is in our wine cellar and provides a constant 55% degree heat sink to moderate the cellar environment. 

We also have supplemental air conditioning to provide auxiliary cooling for the cellar when needed. 

At the end of the day, (or decade), the true test is how well bottles age in the cellar. We regularly open aged vintage bottles of wine that have been stored in our cellar since being acquired upon release, ten, twenty and as long as thirty-five years earlier. Invariably, the bottles, corks, labels, and most importantly, the wine have aged gracefully and appropriately. We often say, whatever we are doing, keep doing it, when we open such bottles of well maintained, properly aged, fine wines, in superb condition.  

We hold about 2500+ bottles in our cellar, plus more in a couple wine coolers adjacent to the kitchen for staging. While we're at a stage of life where we should be consuming our wine, we still tend to acquire our share as well so the holdings remain the same. We have almost as much  fun acquiring the wine, as we do drinking it, as this blog will atest. 

As to be expected, 95 percent of our wine cellar is Red wines. Only a couple cases of whites and Champagnes are held for short duration cellaring, nearer term drinking. We do have a collection of white dessert wines which do age well and can be held for decades or more but its single digit cases. 

 

People regularly ask me where I buy my wines. The answer is, wherever wines are sold. Actually, we regularly 'audit' the local wine shops, both the wine superstores, and the local independent merchants. We're always on the prowl for values, but also trying and buying wines in the styles that we prefer. We're also always buying and trying new labels, and occasionally, new regions or styles.  

 

We also acquire wine from favorite produces through their 'clubs' or memberships - ensuring continuity and access to favorite labels - especially for our collectibles. Much of the fun of collecting is comparing a label from vintage to vintage, over time as it ages, at different stages of its tasting/aging profile. One of the benefits of having a wine group of wine buddies is that we mix it up, spreading and sharing the club memberships. This way we can participate in three or four times as many clubs between us, and then we share the case purchases between three or four of us.

 

Lastly, we're always filling out our collections with new vintages of our verticals or new labels of our horizontals. (A vertical collection is many vintages of the same label; a horizontal is multiple labels of the same vintage). 

 

Readers of this column know we have vertical collections of favorite labels that span as much as 25 years (obviously age-worthy wines) and horizontal collections for each of our childrens' (and now grandchildren's) birth-years. 

 

Selection from Vertical Collection of Dunn Vineyards
Cabernet Sauvignons

These pages are filled with different examples of tasting events of various verticals or horizontals. We hold vertical collections spanning as long as three decades of numerous producers including Del Dotto, Robert Craig, Clark Claudon, Dunn Family Vineyards, Fantesca, Ducru Beaucaillou, Leoville Las Cases, Gruaud Larose and others.

See the following features from our earlier blogposts highlighting vertical or horiztonal tastings: 

Ducru Beaucaillou Vertical Showcases Pour Boys Wine Dinner

Sassicaia Owner Dinner and Vivere Vertical Tasting

Kathryn Hall Vertical Tasting - Hall Wine Release Tour 2015

Silver Oak Alexander Valley Vertical

 In some cases we did a mini horizontal and vertical in one tasting:

Caymus and Del Dotto Napa Cabernets - 1995-96 horizontal - vertical !

Example of a gala Horizontal Vintage tasting from our Pour Boys Wine Group:

Bordeaux 2003 Horizontal Tasting on the Cityscape Deck - Grilled Steak Dinner

2003 Vintage Bordeaux Horizontal Flight

 
As mentioned often in these pages, we maintain our cellar inventory in Cellartracker.  I was developing a personal app on my own and had a vision for essentially the same solution, however, I'm a marketing guy, not a software engineer with the skills to develop a comprehensive sophisticated application. I spoke of my vision for such a site in my Wine Spectator interview in 2001.

CellarTracker was originally created in March, 2003 by Eric LeVine who was working for Microsoft at the time, to track his own collection. After extending access to several friends the site quickly grew to 100 users tracking 60,000 bottles.

LeVine launched the site to the public in 2004 and left shortly thereafter to manage it full time. Since then, the site has grown steadily every since.

Today, CellarTracker is the leading cellar management tool with hundreds of thousands of collectors tracking more than 75 million bottles. CellarTracker has also grown to become the largest database of community tasting notes with more than 5.8 million notes as of late 2016. The site is also visited by millions of wine enthusiasts annually to read the reviews and get wine recommendations. Patron members who contribute a voluntary fee get access to cost information - the aggregate average price paid for a wine by the community. This in of itself is worth the annual contribution investment, the ability to validate the price of any particular wine across a wide community of mostly astute consumers.

Finally, here is a link to a gallery of our friends' wine cellars, many of which you see featured in these pages over the past years, or certainly the wines from such cellars.  Friends Cellars - Take a look at the cellars of our Pour Boy wine group and other friends. 

Covid19 Shut-in Prompts Curbside Carryout - Another Virtual Family Dinner

Covid19 Shut-in Prompts Curbside Carryout - Another Virtual Family Dinner

As the Coronavirus shut-in continues, we conducted another Coronavirus shut-in virtual family dinner and wine tasting like we did last week, sharing dinners and wine selections texts, photos and videos across the dispersed family, great-grandparents, us and our four kids and seven grandkids, shut-in in Conneticut and the western Chicago suburbs. It also provided the opportunity for us to support our local restaurants and order curbside carryout dinners.

Linda and I ordered carry-out from Angeli's Italian, to support our neighborhood Italian trattoria, open only for curbside pickup. I ordered the Angelis Veal Special in a Marsala sauce with mushrooms (right) whilst Linda ordered Grilled Salmon salad special.

We also ordered a side order of Angeli's Italian Sausage and Peppers.

For our wine accompaniments, we finished what was left from the Keenan Spring Mountain Cabernet Franc from our dinner the night before.

Sean and Michelle came over and joined us for dinner and had the Angelis Italian Special Mussels entree. With their mussels and salad, we served the remains of Stonestreet Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc, and Freemark Abbey Napa Valley Chardonnay that were left from earlier in the week.

In honor of Sean and Michelle joining us, despite the extraordinary circumstances, and to celebrate Sean joining PureB2B team, we opened a birthyear bottle of Château Gruaud-Larose, 1985.

Our visit to Château Gruaud-Larose in St Julien Beychevelle was one of the highlights of our Bordeaux Wine Tour last summer.

We hold a dozen vintages of this producer dating back to the kids' birthyears in the eighties including Sean's 1985 vintage release.

We shared a virtual tour of our visit to Château Gruaud-Larose estate grounds, cellar, chai, library and hospitality center in St Julien from our unwindwine blogpost in these pages.

At Ryan's house not far away in Naperville (IL), he prepared for his family household dinner Carribean grilled ribs with baked beans and cilantro lime cole slaw.

Ryan prepared BBQ ribs on his super smoker grill, hand rubbed with home made and Dave's preparation, grilled and smoked with dried apple wood and cherry wood chunks with mixed charcoal - on for three hours, then 2-3 hours wrapped in foil.

Ryan's barbecue ribs

Kids plates - ribs, baked beans, cole slaw...

For his wine accompaniment with the ribs, Ryan and Michelle finished off the remains from the previous evening dinner, Maison L'Envoyé Two Messengers Willammette Valley Pinot Noir 2012. 

They then opened one of Ryan's favorites, L'Aventure Optimus Paso Robles Red Blend.


Stephen Vineyards L'Aventure Optimus Paso Robles Red Blend 2007

This is a blend of estate grown Syrah (49%,) Cabernet Sauvignon (37%), and 14% Petit Verdot.

Ryan noted, "it was a serious fruit bomb, showing no age, with firm backbone and notes of charred wood that was perfect with the smoked grilled bbq".

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=652444

He also prepared a carry out care package to take to great-grandparents Keith and Evelyn at the assisted living center. The best we can do is for them to wave to them at the window from the parking lot! Such are these surreal times and circumstances.

Erin and Johnny and their family of six were, of course, also shut-in at home in nearby western suburb Western Springs. They also in support of one of their favorite local eateries, had BBQ ribs carry-out from Q-BBQ in nearby LaGrange.

Not being oenephile wine geeks like Ryan and me, and Alec, as we were sharing our wine label selections across the group text, Erin showed their family beverage of choice for their dinner, milk. For their four small children, especially Richie who is a ravenous milk drinker, Erin shared a photo of their family refridgerator showing no less than six, or was it seven? gallons of milk, an astonishing normal week's supply.

From Conneticut, shut-in Alec and Vivianna checked in and shared they were preparing Asian chicken lettuce wraps.

Before dinner they had a local Conneticut craft brew, Beer'D Dogs and Boats Double India Pale Ale with Citra and Mosaic Hops (no vintage given ;>)), more appropriate than one might think as they sit on the shore overlooking the Long Island sound. 

For dinner wine accompaniment, they opened K-Vinters Wahluke Slope Millbrandt Vineyard Shiraz 2016.

Later, Ryan and Michelle stopped by with the kids and brought us some pastries from DeEtta's Bakery in Naperville that they also took to the grand, great-grandparents.

Family Celebration Dinner Features Birthyear Vintage Wine

Family Celebration Dinner Features Birthyear Vintage Wine

We held a gala family dinner to celebrate the engagement of son Sean and Michelle at our neighborhood trattoria Angeli's Italian. To toast the celebration and accompany the dinner I brought BYOB from our cellar a Limited Edition red magnum of Piper-Heidsieck Cuvée Brut Champagne, a magnum of Chateau Ste. Michelle "50th Anniversary Edition" Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, and a bottle of Sean's birth-year vintage Chateau Cos d' Estournel.

The Champagne was a concensus highly rated selection being among the Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2019 at #95. The Winemaker Notes for this release: "The Brut NV represents the epitome of the Piper-Heidsieck style: a classic, well-structured, and fruit forward champagne.

We also served this for our gala family Christmas dinner when I wrote, "Piper-Heidsieck carefully selects fruit from more than 100 of Champagne’s crus to blend the Brut NV. This adds great complexity and dimension to the wine and allows the bold Piper-Heidsieck style to shine through.'

A majority blend of Pinot Noir provides structure to the composition while Pinot Meunier expands the wine with its brilliant fruit expression and fleshiness and Chardonnay bring elegant tones and acidity. The precious reserve wines create a consistent flavor profile year after year.'

"This Champagne teases and allures us with its festive, light-drenched, pale gold shimmer and joyful display of neat, lively bubbles. Notes of almond and fresh hazelnut accompany the precise ascent of its bubbles. It is lively, subtle and light, leaving a deliciously incisive sensation of smoothness, marked by the pureness of fresh pear and apple and a delicate hint of citrus fruits. A harmonious mixture of bright, crunchy pomelo, blonde grapes and juicy white fruits creates the delightfully surprising sensation of lightness embraced by the structure and depth from the Pinot Noir; all beautifully balanced."

This release achieved Critical Acclaim having been awarded WS 92 points by Wine Spectator, 91 points by Jeb Dunnuck and 90 points each by Robert Parker's Wine Advocate and Wine Enthusiast.

White-golden straw colored, balanced, fruity, fresh and elegant, medium-bodied, stimulatingly fresh and well-structured blend with gorgeous fruit and a clean, persistent finish, a mineral edge and final fruitiness, beautifully textured with a solid mid-palate, good density, and a clean, crisp finish.

RM 90 points

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=2651727

Chateau Ste. Michelle "50th Anniversary Edition" Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2015 

A whimsical tribute to daughter-in-law to be, we served this namesake bottle from magnum. We took this wine to a dinner she hosted in the fall and it was well received. This received 93 points from Decanter Magazine. 

This is a complex Bordeaux style blend of 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot, 4% Syrah, 1% Malbec, 1% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Petit Verdot crafted from fruit sourced from Columbia Valley vineyards in eastern Washington including the Cold Creek, Canoe Ridge Estate, and Indian Wells vineyards.

Dark garnet colored, medium to full bodied, rich extracted complex concentrated black and red berry fruits, tightly would with a firm structure that is accessible style and approachable with moderate smooth tannins on a lingering finish. A great complement to the beef tenderloin with brown marsala sauce or the horseradish creme sauce.

RM 88 points.

https://unwindwine.blogspot.com/2017/07/chateau-ste-michelle-50th-ann-special.html
 
Château Cos d'Estournel St-Estèphe Bordeaux 1985

Lastly, from our wine cellar collection, a wine from Sean's birthyear. Our cellar is known for the horizontal collections of wines for the vintage birth-years of our kids and grand-kids, especially many in large format bottles. Indeed, our large format bottles were the basis of our cellar being featured in the Collecting column of Wine Spectator magazine back in June, 2001.

We visited the historic iconic Chateau Cos d' Estournel during our visit to the Medoc last summer.

Chateau Cos d’Estournel is a Second Growth Bordeaux from the Bordeaux classification of 1855. The estate is located on the border as one leaves Pauillac and enters St.-Estephe, adjacent to and looking across the vineyards at Chateau Lafite Rothschild. The historic iconic Chateau sits atop the hill and emerges in full view as one rounds the bend on the D4 route. The chateau is surrounded by 160 acres of vineyards planted to 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot.

Founded in the 18th century by Louis Gaspard d’Estournel, the chateau’s wines were admired and in demand all over the world from the 19th century. The chateau was bought and sold many times during the late 19th and 20th centuries, and in 2000 it was acquired by Michel Reybier, who has managed it and maintained it's excellence.

Robert M. Parker Jr. has noted that Cos d’Estournel “has been particularly successful in difficult vintages” and “remains impeccably managed.” Some 200,000 bottles of the signature Cos d’Estournel are produced each year. 

Château Cos d'Estournel St-Estèphe Bordeaux 1985

Our Cellartracker records indicate we still hold a half dozen vintages of this label from the eighties and nineties. We still hold a half case of this vintage release.

My previous and last tasting note of this vintage was way back in 2001 when I wrote: "Very refined and polished - a robust nose filled with ripe blackberry and currant. This is a deep and complex wine that has a long and chewy aftertaste."

This vintage release was awarded 93 points by Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator and Vinous. 

Parker said "it was one of the most forward wines from Cos". WS said, "This bottle constitutes the best example of the 1985 that I have encountered."

Initially a bit funky, after ninety minutes the fruit emerged, the color seemed to clear up and it opened up to show true St Estephe Cos character.  

We acquired and have held this bottle in our cellar since release - the foil and label are like new, the cork was intact with the lower quarter starting to saturate. Again, evidence our cellar conditions are suitable for decades aging fine wines.

Garnet colored with a slight tinge of brown rust bricking, medium full bodied, complex, concentrated, rich black berry and black cherry fruits with notes of leather, tobacco, coffee, herbs, spice and hints of cedar with lush tannins and crisp acidity on a long aromatic finish. 
RM 93 points. 

https://www.cellartracker.com/barcode.asp?iWine=13153

https://www.estournel.com/en/ 
 

Ducru Beaucaillou Birthyear Vintage

Château Ducru-Beaucaillou St Julien Bordeaux 1985 Birthyear Vintage

Celebrating son Sean's engagement to Michelle, Linda prepared a special dinner and I pulled from the cellar a special birthyear vintage bottle of this premium Bordeaux to celebrate. We hold more than a dozen vintages of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou dating back three decades including each of our kid's and their spouse's birthyears dating back to 1980.

Our visit to Château Ducru-Beaucaillou was one of the highlights of our trip to St Julien Bordeaux this summer where we had a personal tour and barrel sampled the current 2018 vintage.

Tonight we opened a 1985 vintage release to accompany Linda's dinner of grilled beef tenderloin, baked potatoes, cauliflower and fried onions and mushrooms. The pairing of the wine was perfect, especially with the mushrooms.

Our thirty-five year old bottle was in perfect condition with acceptable above neck fill level and a partially saturated but still intact cork. The provenance of the bottle dates back to acquisition upon the vintage release and being held in our cellar ever since. This is another testament to our cellar conditions for long term aging of fine wines.

As is my custom, I used an "Ah-so" two pronged cork puller to extract the cork and believe it may not have come out intact using a tradition cork screw.

Château Ducru-Beaucaillou St Julien Bordeaux 1985

Even at thirty years old, this was delicious, still at the apex of its drinking window and likely suitable for another decade of aging, showing no diminution whatsoever. It drank like a nicely aged ten year old! A testament to the age-worthiness of fine vintage Bordeaux.

Thirty years after acquisition we are being rewarded for buying Bordeaux during the 1980's, although, regretably, we have learned we consumed much of our collection to early and too young back in the nineties. We still hold several cases of this producer from the string of top vintages from 1981, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 89 and 1990 and are now enjoying these special vintage bottles on special occasions, such as tonight.

We also still hold several of these vintages in large format magnum (1.5l) and double magnums (3.0l). Our collection of large format birth year wines was the basis for our cellar being featured in Wine Spectator Collecting column back in June 2001.

To commemorate our visit to the Chateau, we recently conducted a vertical tasting of several vintages of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou with our 'Pour Boys Winers and Diners' wine group.

Looking back at critics' reviews for this release, Robert Parker's Wine Advocate wrote of this release in 2003, "the 1985 Ducru-Beaucaillou has a floral, cedary nose intermixed with red and black currants as well as flowers. The wine is fully mature and soft, with beautiful concentration and purity. It is not a blockbuster, and certainly not nearly as powerful and massive as the 1986, but it is certainly much more seductive." Parker gave the 1985 Ducru 92 points.

In 1996, James Suckling of Wine Spectator wrote, "Seductive and beautiful. Minty, rich and fruity aromas and flavors caress the palate and tickle the throat. Medium- to full-bodied, with super firm tannins and a long, silky finish. Drink now or hold; will improve with age."

The Zachy's wine team tasted this vintage release more recently and wrote, "We had this wine over dinner while in Bordeaux tasting the 2014s - easily one of the highlights of the entire trip. Perfectly mature and is currently drinking the way Bordeaux was intended to be consumed - with age and enough sweet fruit to complement the tertiary development. This wine is all about elegance, no hard edges, classic St Julien cedar, truffle, and damp earth are joined by tobacco and cinnamon. Tongue-staining, long finish. It is a wine that transports you back to old world style claret, where the wine doesn't clobber at 12.5% alcohol. It is truly a special treat to have this wine with this provenance and condition." Zachys Notes 95 Points, Zachys Buying Team. Zachy's wine mcrchant  show they hold this vintage release in stock available for purchase.

All those characteristics remain today as this releases holds on into its fourth decade.

Dark garnet colored, medium-full bodied, muted aromas on the nose but elegant, balanced and full flavored, bright and expressive on the palate with black currant fruits accented by sensuous floral, cedar, tobacco leaf, hints of damp earth with super firm tannins and a long, silky finish.

RM 93 points.

We hold a few more bottles of this release in a mixed case from the era and look forward to opening them in the coming year as we celebrate with family, friends, Sean and Michelle.

Like Zachys above, K&L Wine Merchants in the Bay Area, where we acquired much of this wine during the 1980's are showing they hold this vintage release wine in stock.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=17635

http://chateau-ducru-beaucaillou.com/

@DucruB #stJulien #medoc #bordeaux #GrandCruClasse1855

Parents-Son Dinner features Birth Year Wine of the Year

Parents-Son Dinner features Birth Year Wine of the Year

Visiting son Alec and his fiance' Vivianna in New York City for the weekend, we took a couple of very special wines from Alec's birth year. We drank the first bottle, Château Calon-Ségur that we took BYOB to Bobo French Wine Dine Experience on Friday night.

Tonight, Alec and Viv were preparing dinner and to celebrate their engagement and the occasion, we took from our home cellar a very special bottle that I acquired upon release for his birth year. The 1990 vintage was a very unique year in the release of vintage wines in that three times, the Wine Spectator Wine of the Year was from that vintage year.

In 1993, the WS Wine of the Year was Caymus Special Select, Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, 1990. In 1994, the WS Wine of the Year was Chateau Gran Vin Latour Pauillac Bordeaux, from the 1990 vintage. In 1995, the ‘Red Wine of the Year’ by Wine Spectator magazine was Penfold's Grange, 1990. 

This is testimony to the fact that 1990 was a blockbuster vintage in all three hemispheres' top wine regions - US Napa Valley, France Bordeaux and Australia. Someone want to collect a birthyear vintage wine for a given year has several options from which to select. For this year, any one of these three regions offered top rated wines!

Tonight's bottle was part of an OWC - Original Wood Case of the 1990 Penfold's Grange that I picked up on release back in 1993. I actually purchased it a Berry Brothers & Ruud in London during one of my very frequent monthly trips there. In those days, they had a wine shop in Terminal Three at London Heathrow Airport. I purchased and hand carried the case of wine on the plane enroute home, and have stored it in our home cellar ever since.

For dinner, Alec and Viv prepared ribeye steak with wine reduction mushroom sauce, grilled diver sea scallops, asparagus and pomme frites.

For the starter wine, they opened a Orin Swift Abstract California Red Wine 2016

Penfolds Grange Shiraz 1990

For the main beef entree course, I served the Penfolds Grange. Readers of this blog know we drink a lot of Australian Shiraz' and that we like them big and bold. This Aussie Shiraz was a totally different profile than the usual shiraz we encounter. Naturally, this is an extraordinary wine that is in a totally different class, with a totally different profile than the once a week, once-a-month, or even the once-a-year wines that we drink. This is one of those very special occasion, or even once in a lifetime wines. Of course, this wine sells for more than $500, a price-point higher than we normally spend on once a year, once a month or other wines.

Grange is arguably the most prestigious and most historic, famous wine from Australia, first released back with the experimental vintage release in 1951. For its first four decades, the label was called Penfold's Hermitage Grange. With this 1990 release, the Hermitage moniker was removed and thereafter it is simply known as Grange.

The fruit for Grange is sourced from south central Australia Barossa Valley, Clare Valley and Coonawarra. The 1990 is one of the top Granges ever produced. The vintage year was an ideal completely trouble-free growing season that enabled the grapes to ripen perfectly and to be harvested at the perfect time under ideal conditions. The producer says the 1990 Penfolds Grange is one of the best ever, with the potential to eventually rival the classic vintages of 1955, 1962 and 1971. It should be aged carefully for a minimum of ten years and preferably for 25 to thirty years.

The blend of the 1990 vintage is 95% Shiraz and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon. It was aged 18 months in new American oak hogsheads.

The fill level was proper and appropriate for its age, the cork was perfect, and of course the foil and label were perfect as it was still packaged in the original tissue and OWC - original wood case. 

Dark garnet colored, medium-full bodied, flawless, elegant, polished, harmonious, perfectly balanced, silky smooth flavors of concentrated black berry and black raspberry fruits with notes of vanilla, licorice, spice, black truffles and oak with hints of spice and cedar turning to fine grained tongue puckering tannins on the long lingering finish.

RM 95 points.

Wine Spectator gave this 98 points, James Halliday 97 points, Robert Parker's Wine Advocate 95 points, and Jancis Robinson gave it 18 out of her twenty point scale. 

James Halliday said it was 'destined to be one of the greatest Granges'. Wine Spectator called it  'magnificent, exotic, a veritable cascade of opulent flavors'. The Rewards of Patience - Fifth Edition (2004) called it Outstanding and projected its Drinking Window from now to 2040. Southcorp Wines said, 'The 1990 vintage was the kind that winemakers only expect to see once or twice in an entire career'.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=6295

https://www.penfolds.com/

https://twitter.com/penfolds

@penfolds


La Fine du Château La Nerthe Châteauneuf du Pape 1988

After dinner, Alec opened this special extremely limited release Chateau La Nerthe La Fine 1988.

We discovered, tasted, and Alec acquired this wine during our visit to the Château La Nerthe estate this summer.

La Fine de Château La Nerthe comes exclusively from the distillation of white wine in bottles of the Château. White wine is aged in bottles in the cellars before being tasted and distilled.

Château La Nerthe perform a triple distillation to obtain the finest and delicate aromas possible. They seek the spirit of their old white wines that make the reputation of Château La Nerthe. By its origin, its extraction, its requirement and its refinement of 10 years minimum in oak casks, the Fine of the Castle La Nerthe is the expression of the exceptional finest spirit of their wines.


Château La Nerthe have been producing these fine wines in the true tradition of fine wine distillation in Châteauneuf du Pape since this, their first vintage, 1988.

Tea honey colored, full bodied, delicious, smooth, harmonious, nicely balanced.

RM 93 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=3330760

http://www.chateaulanerthe.fr/

Bobo NYC French Wine Dine Experience

Bobo NYC French Wine Dine Experience

Visiting NYC we dined with son Alec and fiance Viviana at Bobo's in the West Village. For the occasion, celebrating their engagement, I brought a birth year vintage Bordeaux from our cellar to take BYOB with dinner. We also had a recent release Bordeaux with our French faire from the winelist.

Bobo is set in a stylish hundred year-old brownstone in the heart of the West Village. Opened in 2007 it is one of Carlos Suarez's Casa Nela restaurants, that include the Village hits Rosemary's, Claudette, and Roey's.

Like its sister restaurants, Bobo is a residential setting, 'paying homage to La Maison de Campagne - a neighborhood restaurant inspired by nature and by family.'

Bobo is entered off the bustling street corner to the subterranean street level into the bar, then upstairs are multiple levels of dining rooms. The restaurant is decorated in natural French country decor to match its country French cuisine.

Bobo's offers an imaginative well selected wine list of French wines from small and interesting producers as well as well known houses. The selection is superbly chosen for the menu with excellent wines at reasonable prices. They also accommodated our BYOB for a fee ($35).

For our dinner selections we ordered: 

Rainbow Trout Almondine with haricots verts, toasted almonds
Duck Leg Confit with  orange-scallion salad, green olives, truffle vinaigrette
Roasted Sasso Chicken with pommes purée, roasted brussels sprouts

Filet mignon au poivre with pommes frites 

The Menu

Château Calon-Ségur St. Estephe Grand Cru Classe 1990

From our cellar collection I brought BYOB this special birth year vintage selection. This label is famously popular for occasions such as the engagement celebration with the predominant heart on the label. This was also a special selection as we visited the Chateau in St Estephe during our visit to the Medoc this summer.

At twenty-nine years, while showing its age in the somewhat 'tired' color as being a slight bit cloudy, the full aroma and taste profile was predominant floral with hints of mushroom over the black berry fruit. This is still drinking very nicely, thoroughly enjoyable. It is time to drink over the next couple of years as it will not improve with further aging and will diminish further as the fruit gives way to non-fruit flavors.

The fill level was good, the cork was very saturated almost 7/8 of the way. I had my two pronged cork puller with me in my wine carry bag which I used to open the bottle. It would not have surrendered intact to a traditional cork screw.

I always wonder why Sommeliers don't use such a tool, also known as an 'ahso', especially in such cases. It's hard to believe they don't have the skill or technique for using such. I use mine almost always except when the cork is synthetic for which they do not work.

Dark garnet colored, medium full bodied, nicely balanced, elegant and refined, Jancis Robinson speaks of its "very attractive voluptuousness.. .and beautifully balanced". Aromas and bright taste profile of floral and violets, the layer of black fruits accented by the floral and tones of mushroom, spice, licorice, earth and leather and soft, velvety tannins.

RM 91 points. 

Wine Spectator gave this 93 points, Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar 90 points, and Jancis Robinson 18.5 on her 20 point scale.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=5039

@ChateauCalon 






 


Grand-Puy-Lacoste Lacoste-Borie Pauillac 2012
 
From the winelist, we also ordered this Pauillac from the legendary Borie family who also own Ducru-Beaucaillou and Haut-Batailley. Our visit to the classic second growth Ducru-Beaucaillou was one of the highlights of our trip to the Medoc.

The history of Grand-Puy-Lacoste is a family saga going back to the 16th century.

The name Grand-Puy comes from the ancient term "puy” which means "hillock, small height” as true to its name, the vineyard sits on outcrops, with a terroir similar to that of the Médoc's first growths. The property was held by a single family from generation to generation, in a direct line through marriage from the 16th century until 1920, before connecting with another family in 1978—the Borie.

The family's history took a decisive turn in 1978 when the owner of Grand-Puy-Lacoste "chose” Jean-Eugène Borie to buy the property. Borie and Raymond Dupin, owner of Grand-Puy-Lacoste since 1932, were close friends which led Dupin to sell him the domain. After acquiring the estate Borie turned to his son François-Xavier to manage it; his challenge was to awaken this "sleeping beauty”.

François-Xavier Borie has directed the estate since its acquisition in 1978. He lives on the estate in the at the château, a rather rare occurrence in the Médoc. With him at the estate is his wife Marie-Hélène. Also involved in the business are their three children, the next generation who will manage the property.

Over time, the château became a true family home, with its traditions, celebrations, and ceremonies in its chapel. The three Borie children, Emeline (1982), Laurence (1983) and Pierre-Antoine (1986) were born there, grew up at the property, and attended school in Pauillac.

Today, François-Xavier and Marie-Hélène's eldest daughter Emeline is in charge of communication and public relations at Grand-Puy-Lacoste. She travelled widely as a student and received valuable international experience during two years with an importer of wines in Vietnam. I've had the pleasure of meeting Emeline at industry events over the years. 

François-Xavier Borie on the brand, "Grand-Puy-Lacoste is a classic Pauillac, that is to say, characterized by class, allure, harmony. We are fortunate to have one of the finest terroirs in Pauillac and our wines display what may be called a French taste: aromatic, with body and a great sense of balance."

We drove by the estate during our visit to Pauillac this summer. 

"These wines are structured, with a fine attack, great presence in the mouth and a remarkable length. Each stage of tasting gives harmonious pleasure. The tannins are never aggressive, an expression of elegance is always present."

Wineamaker notes on this label, "This wine presents a very ruby red color. The nose is dominated by black fruits with black cherry very much to the fore and by coffee aromas. The mid palate has the sweetness of ripe fruit and rounded tannins. The richness is well balanced by some bilberry freshness. This wine will need a little bite of patience before starting to enjoy it."

This is a blend of 52% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot and 8% Cabernet Franc.

Dark garnet colored, medium full bodied, nicely balanced and structured, black berry fruits, notes of coffee, hints of anise and forest, well integrated tannins and some nicely balanced acidity.

RM 88-89 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=1646786

https://www.chateau-grand-puy-lacoste.com/en/#/en/ 


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A visit to Léoville du Marquis de Las Cases

A visit to Château Léoville du Marquis de Las Cases, St Julien-Beychevelle, Bordeaux

One of the highlights of our trip to the Medoc was a visit to the legendary 'super second' Léoville du Marquis de Las Cases. This is one of the premier labels of Bordeaux and a special part of our collection with holdings or consumed bottles that date back to the 1964 vintage.

We hold a vertical collection of more than a dozen vintages that has consisted of releases from each of our kids' birth years, the vintages of 1981, 1982, 1985, 1990, and numerous other vintages in between or since, several in large format bottles.

We were very selective in contacting but a very few producers to visit during our trip to Bordeaux. As is customary, as we have learned from many trips to wine regions, we focused on but one appellation or growing region for the trip.

Château Léoville Las Cases were very responsive to our request for a visit during our trip to the St Julien Appellation. We celebrated upon receipt of our invitation by opening a bottle of the 1985 vintage Léoville Las Cases.
 This kicked off our spectacular week visiting our favorite St Julien Appellation producers. In addition to Léoville du Marquis de Las Cases, we also visited Second Growth producers Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou, Gruaud Larose and Léoville-Poyferré, as well as Fourth Growths Château Beychevelle  and Château Branaire-Ducru.

Indeed, we served Léoville Las Cases from large format Jeroboams from our daughter Erin's birthyear vintage at her wedding. We served this alongside Grand Vin Latour from the same vintage, the First Growth Chateau whose vineyards are immediately adjacent to those of Clos Léoville Las Cases.

We're holding a case plus several bottles of son Alec's 1990 birth year release that we'll most assuredly celebrate with him, family and friends as part of his wedding festivities in the coming year. We opened one upon our return to see how it is aging and it was spectacular. We several more opon our return at auction to supplement our holdings. 

Las Cases is one of the oldest and most noble Medoc estates dating back to Domaine de Léoville in the 17th century when it was owned by some of the wealthiest and most influential noble French families before it was acquired by the Las Cases family. The estate was split up between 1826 and 1840 as a result of the French Revolution creating Château Léoville Las Cases due to the ancestral birthright, from 3/5 of the original estate and the heart of the domain.

The Grand Vin’s current terroir vineyards were controlled by Pierre Jean, Adolphe and Gabriel de Las Cases who were successive heirs to the property until 1900 when Théophile Skawinski purchased a share in the estate and became its manager.

Léoville Las Cases has now been managed by the same family since the late 19th century and is today represented by Jean-Hubert Delon, sole owner and proprietor of the Château. Additionally, he owns Bordeaux estates Château Potensac in the Medoc and Château Nénin in Pomerol.

The Grand Vin is the product of exceptional terroirs from the former Léoville estate. The estate vineyards are located mainly in the Clos Léoville Las Cases along the D2 route running along and overlooking the Gironde River. They lie at the northern edge of the appellation just outside the village of Saint-Julien Beyechevelle village as you descend the hill heading north toward the appellation and village of Pauillac. There they meet and are adjacent to the legendary First Growth Chateau Gran Vin Latour estate and Pichon Longueville Comtess de Lalande, and Pichon Baron just across the road, in the Pauillac appellation. The vineyards extend over nearly 135 acres comprised of Bordeaux sanctioned varietals Cabernet Sauvignon (66%), Merlot (24%) and Cabernet Franc (10%) with an an average age of 52 year old vines.

The Clos represents a terroir of very great complexity composed of Quaternary gravel ("graves") over gravelly sand and gravelly clay subsoils. The vineyards run along the Gironde River and the proximity to the river has created the wide diversity of soils, formed over various geological periods.

The temperate waters of the river estuary and the nearby Atlantic Ocean create a moderating special micro-climate that enables very early ripening of the grapes and protects the vineyards from frost. The incomparable terroir gives this great wine its distinctive character and personality.

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This proximity to the river with the combination of geology and climatic effects influences the growth of the vines, coupled with appellation compliance restricted water supply and a very low intake of nutrients that all contribute to bringing out the best in the great Cabernet Sauvignons and Cabernet Francs. The result is magnificent fruit that consistently achieves the full potential of the site, even in modest or the most challenging vintages.

The legendary estate produces distinctive Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc Bordeaux grape varietals that are predominant in the blend resulting in a complex, polished expressive  characteristics which are unique to the Grand Vin of Léoville du Marquis de Las Cases that has been widely recognized as one of the premier producers of the Medoc for decades. 

Another label from Domaine Leoville St Julien is Clos du Marquis, another perfect expression of the Saint-Julien features based on structure, harmony, distinction, complexity and ageing potential.

Clos du Marquis was created at the beginning of the 20th century when the vineyard was planted,  inspired by the Petit Clos adjacent to the Château de Léoville, residence of the Marquis de Las Cases.

Clos du Marquis is a historic brand by the Domaines Delon, a separate vineyard that is across the road from Leoville Las Cases, whose first vintage was released in 1902. The creation of this brand was to allow a clear identification of two completely distinct terroirs of the two estate vineyards.

We hold many vintages of the Clos du Marquis and in error always thought it was a second label of Las Cases rather than a distinctive label in its own right. Upon our return home, we opened a 1989 vintage of Clos du Marquis in tribute to visit there and it was excellent.  

Clos du Marquis is located on some of the finest vineyards with their distinctive terroirs of the Saint Julien appellation, near the Las Cases property and the nearby surrounding prestigious Classified Growths such as Léoville Poyferré and Léoville Barton, and Pichon Lalande across the appellation boundary in Pauillac.

Recently, several vineyard plots in the Clos Léoville Las Cases were uprooted and replanted, and these are now coming into production. To differentiate the fruit from those plots, and to preserve the quality level of the prestigious Grand Vin, Château Léoville Las Cases created a second wine and label, starting with the the 2007 vintage, Le Petit Lion.

 

We had never seen or experienced Le Petit Lion and found it at the local wine merchant just down the street from the Chateau. We purchased a bottle and enjoyed it during our casual dinner back at our BnB that evening. We'll be on the lookout for it in the America marketplace.

The Petit Lion shares the philosophy of its two elder siblings; it is vinified and aged in order to preserve its fresh, ripe fruit flavour throughout its life. However, it is designed as a second wine, and is therefore made to be more accessible and for earlier drinking, with a significant proportion of Merlot used in the blend. It also available at a more affordable price point.

From the Delon property's website, "all the wine-producing estates of the Delon family, regardless of their varying levels of notoriety, are devoted to the same philosophy:

• Wines that are true representations of their Terroir. Another label from St Julien is Clos du Marquis, another perfect expression of the Saint-Julien features based on structure, harmony, distinction, complexity and ageing potential. In fact, its terroir is surrounded by several Second Classified Growths of the Appellation. 
• Wines that are made to be consumed during meals. They can be shared and enjoyed with family or friends. The wines are produced in such a way that they preserve their fresh ripe fruit fl avours throughout their life. Special attention is paid to the balance of acidity, a key element for ageing and the thirst-quenching role of the wine. The empyreumatic aromas given by maturation in new oak barrels must not dominate the grape aromas, but should blend together to offer a refined nose. 
• They must have good ageing potential and be able to improve with age. Precise ripening level of the grapes, balance in the blend and adapted maturation according to the wine's potential, all contribute in obtaining the oenological features which play a part in the wine's ageing capacity. A wine with ageing potential, if composed harmoniously, will overcome with ease certain inconveniences encountered during transport and conservation, which can lead to premature ageing. 
• A continual and incontestable search for excellence. For each vintage and terroir, the capricious sides of nature need to be understood in order to provide healthy and ripe grapes at harvesting, which are then vinified and blended to make fine or great wines.
  Not only is the soil worked traditionally using the age-old knowledge of the terroir but also our integrated agricultural methods show true respect of the surrounding environment. Carefully selecting grafts from our own best plants, mastering the plants' vigour, limiting the number of treatments and introducing hedgerows to encourage biodiversity are all decisions that contribute to our goal: bringing out the best in each terroir for each vintage offered by Mother Nature.
  
  After strict selection, only the most representative batches of each product are chosen for the final blend. The Delon family and its team ensure that the wines are as consistent as possible, by a first blend before barrelling and by re-blending them after ageing. The Delon family considers that each bottle of each wine produced is an ambassador for all consumers who taste them."

We were hosted in our visit by Florent Gentry, Associate Sales Director for the enterprise. He was very gracious and accommodating taking us through the facilities and then treating us to a special tasting of estate labels.

The operations use the most modern equipment and techniques to ensure the highest standards of quality. The grapes are individually sorted by hand and then by electronic optical sorting machines to ensure only the ideal grapes make it into the batch.

We toured the historic production facility with the large oak blending tanks, then the new modern production halls with laboratory command and control center. Florent talked about the tedious and meticulous blending process and the selection of the final cru. He mentioned that the tanks are filled according to each plot in the vineyards. Samples are taken from each tank in small lots and compared in over 100 separate batches by members of the staff in determining the optimal blend. When narrowed to a dozen selections the owners and winemaker and technical advisors determine the final blend.

 

The chai contains a series of connected buildings with production facility, blending halls with laboratory and command and control center, the barrel storage halls, bottling room, shipping and storage room and the historic vintage library storage area.  

The grand vin is kept in the prime tanks while the second wine is produced in the square tanks in the another production hall. The control center has precise control over each tank during all phases of the process.

The blended wine is transferred via underground pipes into new oak barrels in the adjacent barrel facility where it is aged for two years.

The barrels are racked monthly to remove any sediment and top off the level that is lost to evaporation. The aging barrels are kept in a precise temperature controlled facility.

Las Cases have their own bottling and labeling line that etches each bottle with the timestamped batch and lot number for quality control. As is customary, labels aren't applied until the final stage at the latest opportunity to minimize soiling or damage.

It was a great treat to tour the cellars and see the extensive Las Cases library of vintages dating back in the 20th century including historic legendary top vintages such as 1959, 1961, 1975, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1990 and others.

Many vintage bottles had been re-corked as warranted and were labeled with notations accordingly.

The historic Chateau contains lounges, meeting rooms and a elegant formal tasting room. The Chateau overlooks a formal garden and fountain with views of the Gironde River in the distance.

I inquired about a vintage wine from the library and upon our return to Chicago Florent had already contacted our local merchant, Binny's, the Chicago wine super store, about procuring a case of the 1990 vintage in either standard size bottles or magnums. We found a half case in our cellar and are working with Binny's on potentially splitting a case of the standard bottles or the magnums. Extraordinary service and promotion of a very special brand! We eventually acquired another case of this marquis label from a stellar special birth year vintage. Watch for our tasting posts as we celebrate this prized label from our collection or other encounters.