Friday, June 4th, 2010
Napa Valley Reserve + 1998 Bahans Haut-Brion = ?
1998 Bahans Haut-Brion
It equals a night I can’t remember, and a night you can’t forget…Truth be told, I remember it quite well. Here’s the situation: Dinner with family one hot New York summer eve about a week ago. For those of you who know what the Napa Valley Reserve is, you get 1500 points to be applied however you like to wines of your choice, merely for scoring purposes. For those who do not know, this will shed some light: page 132 of Kevin Zraly’s “Windows On The World: Complete Wine Course,” top left-hand corner.
That being said, when you have an opportunity to taste such fine and rare wines, you must reflect upon such times. Bahans Haut-Brion is the sister winery to the First Growth Haut-Brion. It’s a second-rate version of a top-class wine, and frankly, it’s second-rate to none, not even to Billy Joel, who seems always to take a back-seat to Elton John. Yikes. Well: I can tell you I only listen to Frank Sinatra, and Sinatra once said, “I broke my bird!”
The Bahans we let open a while before drinking, about 16 days. When we tasted the wine, a hush came over the room (likely because I was the only one in the room at the time) (not true) and it was smooth and delightful, like drinking a glass of whole milk. The taste was superb and reminded me of sitting in a small cafe on the Boulevard St. Germain. The sun, creeping in through the trees, the bells of Notre Dame resounding in the distance a tune Dean Martin once butchered: I love Paris. In short, the nose was of Bordeaux circa 1998, the same year I was looking into University. I had already been accepted to Oxford, Juilliard, and Carnegie Hall, but decided instead to take up farming.
Look: The Napa Valley Reserve, if you ever get to taste a bottle will look like this:
Lable courtesy of The Napa Valley Reserve website
The first time I had the privilege of tasting this it was a warm evening in St. Helena, and I had just promised a wonderful lady that I’d live out my days with her. Sitting the restaurant, heads turned to glimpse the bottle, wondering desperately who and what we are and what we do and why we do it and where we do it and I answered them all in silent whispers, chilling them to the bone.
Tasting notes on the NVR: Spain, bullfighting, fly-fishing in the Dordogne, late-night runs in McCarren Park in Brooklyn, driving along the Taconic in Upstate New York. Nothing like it.
Tonight, the Noble Rot embarks on New Zealand and Micro-Terroir. Wish us luck. I’ll reward you with more musings upon it’s completion.
My Very Best,
Jonny Cigar
