The event that certified the arrival of the Napa Valley as a major wine region didn’t come until 1976, when the British wine connoisseur Steven Spurrier organized a blind tasting in France—the famed Judgment of Paris. The tasting was to pit some of the most venerable French wines from Burgundy and Bordeaux against some of the Napa Valley upstarts, and Spurrier made a trip to Napa to handpick the American entrants. California Chardonnays were matched against white Burgundies—which are also made from Chardonnay grapes and are generally regarded as the highest expression of that grape. California Cabernets went up against some of the greatest red wines of Bordeaux, including a 1970 Château Mouton Rothschild and a 1970 Haut-Brion. The judges, nine in all, were French, and their oenological credentials were impeccable, which made the results all the more surprising. The top-scoring white wine was Mike Grgich’s 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay. Two of the other top four white wines chosen were also American. In the red category, the winner was Warren Winiarski’s 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cab. Naturally, the hosts were indignant. The French press at first ignored the results and later tried to explain them away. One or two of these dozens of explanations were remotely plausible. French grand vin tends to be made for the long haul and to show more awkwardly in youth than the ripe, flirty wines of California. Then again, the patriotic French tasters presumably would have been on the lookout for hints of California glitz. At any rate, the Spurrier tasting made an enormous impression on both sides of the Atlantic. Mondavi professes himself to have been “tickled to death by the outcome,” but none of the representative American wines that Spurrier chose were his, and that had to rankle. Still, whatever frustration he felt at sitting out the big event must have been ameliorated by the fact that the two winners, Grgich and Winiarski, were alumni of his cellars. His vision for the industry had been resoundingly endorsed.
Mondavi continued to expand and proselytize, seeming less like a voice in the wilderness and more like an elder statesman. His 1974 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, released around the time of the great tasting, has become something of a legend. And in 1978 the French came calling. Baron Philippe de Rothschild, the proprietor of Château Mouton Rothschild, invited Mondavi to participate in a joint venture in the Napa Valley. If Mondavi still needed vindication, this was it. Indeed, he can scarcely conceal his pride. “My parents came to America without a penny in their pockets,” he writes. “Now, thanks to hard work and the ability to turn humble grapes into fine wine, the names Rothschild and Mondavi were going to stand side by side.” Together, the two men built a limestone-clad, postmodern winery. Yet the venture nearly capsized: it was plagued by huge cost overruns, and consumers were initially skeptical about the wine, Opus One, when it was released at $50 a bottle. And then, just a year after the first vineyards were planted, phylloxera struck again. The dread root louse swept through the valley during the next decade, wiping out millions of dollars’ worth of vines. This, however, was a mixed curse: the epidemic forced the vineyards to replant, but the new plantings tended to be genetically superior and to reflect advances in the understanding of climate, soil, and grape types.
The cost of replanting was one of the reasons that Mondavi decided, in 1993, to take the winery public. Shortly afterward, he appointed his older son, Michael, president in an effort to end a long power struggle between Michael and his brother, Tim, which threatened to become a replay of the earlier family feud at Charles Krug. Harvests of Joy only hints at the family dramas behind the corporate success story. Mondavi confesses that his fierce and single-minded ambition damaged his family, but he doesn’t really show us how. His portrait of his saintly, silent wife, Marge, is typical: after buying the mink, she more or less disappears from the narrative. The reader is occasionally puzzled by flattering references to a Mondavi employee named Margrit Biever until, near the end of the book, Mondavi mentions that she became his second wife. And we learn little about his sons, who will lead this hugely successful company into the new century. One senses, if not a King Lear, then certainly a Rich Man, Poor Man of viticulture awaiting its bard. If Harvests of Joy were a wine, we would have to say that it was a little disjointed, lacked complexity, and had too much residual sugar. But then it’s entirely fitting that Mondavi’s most eloquent message still comes in a bottle.
Postscript: In 2004, Robert Mondavi and his family lost control of the company they’d spent decades building in the wake of the Robert Mondavi Corporation’s $1.3 billion sale to Constellation Brands. Robert Mondavi died in May 2008 at the age of ninety-four. Julia Flynn Siler’s House of Mondavi fleshes out the story.
The Red and the Black
Does Bordeaux Still Matter?
This might seem like a foolish question given that the 2009 and the 2010 futures campaign set record prices, and given that Asian buyers in general and the Chinese in particular have embraced the region’s wines, especially the first growths, as if they were aphrodisiacs. Many younger sommeliers and enthusiasts think of Bordeaux as the General Motors of the wine world—kind of a dinosaur. For wine buffs with an indie sensibility, it’s the equivalent of the Hollywood blockbuster, more about money than art. At a 2009 Acker Merrall & Condit auction, there was booing when the auctioneer announced an offering of Bordeaux. “Let the Asians overpay for it,” one bidder remarked. If I were the owner of a château in Bordeaux, I would be worried that the world’s hottest restaurant, Copenhagen’s Noma (voted Best Restaurant in the World for 2010 and 2011 in Restaurant magazine), hasn’t got a single bottle of Bordeaux on its very extensive wine list.
In spite of, or, more likely, because of, the fact that Bordeaux has produced the world’s most famous wines for hundreds of years, slagging it has become a new form of snobbery. As someone whose first love was Bordeaux, I can’t quite join the beat down, and several recent close encounters have reignited my passion.
The most improbable of these took place at Terroir, a wine bar in Manhattan’s East Village run by Paul Grieco, a very influential sommelier known to advocate the obscure and the artisanal. Of the fifty wines he serves by the glass, not one is a Bordeaux. So I was surprised to discover him pouring several late one night for a raucous and seemingly appreciative audience that included some of the city’s top sommeliers. Overall it was a younger crowd—lots of tats and piercings and facial hair. Grieco himself sports a pencil-thin mustache, soul patch, and RIESLING tattoo.
The wines in question were part of a portfolio of small-grower Bordeaux imported by Daniel Johnnes, wine director at the four-star restaurant Daniel, who is famously passionate about Burgundy. Had these guys gone over to the dark side, or was it possible that a backlash to the backlash was fermenting? “I was tired of listening to the wine cognoscenti bash Bordeaux,” Johnnes told me. He went there to seek out small, family-owned properties in the lesser-known appellations and came back with a handful of artisanal wines with traditional Bordeaux character in the $20 to $30 range. It was a tough crowd that night, but most of us were very impressed with them.
Among those struggling for elbow room in the tiny space was burly, bearded Pascal Collotte, the proprietor of Château Jean Faux, who looked as if he might have just come across the bridge from Williamsburg. He poured me a glass of his 2007, a delicious, hearty Merlot-based red that was every bit as ingratiating as its maker. Collotte worked as a cooper—a barrel maker—before buying a hilly estate just outside Castillon, and he was the first Bordeaux proprietor I’ve ever met who wasn’t dressed like a tweedy English aristocrat. He explained that wines with the Bordeaux Supérieur label have stricter yields and higher alcohols than those labeled generic Bordeaux, although they are less illustrious—and expensive—than the classed growths of Pauillac, St. Julien, and Margaux.
It’s a long way from the East Village to the manor houses of the Médoc, and no address is more emblematic of classic Bordeaux than Château Lafite Rothschild, which is one of four first growths listed in the famous 1855 classification. (Château Mouton Rothschild, owned by another branch of the Rothschi
ld banking family, was added in 1973.) The château itself is a relatively modest, eighteenth-century dwelling, but Lafite’s preeminence in the market is perhaps better reflected in the circular cellar designed by Ricardo Bofill, its central vault supported by sixteen massive pillars under which oak casks of Lafite age fragrantly. After a lackluster period, since 1982 Lafite has regained its place at the top of the Bordeaux hierarchy with a succession of great vintages. More recently, it has become the object of a kind of cult in the Far East, particularly in China. A Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong in November 2010 ratcheted up the market even further. Three bottles of the 1869 vintage sold for $232,692 each. This wine is obviously a great rarity, but cases of the 1982 vintage, still widely available at auction, sold for $131,859, or more than $10,000 per bottle. This kind of madness may gladden the hearts of auctioneers and château owners, but it tends to depress the average wine drinker and to harden the perception of Bordeaux as a commodity rather than a beverage.
Perhaps it’s best to think of the first growths of Bordeaux as the haute couture of the wine world. Not many of us will consume them, but they serve as a kind of reference point, and it’s remarkable that those named in the 1855 classification have maintained their reputation and position 150 years later. The 1855 classification didn’t include wines from the right bank of the Gironde River, in the appellations of Pomerol and St. Émilion, but critical consensus has made Cheval Blanc, Ausone, and Petrus unofficial first growths. The right-bank wines, based on Merlot rather than Cabernet Sauvignon, tend to be more immediately seductive. Petrus, virtually unknown until the English wine writer Harry Waugh championed it in the nineteen forties, became—at least until the Chinese discovered Lafite—the most expensive of them all.
On my fifty-fifth birthday, with the help of some generous friends, I tasted many of the top 1955 Bordeaux, including several first growths, and was astonished by the beauty and depth of these wines that were fermented the year I was born, the best of which have a great many years ahead of them—possibly a good omen. This is one of the signal glories of Bordeaux, its ability to age and improve for decades. The 1955 La Mission Haut-Brion, a second growth, is one of the finest wines I have ever tasted. A few months later, I was invited to taste the first growths of 1982, described by James Suckling, the former Wine Spectator editor who helped organize the tasting, as “the first modern vintage of Bordeaux.” Some have suggested that the vintage was too warm, too low in acid to be classic and long lasting, but the tasters agreed the wines were brilliant, though several were just beginning to show their full potential. (Just for the record, we all ranked Lafite well behind Latour, Cheval Blanc, and Mouton.) A couple weeks later my Bordeaux infatuation was further stoked at a pre-auction dinner at Sotheby’s in New York that was devoted to the top wines of the 2000 vintage. (Latour and Cheval Blanc were once again the standouts.) If too young to show all of their colors, they were awe inspiring and already a hedonist’s delight.
I will probably be long gone before these wines reach their peak and I doubt my children will be able to afford them. The Chinese might have consumed them all by then. (One hopes at least that they don’t mix their Lafite with Sprite, a persistent rumor.) But the ineffable experience of Bordeaux, which Cardinal Richelieu once described as having “an indescribable sinister, somber bite that is not at all disagreeable,” has for centuries set the standard for great wine and is available at almost all price points. The lesser-classified growths, second through fifth, sometimes outperform the first, and the wines from less prestigious appellations like the Haut-Médoc, Fronsac, and Côtes de Castillon can be terrific values, especially in great vintages like 2005, 2009, and 2010. And yes, it’s possible to find a good one for less than ten bucks. Although I’m not ready to surrender my “Bad to the Beaune” T-shirt, which flaunts my passion for Burgundy, I’m rediscovering the joys of Bordeaux. Dare to be unfashionable and try some this season.
The Exquisite Sisters of Margaux
The name Margaux was famous long before Ernest Hemingway’s son Jack named his daughter after the wine he was drinking on the night she was conceived. Besides Papa Hemingway, Thomas Jefferson and Sir Robert Walpole were among the fans of this Bordeaux, one of four first growths named in the famous 1855 classification (along with Lafite, Latour, and Haut-Brion). This particular château gave its name to an entire appellation in the southern Médoc region of Bordeaux, which has caused some confusion and a fair amount of disappointment, since many of the wines sold under this name aren’t all that good. In the whole appellation, only Château Palmer has ever challenged the founder, so to speak, and although ranked as a third growth, it has in some vintages surpassed Margaux and, in all the others, provided a fascinating comparison to its eminent rival.
Nothing could provide a more stark contrast than the architecture of the châteaus themselves, among the most dramatic in all of Bordeaux. Designed in 1810 by Louis Combes in the neo-Palladian style, Margaux is a stately pile with clean lines and a three-story pediment supported by Ionic columns. Palmer was built in flamboyant Second Empire style with two fanciful pointed turrets, lending a touch of Bavarian whimsy of which Walt Disney would have approved. Both buildings are so iconic that it’s sometimes difficult to remember that it’s what is under the ground, rather than above it, that truly shapes the character of the wines. The two properties share a border, close to the Gironde River, and are blessed with superb soils and drainage.
Margaux has the longer history as a wine-producing property. Legend holds that Edward III had a castle on the premises in the fourteenth century, when the British occupied Bordeaux and developed their taste for the wine they called claret. The property itself was owned by a series of noble families, and in 1771 its wine was the first Bordeaux to be listed for sale at Christie’s, when claret was changing from a pale pink beverage to the bolder red wine we know and love today. It was classified as first growth in 1855 and lived up to its rank for most of the next century. But the wine seriously underperformed in the nineteen sixties and seventies, until it was bought by André Mentzelopoulos, a Greek tycoon whose French residency came in handy after the government quashed the proposed sale of the estate to National Distillers, an American company.
The Mentzelopoulos family turned the estate around almost immediately, and their first vintage, the 1978, was the first great wine from the estate in decades. Today, Margaux is owned and managed by the unconscionably glamorous, strawberry-blonde Corinne Mentzelopoulos, with the very able help of Paul Pontallier, one of the most highly regarded winemakers in Bordeaux.
The first time I met Pontallier he was hosing down the winery floor dressed in a Harris-tweed sport jacket over a vest, a knit tie, and knee-high Wellingtons. He arrived here in 1983, which happened to be a very good year in Margaux—better than in the more northern Médoc appellations—and produced a wine that has become legendary (Palmer also made a terrific 1983). Under his stewardship, there have been many great wines since then, including the 1990 and the 2000, although probably none has raised such a buzz of anticipation as the 2009, which is widely touted by early tasters as the wine of an extraordinary vintage. Typically, the elegantly modest Pontallier gives credit to the untranslatable French concept that embraces the soil, topography, drainage, weather, and everything else unique about a particular vineyard by saying that “the 2009 seems to have enhanced the intrinsic qualities of Château Margaux’s terroir.” The genius of the place, he believes, “consists in producing wines of inimitable aromatic finesse and complexity, of great density on the palate, and yet of a surprising softness.”
“Margaux wines are recognized to be the most feminine wines of the Bordeaux region,” according to Thomas Duroux, the winemaker at neighboring Château Palmer. “They show less power than the wines of Pauillac or St. Estèphe, but more delicacy, more precision.” While such generalizations don’t always apply across the board, this is usually true of his wines, which sometimes seem almost Burgundian, and at other times like a Pomerol. It’s uniq
ue among the wines of Bordeaux’s left bank in its high proportion of Merlot (about half), which might account for its singular, supple character. Margaux, by contrast, is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, giving it a little more heft but making it less approachable in its youth.
The property is named for Charles Palmer, a wellborn English general who fought under Wellington and was almost as well-known for his success with ladies of the court as for his military victories and his decision to purchase Château de Gascq, which seems to have been sealed during a “turbulent” stagecoach ride with the beautiful Marie de Gascq. He expanded her estate, replanted the vineyards, and was, by all accounts, his own best salesman and worst enemy. His personal charm and his friendship with the prince regent, the future George IV, helped to seal his wine’s reputation among the British aristocracy, even as his extravagance eventually led him to bankruptcy. Palmer was forced to sell in 1843, and the estate was still in turmoil when the 1855 classification was made, which might explain why it was ranked a third growth; its quality since then has long exceeded its ranking, a fact reflected in its price. Palmer made many great wines while Margaux languished in the mid-twentieth century, and the 1961 remains one of the greatest legends of Bordeaux—certainly one of the best wines I’ve ever tasted. Curiously, it often excels in off vintages—like 1999 and 2002—and sometimes fails to dazzle in purportedly stellar years.
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