Us vs. Them, Larry-style

The wine world was turned on its vinous ear for all time in June of 1976. Now known simply as the "Paris Tasting", the event pitted four American upstarts against the pride of Burgundy and Bordeaux. The tasters were some of the most respected European palates of the time. However, both tradition and popular wisdom lost out when the US wines -- chardonnays and cabernet blends -- soundly trounced their French counterparts.

Aside from the scandal aspect of the results, the tasting showed that Europe was to no longer be the centre of the wine universe. This, in turn, opened the door for other wine regions to strut their stuff without apology. Unfortunately, for many regions the quality of their wines remains a tough sell. Canada, for example, still suffers from the public's memory of bad wines, none of which have even been made for more than 20 years!

Larry Paterson has been an Ontario wine booster for quite a few years. In his alter ego as the Little Fat Wino, Larry is accustomed to conducting confrontational tastings. On February 27/05, "Lardy" took over the Pond Inlet room at Brock University in St. Catherines for an Ontario version of the Paris tasting: 16 wines -- 4 from Bordeaux up against cabs and cab blends from Ontario. Here too the palates belonged to an impressive group: wine writers, wine educators, wine makers, and certified wine judges. Larry pulled no punches, declaring that the results were sure to surprise us. In truth, I didn't expect to be at all surprised. I've tasted scads of Bordeaux alongside comparable New World blends, so I was quite prepared for the Ontario wines to at least do well.

Larry also threw out a challenge: a bottle of Vin de Glace to whomever could identify the four Bordeaux wines out of the 16 samples. The other highlights of the event were a chance to try some of Larry's homemade, albeit award-winning, wines plus a new creation: Chocolate wine, which I'll tell you about a little later.

Now, I could go on and describe the tasting in detail, but I think it makes more sense to cut to the chase. Who won the Vin de Glace, i.e. which of the more than 50 finely-honed palates was able to pick out the four Bordeaux wines? Nobody! Not one person could identify named growth Bordeaux amidst the Ontario competition. Only one person got three of them, and most got either one or none. As Larry intimated, throwing darts at the wine list would have yielded a better number of "hits" than this.

The other interesting result is that there were no French wines selected as "best of show". They didn't even place in the top five, and only two made it into the top 10!

There are two messages that I took away from this tasting. The first is that the best Ontario wines are handily the equals of venerated Old World "growth" wines.

The other message appeals to my frugal nature. Of the Bordeaux wines, only one was priced at less than $50, with the others priced at $67, $79 and $85! On the other hand, all the Canadian wines were priced at $50 or less, with several coming in at under $30. Moreover, the top rated Canadian wine sold for $49.95, 17 dollars less then the top scoring French wine, which stood in a rather humble sixth place. So, what should you do with this information?

First, keep an open mind. Too often people limit their wine horizon by avoiding entire classes of wine for no good reason. To write off all wine from a given region makes no sense, especially given the impressive ramping up of quality in recent years. Yes, Ontario made lousy wine years ago, and still makes a certain amount of lousy stuff. But as this tasting shows, the best do rank among the best. Second, why not opt for value when it's offered? When I see two wines that are equal in every way, but one costs far less than the other, I'll always choose the better buy. (The money I save will probably go toward a second bottle.)

Lastly, look at this and other demonstrations as an opportunity. Rather than standing in line to buy a limited number of some high-scoring import, why not look closer to home? The wines may be just as good, and perhaps even better. Certain wines are highly rated for the simple reason that they've been put in front of the people who write the reviews. But for every wine that they rave about, there are scores of equally good wines they've never even heard of. You can be your own reviewer and discover those wines yourself, whether at the winery or at tastings.

About That Chocolate Wine…

Once we'd had our shot at the Cab blends, Larry offered us an entirely new genre of wine: chocolate dessert wines. He'd been experimenting with adding chocolate sauce to fruit wines and finally had a result he was happy with. The first pouring was two red raspberry wines, one with added chocolate and one without. This presented a dilemma to the people I shared a table with. We didn't want to spit this stuff! I pointed out that there was no law that said we had to, so we didn't. In fact, I mixed my two samples so I'd have more of the chocolaty stuff to enjoy. Same with the cranberry and cranberry/chocolate: I mixed the two and nobody spit.

Larry is now working with a fruit winery hereabouts to develop a commercial version of this treat. If they're successful, it will probably be as popular as, well, as popular as chocolate sauce!

Buy & Hold Strategy

One write-up on the 1976 Paris Tasting complained that the US wines were expensive: a whopping $6 or more! Allowing for 3% inflation, those same wines would cost in the area of $14 today. Comparable wines are now priced around $30. So if you'd loaded up on the winners in 1976, you could have netted roughly a 6% return over 28 years. How does that compare to your best performing mutual fund?

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