Wine Trade Winds Diary for January 2007
TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2007
The Time and Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2007, mid-day
The Event: Invitational wine tasting, the latest in a series of
controlled Ontario versus Bordeaux wines.
The Venue: Sette Mezzo, Eglinton and Bathurst.
The Target Audience: there were 13 tasters, mostly wine writers. We
tasted 34 wines in 34 different numbered glasses, all blind, and all
differently numbered than any other writer's. All we knew was that the
wines were from Ontario and Bordeaux only, and that the drinkability
window was open - no tough wines!
The Availability/Catalogue: many are still available for sale at the winery in Ontario; some of the Bordeaux are at the LCBO.
The Wines: All wines were scored out of 100. The winners are at littlefatwino.com/scores070123.html
First place: The overall winner was Southbrook Triomphus VQA Cab Merlot 2002 ($50, 88.17 points), followed by Ch. Pouget 2001 4th Bordeaux ($52, 88.15), Ch. Margaux 2001 1er Cru ($339, 88 points), Reif First Growth Cabernet Niagara VQA 2001 ($50, 87.77 points), Stoney Ridge Cabernet Franc Merlot VQA Niagara 1995 (87.46 points), and Ch.Lafite Rothschild 2001 1er Cru ($349, 87.46). I did not try to guess which wines were which labels. Instead, I just concentrated on identifying whether they were Ontario or Bordeaux wines. I got 9 wrong (25 right?). All the wine I got wrong were merlot- based wines (St.Emilion, Pomerol or Ontario Merlots). Merlot is probably the least regional-specific, least-terroir grape on the planet. Seven of my wines were actually tossups which could have gone either way: I simply had no idea where these seven wines came from. In fact, I got all seven wrong! So what worries me are the other two wines which I completely mistook for the other region. Once I saw the final results, I could see that my favourite wines were Ch. Pouget 2001 ($50), Reif First Growth 2001 ($50), Lailey Cabernet Merlot 2001, Ch. Durfort-Vivens 1999 2nd Cru ($56), Ch. Lafite Rothschild 2001 ($349) and Ch.Margaux 2001 ($339). There was one wine that was definitely from California, at least in taste: the 2002 Hillebrand Trius Grand Red ($52).
The Food: good buffet with pasta, chicken, risotto, salad, etc.
The Contact Person: Larry Paterson littlefatwino1@cogeco.ca
The Effectiveness (numerical grade): 94.
