12th
Wine of the Night (any day of the year)
I couldn’t help but extend the learning experience from last night’s bottle—designing what I thought might be a decent blind tasting. I decided to draw two correlating factors—vintage and grape. I wanted very different regions, without going over-the-top—reaching for a Jaboulet Hermitage, or something. What I wound up with was a splash of Syrah—probably around 5%.
The 1999 E. Guigal Châteauneuf-du-Pape was medium-dark rose in color; with a fairly complex nose that maunders from floral to sweet—big black fruit, faint garrigue and earthy funk, spice, pepper. The spice carried through to the palate, offering layers of black fruit, fairly well balanced. Not terribly long, but a pleasure to drink with reasonable terroir and distinction. I would recommend drinking this sooner than later, and decanting for at least an hour, if not four. What more could you ask for a thirty-dollar investment?
Then, I started reading-up a bit, online. Turns out there are a lot of angry people out there. Seems the Wine Spectator gave it wine of the year in 2002 and folks are feeling betrayed by their anti-climactic experience. Normally, with publications like WS, you’re placing all of your faith in just one individual taster—for Wine of the Year, however, it has to make it through some kind of board, or something, no? Makes numerology, a la 100-points, seem even more bizarre, still. All I know is, I’m glad that my experience wasn’t tainted by the anticipation of baseless accolades—and that I tasted it based-on the single organic interaction between me and the wine. Put a bunch of those together and you have something to talk about.
I have clearly grown weary of the misplaced pomp. While it wasn’t the best example of the Rhône, I was very grateful to have had the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of vast collective labor. Thank you.
