Bob Perkins Consulting

September 2009 Wine Review

I have enjoyed some amazing wines this summer.  Here are my top five:

1996 Chateau Beycheville -  This is proving to be a much better vintage from Bordeaux than originally anticipated.  I absolutely loved this wine.  It has the alluring barnyard on the nose, followed by rich and complex flavors of black cherry, oak, hay, mushroom and tea leaves.  It evolves to a hint of chocolate and raspberry after it opens.  If you can find this  - get it!

1999 Chateau Clerc Milon – This is more elegant than complex, but is a beautiful wine nonetheless.  It is smooth and silky and is a classic Pauillac with soft tannins and hints of blackberry and strawberry. 

2001 Chateau Duhart-Milon – A wonderful wine that has tripled in value since it was first released.  This is an amazing wine that changed three times over the course of about an hour.  It is balanced and complex with barnyard, hints of chocolate and black cherry.  I only wish I had more of this wine.

2004 Roc De Cambes – This is a high-end producer from Cotes de Bourg and I bought this wine after meeting the rep in St. Emillion.  The wine is dense and attacks your pallet.  It needs plenty of time to breath but once it has opened up, your patience is rewarded with a wonderful wine that lingers on your pallet.

2005 Phelan Segur -  For those of you who have been buying 2005’s (and particularly those who bought them on futures) you are going to really love this vintage.  I had this wine while I was in France and it was one of my favorite wines of the trip.  It is an amazing wine that is beautifully constructed with soft tannins, great complexity and good balance between fruit and terroir.  I really loved this wine.

June 2009 Wine Reviews

In the last month I’ve tasted some wonderful wines beginning with the 2004 Chateau Laforge.  This is a wonderful, classic, complex Bordeaux with black fruit and lots of barnyard.  For the Bordeaux lovers this is a great choice at a reasonable price in an underrated vintage.

From the same vintage, the 2004 Abbaye de Tholomies from the Pays d’Oc is a classic Rhone wine that is elegant and full of interesting fruit.  This is a lovely wine to enjoy on summer evenings and goes especially well with grilled chicken.

1996 Chateau Crabity is the reason to cellar great wine in great vintages.  From the moment I opened this wine I knew we had something special.  The first clue was the beautiful bouquet of dark fruit and barnyard that was followed by noticing the brick red color that comes from aging.  On the pallet this wine was elegant, with a great balance of black cherry, wet hay and oak.  This was a true WOW!

Also amazing was the 2001 Chateau Giscours.  It is complex, with big dark fruit, cassis, smoke, hay, mushrooms and smoke.   This wine was big and dense and full of complexity. 

On a quest to find good wines for under $20, the 2002 Chateau de Rochemorin is a wonderful wine in a lesser vintage.  Beautiful and complex this is a great value for $15.

While most wines from 2005 are too young to drink, the Chateau Fontbernard from St. Emilion is a beautiful expression of the 2005 vintage.  It is elegant, soft and balanced and can be enjoyed now.

Lastly, the 2006 Chateau de Virecourt is a great buy for under $10.  It is simple but sufficiently interesting to be set apart from ordinary cabernet.

April 2009 Wine Review

The best wines I’ve had recently have been from B&B’s French Wine Club.  The Chateau St. Brice and the Chateau Deyrem Valentin are simply amazing and I am having trouble resisting opening them every time I have friends over.  There is still time to join the club and receive the Spring shipment of two cases (two more in the Fall).  Visit the web site at www.bandbsfrenchwineclub.com for more information or feel free to contact me directly. 

The other wines I can recommend this month are:

From Lafitte Rothschild – Selection Presitge Medoc 2006; this is a nice simple wine that has all the characteristics of the better wines from Lafitte, but on a slightly thinner scale – and at a fraction of the price.  I love the style of Lafitte, and the earthiness and fruit of this wine are in good balance and what you would expect from this first growth producer.   It’s young, but can be enjoyed now or cellared for a couple of years.

In the under $10 category I loved the Cabernet from Chateau St Jean; yes, from California.  It’s really a very basic wine, and like the Lafitte above, also a thinner version of the more expensive counterpart.  This is a wine you can buy by the case and enjoy every night with dinner.

I’ve mentioned before that the ’04 vintage is turning out to be better than first anticipated, and this month I enjoyed the Clos de Marquis from Margaux, which was excellent.  This wine has beautiful integration of fruit, terroir and tannins and is silky smooth on the pallet.  I loved this wine and believe it will be even better in five years.

Seven great wines

One of my favorite wines from Bordeaux is Chateau Razan Segla, and recently I had the opportunity to taste the 1996.  This was one of the best Bordeaux I’ve had in months and  is an incredible example of what great Bordeaux should taste like.  It has the classic smoky, barnyard, black fruit mix on the nose and elegant mouth feel, with a long lasting finish.  Awesome.

While not as big and complex as the Razan Segla, the 2004 Lafon-Rochet is also not as expensive.  In fact it is one of the best values in Bordeaux.  The Chateau is just down the road from the prestigious Cos D’Estournel and shares the great terroir of its neighbor.  The ’04 has good structure and tannins, soft barnyard with a black fruit finish that lingers on your pallet.  Buy this one by the case.

I am often asked how long to cellar Bordeaux, and my standard answer is that good Bordeaux in good vintages need at least ten years in the bottle.  It is incredible that the 1995’s are still not reaching their peak.  This was true of the Chateau Haut-Beausejour, from St.Estephe that I had several weeks ago.  It was still tight but beautifully made, and probably still not ready to drink.  I’m not opening any more 1995’s for another couple of years.

For those of you who like wines from the Rhone, there are none better than those from Chateauneuf - du  Pape.  I visited there a couple of years ago and bought two bottles of Domaine Giraud, 2004.  This wine shows off the best of the region.  It is smooth, elegant and balanced with hints of spice, rose and slight blackberry.

Also from Chateauneuf, a friend brought over Domaine Raymond Usseglio, 1998.  This was the wine of the night at our tasting and was truly awesome.  It was dense but complex and elegant with Asian spice and ginger that lingered on your pallet.  1998 was a stellar year in Chateauneuf, so if you can find some of these wines they will be excellent.

I have recently rediscovered my favorite American winery, Chateau Ste Michelle, in Washington.  We tried the 2006 Indian Wells, Cabernet Sauvignon, and I was once again convinced that this wine is as good as some California Cab’s costing three times as much.  This is a powerhouse that is big and bold, with deep purple color and really excellent for what it is. $15 is a steal for this wine!

I am always looking for something new and inexpensive so I just had to try  the 2006 BrisAndes, Cabernet Sauvignon, from Lafite Rothschild (of Bordeaux fame) in Chile.  This is a really unique wine.  The pallet is not long but the wine is interesting with a slight spice, strawberry, and cherry flavor on the pallet, and was really much better the next day.  This is an incredible bargain at $10.

The Bad Vintages

This month I want to talk about some great wines in bad vintages.

First up is the 2002 Chateau Pape Clement from the Graves region of Bordeaux.  Pape Clement is one of the big expensive wines in Bordeaux, but 2002 was an “off” vintage so the price was fairly reasonable when I picked up the last two bottles at my favorite wine store.  This is a tremendous wine that is elegant, complex, dense and hangs on your tongue.  I only wish I had bought more.  Several years ago I had purchased some of the 1997 Pape Clement (one of the worst vintages in recent memory) with a similar reaction.  I knew it was not as grand as in great vintages, but nonetheless the wine was stunning.

Another bad vintage was 1994, but when I had the opportunity to purchase a couple of bottles of Chateau Mouton Rothschild at a great price I jumped at it.  This is why Mouton is Mouton.  The wine is silky smooth, with beautifully layered and complex flavors of berry, current, barnyard and even a hint of mineral as it opened up and breathed.

Recently, 2004 has been lumped in with the “off” vintages, but when we were in France a couple of years ago we discovered the garage wine, Tertre Roteboeuf in St. Emilion.  The merlot is dominant in this wine and it needs a lot more time in the bottle before it is really ready to drink, but the fruit and terroir are in good balance with a beautiful rich finish that will be fantastic in 2014.

Lastly, 1979 is also considered a terrible year in Bordeaux, but the bottle of Chateau Palmer we had from that vintage was amazing.  Palmer is an expensive, big wine from Margaux whose reputation for greatness is well-earned.  This 1979 shows the staying power of great Bordeaux and while a tad thin, it had all of the terroir, spice and black fruit that make this a fabulous wine.

I am mentioning all of this to make a point.  While you might not be able to pay for great wines in their peak years, great winemakers make great wine in almost every vintage, and in the lesser vintages you can find great wines at reasonable prices.  Chin!