After months of disenchantment with, if not each other, than certainly the process, my tasting group reformed. It’s a scab crew, some still can’t always make it, but we’re going to try and make it work this time.
We used to pick a theme (i.e. Malbec), have everyone bring a bottle, taste them in flights, and rank the wines accordingly. Gee, sounds like fun, huh? I wonder why we broke up. For fucks sake, I don’t think we could have sucked more of the fun out of it if we tried. And we all really like each other, like getting together. It was the process that sucked.
So our new format just has everyone bringing a bottle, tasting em blind one at a time, and talking about it. It’s cool judging the wines solo. As you taste a few, things start to stick out. That first wine you thought was Bordeaux was really Rioja or, in my case, a Washington Cabernet.
The 1983 Chateau St. Michelle Cabernet Sauvignon to be exact.
I couldn’t have been more shocked if someone told me cat was a Cylon. It was obvious the wine had age, but it had done so gracefully. It was elegant, restrained. It had a slight earthy edge that I can only describe as forest floor. (One hike in the Northwest will make that clear.) I had it pegged as a left bank Bordeaux, mid 80’s of modest rank, but the value of its class.
But when the reveal came, I wasn’t emparassed–I was mostly pissed off. I assure you, no bottle of Chateau St Michelle Cabernet produced these days is going to taste like that bottle of 83 in twenty years. No freaking way. That they made that wine… At risk of prematurely sounding like my Grandfather, they don’t make wines like that anymore. They chemically engineer all that beauty and character right out of em. Time warp that ‘83 and put it next to some of CSM’s current offerings and the ‘83 will look like a Frank Lloyd Wright tucked amongst neon strip malls.
What’s changed? For some wineries it’s no longer about tailoring, it’s about manufacturing. And don’t you dare think it’s about costs, it’s not. It’s about greed. Style and substance give way to the lowest common denominator of taste.
Chateau St Michelle, you used to be somebody.