Wine Words & Video Tape

Wine, Words and Videotape

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Posts Tagged ‘2008’

London Wine Fair: Napa Valley

Written by JW. Posted in California

Napa’s close to my heart, where my wine bug began after visiting in the late 1980s, so it was good to see the Napa Valley Vintners Association back at the London Wine Fair last week. Heitz’s Trailside Cabernet ’05 immediately reminded me what’s exciting about the valley and of the fact that the old ones are often still the best. In this respect too there were good benchmark Napa Cabs from Grgich Hills, Chateau Montelena [actually tasted courtesy of Bancroft Wines], Silverado Vineyards, Cain and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars.

Chateau Palmer and the elusive genius

Written by JW. Posted in Bordeaux

Chateau Palmer

One sunny afternoon twenty-two years ago I pulled into the pebbled drive of Chateau Palmer in a silver VW Golf. I remember the mouth watering excitement of passing famous chateaux on the way up from Bordeaux on the D2 before arriving in the sleepy little hamlet of Issan.  I headed off to fine Yves Chardon, then Palmer’s cellar master, having arrived to work the vendange, the harvest due to start in the next few days. It was late September 1988.

Chateau Cos d’Estournel: 2009 and all that

Written by JW. Posted in Bordeaux

 2009 Cos: loved and loathed

It’s tricky business assessing a young wine just five months after harvest. Of course a critic has to call the wine exactly as she or he sees it, anything else would be dishonest, but in judging wine that young there is always a margin of error. A big wine in a big year will always have the risk of feeling monolithic at the outset. Given the size of all the elements how could it be otherwise? Now maybe those critics who lambasted 2009 Chateau Cos d’Estournel this spring for being over-the-top did allow for that. Maybe not. Maybe it’s just a question of taste. Would they say the same thing if the wine was lined up for them now after a year in barrel I wonder? I think not.

Paul Pontallier: The enthusiast of Margaux

Written by JW. Posted in Bordeaux

 Paul Pontallier of Chateau Margaux

Paul Pontallier seems such an assured presence you just can’t imagine him losing his temper.  If something seriously went wrong, say someone racked Pavillon Blanc into a vat containing the Grand Vin at Chateau Margaux of course, I’m sure he’d go completely bonkers but in twenty-seven or so consecutive vintages at the helm here there can’t be a problem of one sort of another that Pontallier hasn’t encountered either in the vineyard or the cellar, or demonstrably surmounted, given the consistency of the wines at this property over the years.

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