A couple weeks ago I attended a blind tasting in New York of five of Chile’s most prestigious red wines (the Chileans refer to this category as “icon wines”) alongside five upper-tier wines from Napa Valley, Bordeaux and Tuscany. All wines were from the 2006 vintage and the non-Chilean selections were unknown to the participants until they were unveiled after the tasting. We did know that the Chilean wines were the top bottlings from wine mogul Eduardo Chadwick, who conducted the first such event in Berlin in 2004 and has followed it up with tastings in Tokyo, Toronto, Copenhagen, Beijing, Amsterdam, London and Stockholm. This year he took the event to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The roughly 70 attendees in New York were members of the wine trade (mostly sommeliers and retail buyers) and wine writers, almost all of whom had plenty of experience with high-end wine.
Chadwick conceived these events along the lines of the much-discussed (and Hollywoodized) Paris tasting in 1976, conducted by wine merchant Steven Spurrier, in which American wines came out on top on most judges’ scorecards after being blind-tasted next to prestigious French wines made from the same grape varieties. As at the “Judgment of Paris” in ’76, an upstart wine received the highest ranking from the New York tasters, but the exercise raised as many questions for me as it provided answers.
For the record, I was able to identify all five Chilean wines as coming from Chile, and was also able to pick out the two Napa wines, the super-Tuscan and the two Bordeaux examples, as was virtually every other taster I was able to talk to before the wines were unveiled. Our success rate speaks more to the wines’ distinctive character than to uncanny tasting ability, by the way. The Chilean wines were opulent and strongly influenced by fancy new oak, the Italian wine had a slightly rustic quality to its tannins, the Napa bottlings showed a combination of ripe fruit and dusty, herbal character, and the examples from Bordeaux were tight and ungiving but displayed impressive concentration and balance. My favorites of the tasting were the two Bordeaux, followed by one of the Chilean wines, and none of these three were especially showy. And therein lies the problem.
This type of tasting asks participants to pick their favorite wine “on the day,” as the Brits would say, but it’s rare that any criteria are provided. Favorite for what? To drink right now? To put away for 10 years? 20 years? More? Which wines are showing their charms now and which should not be expected to reach their ultimate potential for years—or even decades? Does this characteristic make one wine better or worse than another? The thought that kept nagging me was that an exercise like this is all about context—not to mention comparing apples and oranges—and people bring different expectations and criteria to such events.
In my own case, I was looking at the overall potential of the wines, and the 2006 Château Lafite-Rothschild (my #1 wine) and the 2006 Château Haut-Brion (my #2) are both wines for the patient collector. But, frankly, they provide little in the way of immediate gratification. They aren’t meant to in the first place. Those wines finished 5th and 3rd in the group voting, respectively, by the way. My third choice was from Chile, the 2006 Seña, which Chadwick originally made in a joint venture with Robert Mondavi but now owns outright.
By comparison the Chilean wines were flashy show ponies, showing seductive, fleshy and almost sweet dark fruit character, with lots of sexy (read: expensive) oak adding spiciness. They clearly seduced the crowd, as the top wine, by a narrow half-point margin, was the 2006 Errazuriz Kai Carmenère, which to me was perhaps the most oak-dominated wine of the day, though undeniably impressive for this variety. Coming in a very close second was the 2006 Opus One, which also impressed me and was my 4th choice in the tasting.
If the point that Chadwick was trying to make is that Chilean wines are delicious and often preferable to big-name wines from long-established growing regions, he made a big impression on the group. But I wonder how things will turn out if the exact tasting, with the identical line-up, is conducted in May of 2020, or May of 2030. And how many people care, or even should care, about the longer-term development of these wines, especially if they drink their wines within a few years of release? After all, that’s what you have to do at all but the most serious restaurants these days that can afford to age wines or purchase older vintages.
I wonder how many of the sommeliers in the room tasted through this set of wines and thought, “You know, if I’m going to be serving something tonight, this Kai or Don Maximiano or La Cumbre just tastes better than these young Bordeaux first growths right now.” Is the Chilean wine “better” because it is delicious young? Or does that quality disqualify it from greatness? And what about that Haut-Brion? It was tight as a drum in May of 2010, so does that mean it should be written off as “worse” than the sexy, flamboyant Don Maximiano?
I was happy to see so many serious tasters able to appreciate the high quality that Chilean wines can achieve, but I still have to wonder if tastings that are clearly weighted in favor of the most immediately accessible wines—and that require tasters to pick “winners” and “losers”—are the best way to make this point. On the other hand, at a time when so many wine consumers demand instant gratification, perhaps it is.
List of wines tasted, in the order in which they were presented:
2006 Château Lafite-Rothschild Pauillac (my #1; the group’s #5; $550-$750)
2006 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon S.L.V. Napa Valley (my #7; the group’s #8; $70)
2006 Viña Errazuriz Cabernet Sauvignon Don Maximiano Founder’s Reserve Aconcagua Valley (my #5; the group’s #4; $95)
2006 Tenuta San Guido Sassicaia Bolgheri (my #9; tied for #9 among the group; $180-$200)
2006 Viña Errazuriz Cabernet Sauvignon Viñedo Chadwick Maipo Valley (my #8; tied for #9 among the group; $175)
2006 Opus One Proprietary Red Wine Napa Valley (my #4; the group’s # 2; $180)
2006 Viña Errazuriz Carmenère Kai Aconcagua Valley (my #6; the group’s #1; $90)
2006 Château Haut-Brion Pessac-Léognan (my #2; the group’s #3; $350-$550)
2006 Viña Errazuriz Shiraz La Cumbre Aconcagua Valley (my #10; the group’s #6; $90)
2006 Seña Red Table Wine Aconcagua Valley (my #3; the group’s #7; $78)
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