[scrollGallery id=488]
B ordeaux wine lovers packed into Wine World Friday night for another delightful evening with Jean-Pierre Chambas, founder of Aleph Wines and an expert at finding great wine from Bordeaux.
Jean-Pierre is a storyteller, and he kept the crowd entertained, talking about history, culture and language as well as the wine.
He brought a dozen wines, priced reasonably. He said he brought them “to show you won’t have to mortgage your house to drink good French wine.”
Jean-Pierre said everyone knows about the legendary first growths of Bordeaux, but they are priced beyond the reach of most wine drinkers. The trick, he said, is to find good wines that are getting better and buy them before their prices go up.
“Wine in Bordeaux is changing,” he said. “Grapes are ripening better, alcohol content is going up. Also, better viticulture practices help make better wines.”
That means there is more good to great wine in Bordeaux than ever before. The 11 red wines and one white wine tasted Friday were fine examples of that. Jean-Pierre said all will drink well over the next 5-10 years.
“When you look at the structure of a wine, you are looking for good acidity and how the wine he built,” he said. “A great wine is a harmonious wine.”
The white wine was a 2010 vintage, but the rest were from 2009, a vintage many in the wine trade are raving about. Judging from the wines tasted Friday, there is a lot to like about that vintage.
Here’s the wine list:
Ch La Graviere 2010, Entre Deux Mers
Ch Val de Roc 2009, Bordeaux
Ch du Bosquet 2009, Cotes de Bourg
Ch Croix Mouton 2009, Bordeaux Superieur
Ch L’Estang 2009, Cotes de Castillon
Ch Fonbel 2009, St Emilion Grand Cru
Ch Lyonnat 2009, Lussac St Emilion
Ch Lanessan 2009, Medoc
Ch Pavel de Luze 2009, Margaux
Ch Clarke-Rothschild 2009, Listrac
Ch Moulin Riche 2009, St Julien
Ch Le Crock 2009, St Estephe
Where: Wine World, 133 Georgia Ave., North Augusta, SC
803-279-9522
e-mail: wineworld@wineworldsc.com.
When: Friday, May 18, 2012, 7pm.
