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Home > Blogs > Uncorked > Archives > 2006 > November > 30 > Entry
It really IS a small wine world, after all
Lest y’all think I was making up the whole thing about Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo wine-tasting competition a couple weeks back, check out this Houston Chronicle story on the event headlined “The life of a wine judge is all in good taste.”
My stint as a wine judge in Houston produced a “Whoa — small world” moment that still boggles my half-fermented brain. First, y’all should remember the blog posting from back in June entitled “What was the best wine purchase YOU ever made — of a mispriced bottle?” In it, I describe how I practically stole two bottles of 1983 Ch. Guiraud from a long-defunct wine shop in the Crosse Point Shopping Center, paying the clearly mistakenly marked price of $7.99 for a wine that should have cost three or four times as much, or more.
Fast forward, then, two decades, to this Houston wine-judging gig, where I find myself chatting with one of my fellow out-of-town judges who had traveled the farthest to join the tasting panels: Wendy Narby, a British-born wine and food consultant who has spent the last two-decades plus in France leading wine tours for various entities and teaching English to Bordeaux winemakers.
I asked Wendy an innocent question along the lines of, “Why did you leave England for France?” (We print journalists ask those hard-hitting questions, don’tchaknow). Well, because she married a man whose family owned a chateau in Bordeaux, she explained, but the familiy just sold it recently after owning it for 25 years.
Really, I said. Which one? Now keep in mind, there are many, many hundreds, maybe thousands, of winemaking properties small and large scattered throughout the countryside in Bordeaux, making the robust reds, delicate whites, and delicious dessert wines that flow from the region. And I haven’t heard of 90 percent of them. Or maybe 99 percent.
But of course, Wendy replied, “”Chateau Guiraud.” Catching a glimpse of my look of astonishment, she asked: “Have you heard of it?”
Um, why yes, I stammer, as a matter of fact I have.
My friends, I am here to testify: It’s a small, small world.
Now lean in close, because this is just between you and me: Later, back in my hotel room, I imagined for a moment what my reaction would have been if — back in 1987 or thereabouts when I bought those two mispriced bottles of Sauternes, before I had kids, before I began writing a wine column for the Dayton Daily News, before I had even THOUGHT about writing on wine — you had walked up to me and told me, “Dude, someday you’ll fly to Texas to judge a wine competition and meet a member of the family that made the wine you’re holding in your hand, and you’ll tell her the story of the misprices bottles, and you’ll have one of those ‘Whoa, small world’ moments deep in the heart of Texas” — well, I don’t know what I would have thought. Probably that you were hallucinating.
Life’s funny that way, I guess. Kinda calls for further rumination — over a glass of old Sauternes.
Cheers!
Mark Fisher
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By John Trombley
December 7, 2006 1:50 PM | Link to this
I was bitterly disappointed in an effort last night to find a restaurant that had a decent Riesling Spätlese. I called a ‘Best of Award of Excellence’ local restaurant, who informed me that they didn’t have the Prüm Zeltinger Sonnenur ‘99 that was advertised on their list, nor any other Spätlese of any kind, and didn’t know where around town I could find one. Fortunately I wandered over to another local spot who sadly didn’t have the Kunstler Spätlese 2003 advertised on THEIR list (it was ‘discontinued’, they said, and didn’t have anything else to suggest in its place), but a little further looking turned up this gem: Horst Sauer Escherndorfer Lump Silvaner Kabinett Trocken 2001 (Franken), AP 4397-010-02, 11.5 pabv; $21/750 ml Bocksbeutel, Café Boulevard, Dayton, OH (Oregon District); Importer Heidelberg Distributing, Cincinnati, OH. From the great calcareous ampitheatre, perhaps the best vineyard in Franconia. Positive and refractive emerald-green. Almond, smoke, mineral notes; fresh-cut straw, a little melon. A trace of gunflint, almost like a minor Chablis but doesn’t stop there. Nutty, smoky, crisp but not tart, with subtlety as well as length in the mouth. A beautiful match with seafood crepes (shrimp stuffed with crabmeat and three cheeses; that’s the way to go if you find yourself in this restaurant). 91/100. Perfect age for drinking now but no rush (except to get to this restaurant to buy a bottle before it runs out). For those who don’t know Franken Silvaner or Sauer, its currently top exponent, this wine would be a revelation, as it should be at such prices in a restaurant. The fact that there is little Sauer imported into the United States, and none of his noble sweet wines, just shows how far we still have to go in appreciating the best that Germany has to offer here in this country. Would stand up to most $40 white Burgundies. Best, John H. Trombley Piqua aka ‘RieslingRat’