My First First Growth!

(Editor: You have a typo in the headline.

Writer: No.  I don’t.

Editor: Yes, you DO – the word “first” is used back-to-back.

Writer: As Alexander Hamilton would say, “just you wait.”)

Our first wine tasting of the trip happened on Saturday afternoon, after our gourmet food tour, but before we were to get on the ship Sunday morning.

It was organized by Inspirato as a Bordeaux Wine Cellar Tasting, although it wasn’t in a cellar.  

(Editor: Does THAT matter?

Writer: No, it doesn’t, but I didn’t want my faithful readers to picture us in a cellar, quaffing wine.)

There were eight of us, plus Kelley D, who did a great job organizing the whole week.  (Btw, she has to be relieved this is over – talk about pressure, but like Eli Manning against the Patriots, she came through in the clutch.)

We were given thorough education in wine tasting – Carol and I have done this before, but not to this extent.  

We each received a paper to rank and rate and other aspects of wine tasting.  By the way, as far as I could tell, no one was spitting out their wine into the spit bucket.  We weren’t there to simple taste wine, but to actually consume it!

There were even little bottles of different aromas in wine.  The bottles were smaller than my pinky, but I’m not good with distinguishing aromas.  I drink wine that I like, but can’t distinguish very well between notes of chocolate and notes of sawdust.  

We did chat with everyone, but especially enjoyed the company of Jim and Ellen from Irvine, California.

Each of the wines were from a different appellation.  I thought I took a picture of each bottle, but I can’t find any evidence of said photo.  We weren’t snockered by the tasting – the pours weren’t Healthy South African Pours.

(When we went to the Winelands in South Africa in 2014, the tastes weren’t the little bit you get at most wine tastings, they were full glasses, so Carol and I refer to those full-on pours at tastings as “Healthy South African Pours” And let me tell you, those healthy pours are few and far between at wine tastings!)

The highlight wine to us was our first tasting of a First Growth – a Chateau Margaux 2006.  As we drank it, I looked up the price of a bottle – over eight hundred dollars to buy it in the U.S. 

From Wikipedia:

The need for a classification of the best Bordeaux wines arose from the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris. The result was the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855, a list of the top ranked wines, named the Grand Crus Classés (Great Classified Growths). With several thousand Chateaux producing their wines in Bordeaux, to be classified was to carry a mark of high prestige.

Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was the emperor of France starting in 1852, and he asked for the list of Bordeaux's best wines.  So the classifications were developed.  Only four wines made the list as First Growths.  Lists of Second Growths, Thirds, Fourths, and even Fifths totaling 61 chateaus.

The prestigious labels awarded first growths in the classification of 1855 retain their position no matter what, and the no new wine has been added as a first growth since 1855, with the exception of one, Mouton Rothschild in 1973.

That seems kind of crazy to me – I understand that they believe the terroir doesn’t change, that the best areas for growing wine stay that way, but some other wines deserve the label, and it’s possible that what used to be the best no longer is.

St. Emilion does it right – it reclassifies every ten years, so wineries can move up or down the rankings.

Overall, the wine tasting was fun to do, and I always learn something at these “how to taste wine” lessons.  That said, I don’t take much enjoyment from doing all – the wine I’ve opened, I’m going to drink.  And, by the way, only twice have I turned away a wine because it was corked. . .both times at restaurants, and both times the sommelier tasted it, made a face, and agreed.

(Editor: Sommelier, huh?  You frequent fancier restaurants than I do!

Writer: Well, it could have been waiters, I don’t remember the specifics.  I was trying to give them a promotion!)

There are stacks and stacks of wines.

Different common sizes of wine bottles,

although during the week, we saw bottles 

as large as 21 liters (over 5.5 gallons!)

Our six wines, and our test.

Carol inspects the color.

Glen asks, "when can we drink it!?"

Glen looks at the color against the white

background, proving that he really just

wants to drink the wine!