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Brad Courtney's Place
May 20, 2010
For this month's tasting, we headed over to Brad Courtney's father's house in Lake Oswego. The house sits on beautifully landscaped grounds with a Japanese Tea House. We all ventured down the winding steps during a break in the constant downpour before we sat down for the tasting.
Brad had two whites waiting for us in two decanters. Everyone quickly identified the wine in the first decanter as being a Sauvignon Blanc - and a few even identified it as coming from Marlborough, New Zealand. It just had that classic nose. The second one was a little more difficult to pin down. In fact, not one person correctly identified is as Sancerre.
We moved on to the first flight of four reds and Brad mentioned that he was going to handle this tasting a little different. He suggested that all four reds shared a common theme - after smelling the wine, we were a tad baffled as this suggestion didn't seem to hold water. He then confessed that all of the wine in this flight, and those coming up in the second flight, were clarets. But from different regions. Our task was to determine whether they were from France, Washington, New Zealand or Argentina. What? New Zealand produces clarets? The short answer is "yes" and they've been doing so since the 19th century. Go figure. We were also told that at least one wine would come from each region. With a region sheet in hand, we set off to show our skills at identifying the classic characteristics of Old World Bordeaux, Washington and Argentinian blends, and gulp, clarets from New Zealand. Oh, we also scored the wine.
We moved slowly through the first flight with everyone trying to guess when the New Zealand claret would show up. It clearly wasn't the first or third wines. Not so easy as to the second and fourth. We had the same difficulty when we got to the second flight. Combine palate fatigue, to some extent, with a lesson in identifying the region for these wines proved more difficult than we all imagined at the outset of our test. At the end of the tasting, Steve correctly identified five clarets, Loren four, Howard, Brant, Paul and Greg three, and Bill two. It should have been easier, right? As it turned out, four were Bordeaux, two were Argentinian, and Washington and New Zealand each had one bottle in the mix. Not one person correctly identified the wine down under.
Scoring-wise, the first wine, a 1998 La Dominique from St. Emilion, had the highest score at 92 points. The spread on the scoring for this wine was five points. The lowest scoring wine was the eighth bottle, a 2006 Ch. La Louviere from Pessac Leognan, at 86 points. This wine had a ten point gap, but it wasn't the largest gap. That came from the 2003 Ch. La Bernadotte from Haut Medoc at twelve points in large part because Greg was convinced the wine was corked - there was not agreement on the issue. Brad's average scores were the highest at 91 points. Greg scored the tasting at 87 points and the balance scored it somewhere between 88 and 90 points.
To go with the wine, Brad plated Ford Farms Rugged Mature English White Cheddar, Ford Farms Cotswold, Stilton colston Bassett and a five year Aged Gouda. For the carnivores in the group, Brad had Fra'mani Salmi Toscano and prosciutto. The dessert, an almond/fruit Frangipan, went well with the 2006 Donnafugata Ben Rye.
This was a great test for us. We knew the varietal (blend) and only had four regions to choose from. Yet, at the end of the day, we failed (somewhat miserably) at pegging the region. This was akin to a Back to School Night tasting we've done in the past with a twist.
For a complete list of the wine and the scoring, click here
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