A Hedonist in the Cellar_ Adventures in Wine - Jay McInerney [56]
The challenge they faced was that it’s very difficult to create great wine using other people’s grapes, since the buyer’s and seller’s motives are basically at odds. Growers, especially if they are paid by the ton, want to maximize their yields to maximize their profit, and high yields are the enemy of concentrated wine. The solution, as many grape buyers have concluded, is to pay by the acre and not by the ton, encouraging the growers to strictly limit yields. In creating Bond, Harlan seems to have gone a step further than usual by devising a long-term profit-sharing plan with his growers.
The name Bond, besides being a family name on his mother’s side, is intended to convey this idea of a mutual partnership between the Harlan team and the various growers. Harlan speaks of it as “a convenant.” If this sounds a little fervent, all I can say is that great wines are inevitably the result of an obsessive vision. And Harlan has figured out a way to keep these vows intact. “It takes ten to twenty years,” Harlan says, “to build a name, for us to make these vineyards recognized.” Under his agreement with the owners, the vineyard names under which Bond produces the wines can only be used jointly. If a grower and Bond later part ways, neither can use the name again. Even more unusual is that Harlan reserves the right to tinker with the blending of the Bond wines if vintage conditions call for it, in order to maintain a Bond standard. Thus the possibility exists that a future Bond Melbury may be fine-tuned with juice from Bond or Harlan vineyards—a fairly radical concept, since it mixes the seemingly contradictory single-vineyard ideal with the idea of a proprietary house style, making for a kind of a virtual single-vineyard wine. “It hasn’t happened yet, but we’re allowing ourselves the option to make a better wine,” Harlan says, and hence there is no actual geographical information on the label. Wine purists may balk at this concept. But Harlan believes that “the discerning wine consumer of the twenty-first century wants a consistency of quality.” And he should probably expect it at a hundred and fifty a bottle.
Bond started with two vineyards, Vecina and Melbury, about eight acres each, and added a third, St. Eden, with the 2001 vintage. (The eventual goal is six Bond wines.) Based on the ’01 and ’02 vintages, the only ones I’ve tasted, the Vecina is the powerful, structured, action-film vineyard, the Latour of the group, while the Melbury (my favorite) is more lush and delicate, like a great Pomerol; the St. Eden (which has garnered the highest Parker rating) seems to split the difference. The ′03 wines may be even sexier than the ′02s and are eminently worthy of their illustrious pedigree. Just when I think I’m bored by Napa Cabernets, along comes Bond and its stable of Thoroughbreds. After tasting the wines, I’m thinking that rules are best left to the French.
“A GOOD AND MOST PERTICULAR TASTE”
Haut-Brion
Haut-Brion saved my life. Well, maybe not my life, exactly, but certainly my dignity. I’d arrived late for a dinner at La Grenouille, the stuffy New York temple of haute cuisine. Eleven other guests were seated; the hostess, an Asian princess, announced, “Here’s Jay—he knows wine. He’ll guess what we’re drinking.” Before I could find a heavy object with which to bludgeon her, the sommelier handed me a glass and poured from a carafe. He stood back and smirked, while the other guests looked up at me expectantly, as did diners at nearby tables.
The whole setup reminded me of the dream in which I stand naked in front of a classroom. With a sense of resignation bordering on despair I stuck my nose in the glass. “Haut-Brion,” I declared, eliciting a chorus of gasps. I examined the color, and took a sip. “Nineteen eighty-two,” I pronounced.
I sat down and basked