Essex County Wine Society

Our second tasting of the year covered the much discussed 2003 vintage in Bordeaux and was led by Joel Mitchel. Joel walked us through a tasting of nine wines. We were to decide if the vintage is a great vintage or because of the very hot weather that year is too extreme a vintage to be considered outstanding.

Joel structured the tasting so that we first tasted three wines, which retailed for under $30, Chateau Faugeres, Chateau Fombrauge and Chateau Gloria. All of these wines showed high levels of tannin but did show some fruit. The Gloria had very oaky overtones. Of these three wines, the group favored the Fombrauge, one of the two St. Emilion wines.

The tasting was very informative and as usual Joel did a fine job of walking us through the wines. The favorites of the night were the Clos Fourtet and the Pichon Longueville Baron. Nonetheless, the sense of the group was that the presented wines of this vintage did not have the same “stuffing” as some of the better vintages such as 2000.

Joel also ran a little experiment by selecting three outstanding wines from one appellation so that we might identify such area. We failed miserably. We had guesses such as St Julien, St Estephe and Pauillac but no table guessed Margaux, which was the correct answer.

Our next tasting will be of Southern Italian wines led by Mike Aria on December 7, 2006. Mike who is a member of our wine society and probably one of our leading Italian wine experts lived in Italy for a number of years and has done extensive traveling throughout the country.

We must be honest and tell you that neither of us has very much background in Southern Italian wines. In fact we suspect that not too many members of the society have a strong knowledge of this region. The wine media has been playing up the improvement in quality of these wines over the recent past so we decided it was time for all of us to get a little smarter about these wines. We will be tasting wines from several sub-regions including Abruzzo, Sicily, Sardinia and Campania.

We will taste two wines from Sicily including the 2003 Donnafugata Mille Una Notte produced by the Rallo family which is considered to be one of the best producers in Sicily and this wine is consistently a Parker favorite. From Sardinia we will have at least one wine, the 1997 Argiolas Turriga (from Mike’s cellar). We believe the advisor to the producer was Giacomo Tachis, the same individual who worked with Antinori and created Tignanello and Sassicaia.

We will also taste several wines from Campania which is a region considered to be the best in the south of Italy. The primary grape in this area is the Aglianico grape, often referred to as the “Nebbiolo of the South”. We will be tasting the 2003 Feudi di San Gregorio Serpico which Parker rated 98 in the 2001 vintage (Wine Advocate #154) and the 2003 Montevetrano that Parker rated 93 in the 2001 vintage (Wine Advocate #154).

We are certain that we will all walk away from this tasting with a new appreciation for the wines of this up and coming wine region of the world

Our next tasting will be on January 4 when we taste the wines of the northern Rhone

The cost for this tasting will be $58 for members, and $72 for guests.

In vino veritas and a votre sante

Bob and Howard