‘What a great job I have of tasting wine all day’ is the comment I hear most. To be honest it is a damn fine job until you taste some crap wine or crap wine all day! Then the job is transformed into what a poor job I have to make sure that the consumer doesn’t have to go through what I have just been through.
Tasting good wine is an experience, and as Wine Vault TV grows so does the experience of tasting good wine.
I had the fortune of tasting two fine wines from the same Chateau on Saturday and this is where the description ‘Great Job’ is applied.
The Chateau Brown 1998 from Pessac-Leognan was still youthful in both its colour and bouquet and on the palate. There were hints of lime, rubber footwear, and apricot with a splash of lemon on the nose and a textural experience that one seeks but seldom finds in new world white wine.
The Chateau Brown 2002 was slightly troubled and represented the vintage down to a T. The vintage was hard for the fruit and winery staff with the prolonged cold and frost with poor fruit set and wet summer topped off by a colder but more stable August and September. These final 2 months were its’ saving grace. The wine tasted slightly botrytised with hints of honey, lemon, lime and apricots and the nose slightly dull compared to the youthful 1998. The palate was very satisfying but still lacked the charisma of the ’98, overall it was great to taste wines that sang a song of the vintage rather than industrial wine that sings the same song each year.
I hope that Marlborough sings a different song each year from now on!
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