Diageo Chateaux & Estates was a major buyer of Bordeaux futures for the better part of the last three decades. In fact, according to one California wholesaler quoted in an AFP article, their buying (along with Costco), created “an artificial level of implied demand from the US — the wine estates set their prices based on this perceived demand.”

But things changed. The wines of the rainy 2007 vintage received weak reviews on the whole and demand slackened for pre-buying during the recession. Diageo Chateaux & Estates had committed to the vintage as they had in the past. Now, they are left with a large inventory of wine that needs to be significantly discounted as it arrives in the US. According to the AFP story, they are dumping the 2007s and previous vintages on the US market to such an extent that trucks are even coming from Mexico to scoop up bargains!

While lower prices sounds like good news, the AFP story neglects the question of future vintages. The low prices of the 2007s may be fleeting because Diageo has now decided to get out of the Bordeaux futures business. As of the 2008 vintage, US retailers have had to pursue different, smaller scale strategies for buying Bordeaux wines as futures to the extent that there has been demand. Now the 2009 vintage has gotten huge advance praise and financial markets have rallied, replenishing the bank accounts of some Bordeaux consumers. So while the demand side for future vintages may be coming back, the economies of scale that DC&E had on the supply side have been removed making a tempting conclusion that prices will move higher.

However, if the Diageo demand was “artificial” as witnessed by the current dumping, the prices could remain lower for several years. And with so many lavishly praised recent vintages already available in the market, Bordeaux buyers may think twice about the need to buy futures on unbottled wine. Indeed, American buyers are “skeptical” according to a recent article on Dectanter.com.

For any retailers out there, what is your recent experience with Bordeaux futures and how will Diageo’s bowing out affect the way you do business? And for consumers, is it “game over” or “game on” for Bordeaux futures?

Over 100 of us packed a room in a midtown hotel for the event, organized by Executive Wine Seminars. I arrived fifteen minutes early and it was already hard to find a seat at a table. Five wines were pre-poured into five ISO glasses, and there was some bread and cheese. At my table were people who had come in from Chicago, Wisconsin, Delaware and Napa. And they had paid a lot of money too: $795 each (I was fortunate enough to have gotten a ticket from someone who couldn’t attend). The air practically buzzed with anticipation.

Even though the tasting was blind, everyone knew the lineup of wines and it included some of the most heralded wines of the vintage as the Parker scores (in parentheses) indicate:
Angelus (98) • Cos d’Estournel (98) • Ducru Beaucaillou (97) • Haut Brion (98) • Lafite Rothschild (96+) • La Mission Haut Brion (97) • Larcis Ducasse (98) • Latour (96+) • L’Eglise Clinet (100) • Margaux (98+) • Montrose (95) • Pape Clement (98) • Pavie (98+) •Le Gay (95) • Troplong Mondot (99)

In addition to my excitement about tasting these wines, I was eager to see Parker engage in a blind tasting. Blind tastings are incredibly challenging, of course, and can humble even the most accomplished tasters. On the other hand, Parker is known to be a formidable taster, and he has made some impressive claims about his own tasting abilities. In the famous profile of Parker published in The Atlantic (that Parker displays on his web site) back in December 2000, the author wrote that Parker “stores the sensation of each [wine] into a permanent gustatory memory. When I asked him about the mechanical aspects of his work, he told me in a matter-of-fact way that he remembers every wine he has tasted over the past thirty-two years and, within a few points, every score he has given as well.”

2005 is a vintage that is obviously very fresh in his memory (and he has said it is the greatest Bordeaux vintage he has experienced in his storied career), and given his apparent total recall of the wines he tastes, I was obviously very keen to see how he’d fare in a blind tasting–particularly one involving his favorite wines of the vintage.

Parker himself was in good spirits, chatting and being photographed with many of the attendees. A burly man, he was wearing a black, open-necked shirt and a gray sport coat with red légion d’honneur pin on the lapel.

On his left, Parker had a “surprise” guest, Dominique Renard, a négociant from Bordeaux who Parker had been wanting to meet up with Parker so Parker invited him to join the seminar.

In his opening remarks, Parker placed the 2005 vintage in the pantheon of vintages that includes 45, 47, 59, 61, and 82. He also said that it was tough to taste Bordeaux that was so clearly meant for the long haul at this point in its evolution and praised the organizer, Howard Kaplan of EWS, for “taking time away from his family this morning” to double decant the wines (from bottle to a decanter, then back into the rinsed bottle). He said he hadn’t tasted these wines since 2007. He also touched on the probable quality of the 09 vintage (“looks superb”) as well as the 08s (“a much underrated vintage”) and the difficulties of 07 (“will be discounted very seriously”).

Finally, we dove into the first flight. It was clearly divided between two modern style wines, #1 and #3, that were quite popular (but that I didn’t really care for) and the others. The second wine was quite reticent and closed and some attendees, including Parker, dumped on it for that reason. I actually had a hard time deciding whether this was delicate or closed and, in the end, I decided on both. The fourth wine was a wall of tannins, but the tannins were elegant and the wine seemed quite like Cabernet. Parker opined after the flight that it was very definitely a Medoc and probably a first growth. The final wine in the flight was drinking the best right now, truly quite delicious. Parker suggested it was a Pomerol (on the right bank).

In his overview of the first flight, Parker discussed the powerful tannins of the wines and that these wines would likely outlive him. When he said, “the worst thing you could do is die with a full cellar,” the room burst into laughter and a smattering of applause.

Unfortunately, given that there were only five glasses, we had to dump what remained of the first flight to make way for the second. Wine number six was bursting with plump and juicy red fruits that I found to be stewy. The seventh wine had an alluring nose with just a hint of Brett (think earth and horses), and a gorgeous structure with a balance of tannin from both the barrel and the grapes. The eighth wine had a pretty nose of rose petal but, in my view, had a slightly confected quality on the palate. Parker suggested after the flight that it might be Cos d’Estournel.

The ninth wine was another beauty and, for me, the wine of the night. Although there was another big slab of tannins, the tannins were elegant undergirding a delicate layer of dark berry aromas. Tightly wound and clearly one for the long haul, I would gladly tuck this away in my basement to enjoy decades from now. Parker called the wine “virtually perfect,” and thought it was from the Medoc.

The tenth wine was another beauty, with a lovely herbal note on the aroma. On the palate, huge but graceful tannic structure proved that the best wines can have both power and elegance. Parker said it was “very Medoc and very cabernet” but likely not to be a first growth and suggested, specifically, Ducru. Overall, he called this flight a “really extraordinary” flight of wines.

The final flight started badly with a horrendously corked wine. Fortunately, Howard found another bottle and brought it to our table. I found this pour to have a sort of char brulée note, a juiciness on the midpalate but also a nice minerally quality at the core. Parker called it “shut down.” The twelfth wine was big, rich, luscious but the tannins were not a wall, rather rich, polished, and expensive, the Ferragamo loafer of tannins. I thought it was a good example of the modern style. The thirteenth wine was a lovely aromatically but on the palate had somewhat sweet tannins. Parker commented that he thought it was a first growth.

The fourteenth wine I found to be overblown, a wall of tannins with overripe fruit. Parker liked it, however, so much so that he hailed it as a first growth. The final wine was another gorgeous example of cabernet in a bit more modern style, rich, tarry but not to tarry. Parker didn’t have a comment on this wine.

The organizers of the Executive Wine Seminars like to have the participants vote on the top wines of the tasting. So we all filled in our top three choices, and with alacrity that would put many polling stations to shame, Howard ran the tallies, awarding three points to a wine for a first place finish, two for a second, and one for a third.

But before the unveiling, one of the organizers asked Parker if he cared to pick two wines out of the tasting. “Um, no,” was his immediate reply to an outburst of laughter from the room. However, he then decided to elaborate a few picks, as is the tradition at these annual EWS events. He said that his favorite wines of the evening were 9, 8, and 3 followed closely by 13, 14 and 1. As to specific picks, he ventured that wine #6 was Pape Clement, #8 was Cos, #10 Ducru, #9 Margaux, #13 Latour, #14 Lafite, saying that it was hard to confuse those last two but that they could be the other way around.

Here was the order of the wines with their popular vote tallies:
1. Pavie, St. Emilion (51)
2. Haut Brion (6)
3. Pape Clement (56)
4. Montrose (2)
5. Ducru (30)
6. Angelus, St. Emilion (57)
7. La Mission Haut Brion (43)
8. L’Eglise Clinet, Pomerol (53)
9. Le Gay, Pomerol (53)
10. Latour (86)
11. Larcis Ducasse, St. Emilion (28)
12. Margaux (40)
13. Lafite (28)
14. Troplong Mondot, St. Emilion (54)
15. Cos d’Estournel (39)

I note the appellations of the six right bank wines since they are mostly Merlot based as opposed to the Cabernet-based wines from the Medoc.

What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, for one, you could have ten bottles of Le Gay, Parker’s favorite wine of the evening, for the price of one bottle of Lafite.

A second conclusion is about the wines themselves. There are clearly some winemakers that have pushed a style of wine making that makes forceful, extracted wines, enhanced with new oak and the resulting wood tannin. Sometimes that style can obscure the grape variety or even the place to such an extent that one might confuse a cabernet for a merlot, a Medoc for a Pomerol. And in a blind tasting, a delicate and/or close wine such as Haut Brion can fare poorly when sandwiched between two opulent wines such as Pavie and Pape Clement.

A final issue is about points and the nature of blind tasting, a capricious undertaking if there ever were one. Although Parker did not rate the wines yesterday, his top wine of the evening (Le Gay) was the lowest rated in the lineup from his most recent published reviews. It goes to show that on any given night, one wine can show better than its “pedigree.” For all the precision that a point score implies, it is not dynamic, changing with the wines as they change in the bottle nor does it capture performance from one tasting to the next.

Blind tasting removes preconceptions about wines while maintaining the ability to rate wines in a peer group setting. Wednesday night, Parker upended the order of his published ratings of the wines and, in the process, could not correctly identify any of these wines. In print, he awarded L’Eglise Clinet, a Pomerol, a score of 100 points. While he did call it his second favorite wine of the night, it is interesting to note that he could not pick out this wine in the lineup (he thought the actual L’Eglise to be Cos, a wine that is not only from across the river, but from St. Estephe, an appellation known for the extreme tannic structure of the wines). In that same vein, he mistook Lafite, a Paulliac, for Troplong-Mondot, a new wave St. Emilion. Blind tasting can be ruthless in its outcomes.

SIPPED: wine growing
Wine in London, yes. But vines? Apparently so. But a terroir de double decker diesel may be avoided: Decanter reports that a horticultural college about 10 miles north of St. Paul’s has planted 1,500 vines.

SPIT: red wine stains
A South African winery blog posts with the results of their tests on various red wine stain removers. The winner: hydrogen peroxide! It’s a cost-effective result considering hydrogen peroxide costs something like 99 cents a gallon at Duane Reade. [ht: Tasting Room]

SIPPED: plastique
Wolf Blass, an Australian producer, announced two new wines in plastic (PET) bottles that resemble a traditional glass bottle.

SIPPED: fighting garden thievery
The BBC reports that Hugh Johnson, renowned wine writer and avid gardener, had “a late 17th Century astronomical sphere and urns [stolen] from his historic garden.” He has posted a £1,000 reward for information leading to the return of the items.

Around 1850, faced with the inheritance laws of the Napoleonic code, Baron Pichon split his Pauillac estate among his five children: his three daughters got the larger share of the property but his two sons inherited the chateau itself and two-fifths of the vineyard. This action not only set up a rivalry between the two properties but also doomed legions of wine consumers to confusion between the two adjacent estates now colloquially known as Pichon-Baron or Pichon-Lalande.

In the 1987, AXA Millésimes, the wine holding unit of the multinational insurance group based in Paris, bought Pichon Baron, which had fallen into disrepair. Jean-Michel Cazes of Chateau Lynch Bages ran the operations, which included upgrading the winemaking as well as overseeing a renovation the cellars and the chateau. But according to one account, tensions escalated between the two estates as Cazes laid claim to the Pichon name calling the property simply Chateau Pichon-Langueville with no reference to “Baron,” much to the dismay of Mme May-Eliane de Lencquesaing of Pichon-Lalande! In late 2006, Mme de Lencquesaing, in her eighties, confronted the same inheritance laws that had divided the original property. Rather than seeing it torn asunder, she sold a majority stake to the Rouzaud family of Champagne (Roederer).

The managing directors of both properties convened on New York for a tasting at the Wine Media Guild on April 27. Christian Seely, wearing his trademark bow tie, represented Baron while Gildas d’Ollone, formerly a professional opera singer who has overseen the last twenty vintages of Pichon Lalande, represented the Comtesse. Members and their guests packed the private dining room to (over)capacity.

First up was a walk around tasting of both the wines from 2000-2006. Unfortunately the room was quite a tight space, which made taking detailed notes problematic. Here are some rapid fire observations from this portion: Pichon-Lalande has a higher proportion of merlot in the final blend; coincidentally, it slightly rounder than its cabernet dominant neighbor, which may be why some who use anachronistically ascribe gender to wine attributes consider it the more “feminine” of the duo. I found the 00 and 04 Lalandes the unfortunately disappointing from this portion; the 2002 was particularly lovely, especially given the vintage; and the 03, 05, 06 were richer, with 06 carrying the style most successfully. On the Pichon-Baron side, things are really cranking under Christian Seely who took over in 2000, which produced an excellent wine. Of the 01, 02, 04 vintages, I preferred the 01 and 04. The 2005 was fantastic and the 06 excellent.

At lunch, we heard from our speakers who both talked about changes in vineyard practices with d’Ollone specifically pointing to deleafing, yield management, and grape ripeness, which, he said, explains why they haven’t used “concentration systems in the past five to seven years.” In the discussion about historical yields, both the speakers praised moderately high yields with d’Ollone pointing to the coincidence of high yields high quality in the 82 and 89 vintages while Seely talked of a balance, above “garagiste” levels and below the high levels of some years gone by.

Seely flashed his wit on at least a couple of occasions. Mark Golodetz, the member who coordinated the lunch, brought up the recent posts on this site pertaining to the policy and practice at The Wine Advocate and recommended it to everyone as a good springboard for a discussion about ethics and wine writing. Seely then deadpanned, “I’ve always found wine writers distressingly incorruptible!”

The 2008 vintage also came up in the discussion: d’Ollone said that they had priced the Lalande 08 futures already and had sold directly in China for the first time since eight is a lucky number there. Guild member Peter Sichel opined that the 2008 vintage “is an enormous opportunity” given the quality and the pullback in demand. After a brief discussion about the vintage of the decade, Christian Seely again deadpanned “I want to be clear: 2009 really is the vintage of the century.”

Putting away the crystal ball, we were able to look backward instead in our crystal glasses. With lunch we had both the wines from 1990, which, unfortunately didn’t show well. But the 1989s were superb in both cases–truly exceptional wines that still have many years in front of them. We also had a 1975 Pichon-Lalande from a double magnum, courtesy of one of a member’s guest. The wine was still intact, with high acidity, but it was a good thing that we drank it that day. But the wine of the lunch was the 1985 Pichon-Lalande, which had a beautiful patina of age, with a beautiful subtle intensity, and a long and satisfying finish. When Cabernet is on, man, it can be on fire.

D’Ollon declared the lunch a “historic event.” Now that there’s peace in Pauillac, hopefully more Pichon-Pichon tastings will occur around the world. Sign up for one if you can.

Find Chateau Pichon-Longueville Baron wines at retail (or visit the Baron web site)
Find Chateau Pichon-Longueville Lalande wines at retail (or visit the Lalande web site)

SIPPED: wine as a tax revenue source
New York State will raise the excise tax on wine sold or made in New York from $0.18 a gallon to $0.30 a gallon, effective May 1. This rate increase of roughly two cents a bottle may be too little to pass on to consumers thus may fall to producers or wholesalers. In order to avoid channel stuffing, there will be a “floor tax” levy imposed on warehouse inventory as of May 1. So will there be mega sales in NY wine stores between now and then to draw down said inventory? [NYT]

SIPPED: fraud
Fraudsters posing as buyers for British wine retailers have bilked French producers out of an apparently large amount of wine. Sad. [Decanter]

SIPPED, surprisingly: Bordeaux 2008
If in 2008 grapes were, in the words of Jancis Robinson, “swollen with summer rain,” vineyards are “ravaged by mildew and threatened by rot,” would that make for a good vintage in Bordeaux? Despite all odds, Robinson in the FT and Elin McCoy on Bloomberg attest to finding some surprisingly good wines. McCoy asks the money question: “But dropping prices dramatically in a good vintage? It’s not in the Bordelais DNA.” But some have gotten the message as she quotes Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou, owner Bruno Borie: “We have to go back to basics, go back to the consumer, instead of the speculators.” Subsequently, Decanter reports several releases down 20 – 40% from last year’s prices. What will happen ultimately to the weak and expensive 2007 vintage? A caution against buying wine as futures…

SIPPED: a shot glass of sanity?
Chateau Angelus is the first of the top Bordeaux properties to release their 2008 vintage: 50 euros a bottle, or 40% less than the 2007, which was not a strong vintage in the region. Our previous discussion highlighted how mush pricing is relative and based on perception, rather than actual costs. And Simon Staples is back again, quoted as saying that he wouldn’t even be a buyer of Angelus at 30 euros. [Decanter]

SIPPED: wine in the USA
While worldwide wine consumption fell by one percent, Americans tacked on a 1.8% gain in wine last year, the fifteenth consecutive annual gain according to the new edition of Impact Databank.

SPIT: cakes!
On March 23, we laid out the Layer Cake/Cupcake confusion/silly naming. March 26, Layer Cake’s producer (One True Vine) sues the Cupcake producer (The Wine Group) for trademark infringement claiming the name is “confusingly similar.” [Wines & Vines]

SWIRLED IN CONTEMPLATION: Australia
Australian wine “has moved from being revered to being reviled” with tremendous speed, writes Jancis Robinson at FT.com. She asserts this is largely because of the success of “ubiquitous and vapid” low end wines and the high alcohol wines that receive big scores from the Wine Advocate. Then add a glut followed by a drought and fires, industry consolidation and a global recession and it’s not difficult to see why the sledding has gotten a little rough. I’m quite interested in the story of Australia, particularly the one that is not much exported to the US. That’s why I’ll be joining a group wine writers and sommeliers there in June for the Landmark Australia tasting.

SIPPED: Bordeaux past
In a blast from what seems a distant past, a new investment fund for wine is opens this month with allegedly 15 to 20 million pounds of assets. Investors will need to meet the 500,000 pound minimum for the closed-end fund. Send checks to Richmond Park partners Steven Berger and Pascal Maeter who will manage the Lunzer Wine Investments Institutional Fund. [Bloomberg]

SIPPED: industrial waste over Givry
The Burgundy village of Givry has to contend with plans for a new industrial waste treatment plant on the outskirts of town. Last year’s mayoral campaign was fought largely around this issue with an anti-plant activist winning town hall. But the regional authorities later approved the plant, winemakers sued, and now a tribunal has suspended the approval. Score one for the winemakers! Check out the story at washingtonpost.com.

SPIT: excise tax
California’s legislature approved a new budget without increasing the excise tax on wine.

SIPPED and SPIT: wine blogs
The wine blog award winners have been announced. Alas, this blog is not among them. But thank you for your clicks of support! And hearty congratulations to the winners! [Fermentation]

SIPPED: insurance!
A “Master of Coffee” (not Mister Coffee) in England has insured his tongue for £10 million ($13.95 million) via Lloyd’s of London (not to be confused with the newly nationalized Lloyds Banking Group, ahem). Take that Robert Parker–his policy is 14 times bigger than your policy! [BBC via sdelong]

SPIT: Wine tasting menus!
John and Dottie, WSJ wine columnists known for their sunny outlook, go negative on NYC wine pairing menus. Le Bernardin takes it the hardest. To the tape: “”Very little went right. The sommelier didn’t hear a word we said…Each white wine was served in the same kind of glass…not one of the seven wines we were served was poured from a full bottle…Most important to us, the pairings themselves were uninspired….We felt very much like we had been treated as hayseed tourists who ordered the tasting and wine-pairing menus only because we didn’t know how to pronounce the names of any of the dishes or wines.” Price: $280–for the wine only. And a parting shot on the phenom: “when we order the tasting menu, the restaurant puts us on its schedule, which is generally too rushed.” [WSJ]

SIPPED: Amazon swirls and sniffs
Move over Manuka honey: Amazon may soon sell wine along with its growing non-perishable grocery line according to the Financial Times today. This would be a welcome entrant into the brier patch of online wine retail. The more retailers, the merrier the wine consumer! The story has a mention of fellow wine blogger Tom Wark. [FT.com]

SIPPED: foreign owners in Bordeaux
Properties producing mid-range wines on the periphery of Bordeaux have been squeezed in recent years. But they may find relief from foreign buyers as evidenced by Haiyan Cheng, 28-year-old daughter of “vastly wealthy Chinese businessman,” Zuochang Cheng. She bought a property–a first for a Chinese buyer in the region–for $3 million and plans to renovate it and expand the vineyards. [NYT]

SPIT: Merlot (again), this time for headaches?
Merlot can’t get no lovin’. Malolactic fermentation may improve the taste of red wines but it also fills them with tyramines and histamines, which cause allergic reactions in many people. “Merlots seem to be particularly high,” UC Berkeley Professor of Chemistry Richard Mathies said although his research is inconclusive. [Red orbit]

SIPPED: Amen to that!
Taking Communion may soon help Chilean farmers get a fair price for grapes. The clergy and parishioners at Manchester Cathedral evaluate the wine today for potential introduction as possibly the world’s first “Fairtrade” Communion wine. Seventy percent of the churches in the Diocese serve Fairtrade tea and coffee. [BBC]

SIPPED: Drink for causes, part II
“For each bottle of wine you purchase as futures from his Lookout Ridge Winery, [Sonoma vintner Gordon Holmes (and former Wall Street publisher)] donates a wheelchair in your name to one of the world’s 100 million needy people desperate for mobility.” Andy Erikson of Screaming Eagle fame is one of the winemakers. (find this wine) [Bloomberg]

Mike Steinberger, who is one of the greatest wine writers on the planet, has a piece on Slate about his quest for 1947 Cheval Blanc (find this wine), which he calls “The Greatest Wine on the Planet.” Consider it essential reading: savor the story since the wine itself is much more elusive.

And if you didn’t catch it, last year Mike went on a quest for a $700 bottle of 1996 Coche-Dury Corton-Charlemagne.

Image: Michael Steinberger

Following our discussion of kids at wineries, I was delighted to learn that Chateau Palmer has an open view on the subject–at least for teenagers. Bernard de Laage explained to me in New York recently that Danish high school students have been coming to the chateau to help with harvest since 1997. Danish students have to do a work-study and some clever teacher there dreamed up the idea of bringing them down by bus for a month. Um, how come no teacher at my high school ever had this brilliant idea?

Bernard told me that the students are great workers for at least two reasons. First, “they have no bad habits.” He was speaking to their harvesting abilities, of course. Because they have done no previous vineyard work, they “do exactly what we say,” Bernard told me. Second, he said that “we can rely on them–they’re here every day.” Local workers for hire, by contrast, are available some days, but not others as they scramble to help across many vineyards.

It seems like a jolly time judging by the tiny photos on the Chateau Palmer blog. I wonder what they drank at meal time? My guess is not rum and coke.

Sirech says that in the 17th and 18th centuries, some of the top wines of Bordeaux had some syrah from Hermitage in the Rhone added to them. With the rise of the appellation system in the early 20th century, this practice became forbidden if the wine was to be labeled with any of the Bordeaux appellations since 100 percent of the wine must come from the appellation.

He’s launching a new wine called “Les Deux Terroirs” that revives this tradition. (Chateau Palmer in Margaux has also experimented with the idea.) Since it is outside the appellation system it is thus labeled as a vin de table, theoretically the lowest rung on the French system. That means the wine cannot state on the label the place where it comes from (other than France) or the vintage.

Sirech, 40, has been in the wine and spirits business for almost 20 years. He’s had two long stints at Pernod Ricard interrupted by starting his own online wine retailer, ChateauNet, which he sold in 1999. Most recently he ran Havana Club rum for Pernod Ricard out of Havana.

I asked him via email how he saw a need for the wine through the marketplace or the terroir(s). Here’s his reply:

Quite frankly I had been thinking for a long time that the AOC decrees were too limiting. The AOC system has plenty of advantages but one big inconvenience: it prevents innovation. We need the AOCs but I think we also need a modern/free/hedonistic wine like “Les Deux Terroirs”.

Also, I had been selling a lot of Jacob’s Creek for Pernod Ricard in the UK and I had seen the merit of blending Syrah with Merlot or Cabernet, something that was unthinkable in France at that time (early nineties). When I had the idea back in Cuba, I did not know about the cuvées hermitagées. It is only when I started working on a formulation with the Rolland team in Catusseau that I found out about the whole story and I must say it confirmed my intention. I remember thinking that if they were doing this in the 17th, 18th and 19th century at a time when getting Syrah from Hermitage was surely a logistic nightmare, it had to be good for the blend!

Sirech is the buyer and blender of the wine and is advised by Jean-Philippe Fort of Michel Rolland’s winemaking team.

I haven’t tried the 80-20 merlot-syrah blend yet but it will be available in New York, Florida, and Illinois soon (search for this wine). Sirech wrote me that he bypasses the Bordeaux negociant system and maintains Southern Wine & Spirits as both importer and distributor to deliver greater value to the consumer. The wine will retail for $20 and is sold in wood case six packs.

More on French innovation:
“Is Chamarré still trop francais?”
“Yellow jersey, Beaujolais in tin – new products from Boisset“

The only trouble is that a string of vintages ending in seven have all been bad or mediocre: 1967, 1977, 1987, 1997. So if we were to bring the Da Vinci Code to Bordeaux, what would the numbers tell us?

One chateau owner I spoke with about it said that the string of unlucky sevens has to break this time around. Since much relies on the weather, it will be a roll of the dice.

Weather. It’s probably not something you talk a lot about except for when you are trying to have polite conversation with your aunt at the family reunion. But for wine grape growers it’s a point of discussion.

And this year has been wet in France. The total rainfall hasn’t been astronomical but it’s just rained almost every day for the past six weeks and there’s a lingering humidity. Take Vinexpo: it’s been mostly sunny but it has rained at some point during every day that I’ve been here.

one evening, a fierce storm came out of nowhere and included golf-ball-sized hail. I grabbed one from outside the tent where I was finishing a wonderful dinner and snapped a bad pic. I circled the big hailstone above. Also of note in photo: Chateau Saint Pierre 2002. Mmmm.

And it’s been damp all over France. I was talking with Nicolas Joly from Savennieres in the Loire and he said that he had never seen the vine flower this early.

What does all this mean? Well, perhaps not more than some wet raincoats. But at some point, a string of sunny days would be good to dry things out. But in hoping for heat, you have to be careful what you wish for.

Slow drinkers
“Boxed wine really does keep for six weeks, but would we keep one in our refrigerator for that long? There are so many interesting, affordable wines on the shelves that we’d rather taste several wines than one in a big box.” – John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter. But what about the low low price per glass if you can find a good one?!? [WSJ]

Do futures have no future?
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to play this game? I hope 2006 will not be a success. I hope it will really show the Bordelais the shortcomings of the system.” -Jancis Robinson in a podcast on Bordeaux futures, aka “en primeur”

Yes, I’ll be in Bordeaux (somewhere between a green grape and a dark one) the third week in June covering the massive wine trade show. Given that I have previously written that France is a wine lover’s paradise yet an internet purgatory, I can only hope that the press tent will have wifi since I know there will be plenty of wine.

I’ve bought my plane ticket (ouch!) and am bracing for the full, sobering effect of the dollar’s decline. Ack.

The hottest place in the wine world in mid-June may also have high temperatures. The last time I attended, during the heatwave of 2003, almost 50,000 people packed into a series of exhibit areas that had little or no air conditioning. (Now they could do it in the name of reducing their carbon footprint.) Mmm, hints of barnyard aromas in the wine? Try: hot convention center.

This time, I’ll be able to taste some 2006 barrel samples from Bordeaux and will be on the lookout for some of the yummy 2005s. All with the goal of keeping you informed, dear reader. But with more than 2,300 exhibitors from 43 countries, there will be a lot of swirling, sniffing–and spitting! More anon!

Related:
Vinexpo.com
“Tasting sized notes from Vinexpo 2003” [Dr. V]