I think 40 is a milestone where people take stock of their lives; looking back as well as looking ahead. Some decide changes are in order. For me, those changes include getting to the gym more often and trying to eat less red meat and potatoes, and more fish and vegetables.
Do I have regrets? Well sure, who doesn't. But one does stick out more than most. And it's not even my fault. I was born in a bad year.
1969 was just a not good vintage across the board. There were a few gems scattered throughout the globe for 1969 but they were few and far between. And, according to what I could find, most of them have long passed their peak. If you were born in 1961, wow...you're golden! What a vintage that was for Bordeaux! And they are drinking marvelously from what I've read. But 1969? Here is esteemed wine critic Robert Parker's review on the 1969 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, a Premiere Cru (First Growth, or the best of the best).
"The 1969 Lafite has been consistently unusual to smell, with a cooked, burnt aroma, short flavors that suggest coffee and herbs, and a hollow framework. This is a poorly made, ungracious wine that is unpalatable. 62 points"
And that was from a top-flight chateau! Now, Beaulieu from Napa Valley made a pretty good private reserve Cabernet in 1969. I even found one in a wine shop in Los Angeles. The fill wasn't too encouraging (the actual amount of wine in the bottle), it didn't quite reach the bottom of the neck of the bottle. But I knew that once upon a time this was supposed to have been a pretty decent wine. It was pretty steep, about $200. Still, I was tempted. I decided to do a little more research before investing in this "birth year" wine. Good thing I did. Several different reviews had this wine long passed its peak. I decided I'd rather drink great wine from any vintage than mediocre to bad wine from mine.
I'm reminded of the story of Robert Mondavi's 70th birthday (as told in Julia Flynn Siler's The House of Mondavi): the managing director of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Philipe Cottin, gave Mondavi a bottle of Mouton from 1914, who was actually born in 1913. Cottin explained he hadn't given him a bottle from 1913 because it wasn't a good vintage. In a thick French accent he added:
"You are proof of an adage we have in France:
God cannot make great wines and great men in the same year!"
Guess I can live with that.
"A man cannot make him laugh - but that's no marvel; he drinks no wine."
~WM. SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV Part 2
Posts
2 comments:
Happy birthday Greg,
I was thinking about you and thinking that this might be a milestone year for you. Not so it seems for the vino from that year.
I look forward to seeing you soon.
PD
Two things:
1. Zach recently read a whole article about how one of the benefits of red wine is that when drank while eating a meal with red meat, it actually prevents some of the less-good-for-you stuff to get into your body somehow. So eating red meat while sipping red wine is better for you than eating the red meat alone. There's a great excuse to break open the bottle when splurging on the beef. ; )
2) My friend's brother-in-law turned 40 last year, I think it was, maybe the year before, and threw this huge bash where he spent several hundreds of dollars (if not thousands?) on vintage wines from his birth year for everyone to sample.
How was 2008 for wines? Too early to tell still? B/c you could do something similar for a big wedding anniversary one day. ; )
Post a Comment