Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [75]
In 2006 Spurrier again thought that it would be amusing to have a Franco-California competition, during which exactly the same red wines, now aged by a further thirty years, would be matched against one another. This time there were two juries, one sitting in California and one sitting in London; their marks were combined to produce the eventual winners. A California wine again came first: this was the Ridge Montebello 1971, which had come fifth in 1976; the second place went to Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973, the winner in 1976. It was decided that the white burgundies versus chardonnays tasting, however, should not try to replicate the earlier contestants, as the wines could not be expected to show well after thirty years. It was also decided to look at a recent vintage for the reds, so five Bordeaux wines from 2000 and one from 2001 were tasted against six California cabernet sauvignons from, variously, the 2000, 2001, and 2002 vintages. The result for the white wines was that a French wine, Puligny-Montrachet Les Purcelles 2002 Domaine Leflaive, came first; the next four were California chardonnays, with the wine from Chateau Montelena, whose 1973 had won in 1976, coming seventh. As for the younger vintages, Château Margaux 2000 came first by a considerable margin, with the next four places filled by California wines; the wine from Ridge came third, while that from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars came fifth.
There was satisfaction in mea sure for both sides in this second tasting. On the one hand, the results demonstrated that outstanding California wines could age well, a notion about which the French were extremely skeptical in 1976 (and the Americans a bit fearful). On the other hand, in 2006, younger French wines came in top in both the competition between burgundies and California chardonnays and that between younger Bordeaux and California cabernet sauvignons. Honor was saved.
Whatever happened to the Nicolas vans?
TALKING OF PARIS … Things come, and things go. Mostly we don’t notice, but a recent Internet forum raised the question: What was around when you were twenty-one years old that has completely vanished now?
Our first thought was: Paris.
Nonsense, of course. Paris is still there. But it is not the same Paris; in a few short years, the city has entirely changed. Now it is a modern European capital, in many ways indistinguishable from any other modern European capital. But back in the 1970s it was palpably different. It smelled different, it looked different; it even sounded different. The majestic peculiarity of its Citroën cars, so idiosyncratic that even their hydraulic fluid was different, made from vegetables. The zinc in every café on every corner. The hats the policemen wore. The idea of starting the day with a poussecafé. The ability, unthinkable to an Englishman, to get a drink whenever you wanted one. The cheapness and ubiquity of perfectly drinkable wine. The pervasive and evocative smell of black caporal tobacco. The list is endless.
But the first thing that occurred to us about the Paris that has gone is: whatever happened to the Nicolas vans? They were like British milk trucks, and every morning they would hum and rattle along the streets delivering the unpretentious but marginally drinkable Nicolas table wines, not to restaurants and wine merchants and bars, but to people’s private houses. The wine truck would draw up, the wine man would hop out, a couple of bottles would be deposited on the step or handed to the house -holder or concièrge, and off he would glide again, to stop again a few doors down.
It was, perhaps above anything else, the great signifier of French exceptionalism and savoir-vivre. In Britain, what you got delivered to your home by a man in an electric vehicle each morning was milk, which was healthy and pure and good for you. In France? Wine. Wine that they would drink with