As you can imagine I have been enjoying some wonderful wines here in France this month and I’ve recommended three if you can find them, along with my favorite every day wine.
The one wine you can find easily in the U.S., which I will strongly recommend this month, is the 2007 Chateau Greysac. As regular followers of this column know I love Chateau Greysac and recommend it often because of its consistency and value. They always make a very good representation of Bordeaux at a price point below $20/bottle. The last couple of years have been a challenge for Chateau Greysac. The 2004 was a decent enough wine, but the 2006 was pretty forgettable. What happened to the 2005? 2005 was a great, huge vintage in Bordeaux and I was counting on the 2005 Greysac to be a wonderful wine at a reasonable price, but it never seemed to appear in the store. What happened to it? Well, here’s the explanation. The largest wholesale importer of Bordeaux decided to get out of the market just as the 2005’s were being released. Some of the chateaux bought back their wines from that wholesaler – among them Chateau Greysac – and so the vintage never made it to the U.S. Or, more accurately, it never made it here in large quantities. A good friend found a couple of cases at a small store in New England and we purchased them immediately, but otherwise I haven’t seen it in large quantities anywhere. I was in a grocery store in North Carolina last month and found a couple of bottles on the shelf mixed in with the 2006’s and while the store clearly did not know what they had, I scooped up this rare wine. The 2005 is everything it should be – a big, dense, complex wine that needs ten years in the bottle to reach its full potential. If you find it, buy it – and save it.
Back to the 2007. Again, Greysac has made a wonderful wine that far outpaces its 2004 or 2006 vintage, and this is a wine that is big, earthy and accessible now. The right price for it is around $15-$17 but you will see it for $20. This is a wine you should buy by the case and have for entertaining guests or enjoying every day. It is a great wine at a great price.
From France:
2000 Chateau Verdignan - This is a simple wine from the Haut Medoc that is absolutely fantastic. There are two key factors which make this wine great and they are 1) the vintage, and 2) the age in the bottle. 2000 was a fantastic vintage and almost anything from that year is going to be excellent. You would have had to work very hard to make a bad wine in 2000 and therefore there are great wines to be enjoyed now. The second factor is that this wine has already aged for ten years. Great Bordeaux takes ten years before it is beginning to reach its prime and this wine is proof of what happens in those years. The wine is complex with well-balanced earth tones and dark fruit. Enjoy.
2000 Chateau La Mouleyre – Another wine from the fantastic 2000 vintage this is from the St. Emilion region and is beautiful, elegant, earthy and complex. This wine changed three times as we enjoyed it over dinner and was everything a great Bordeaux should be. I loved this wine so much I am working on getting it for the wine club.
1992 Chateau La Rose-Pourret – Unlike 2000, 1992 was a terrible year in Bordeaux. The good news is that some producers made good wines that have aged in the bottle for almost twenty years and is drinking quite nicely now. This wine is thin – typical of the vintage – but elegant and soft with beautiful red fruit and hints of barnyard. It was quite a find and is really lovely.
