Wine financials – you do the math!

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Steve Shipley

In my last blog post, I talk about the mark-ups that restaurants place on wine. I do not begrudge a restaurant making a profit on wine or other alcohol as it is often the difference between a restaurant succeeding or being forced to close their doors. But the restaurant needs to fair and competitive. Most restauranteurs tell me a typical wine list price should be about 220% – 250% the price of what you can buy the bottle for retail. And I am comfortable with this. But as I mentioned, I will not frequent restaurants that charge over 350% of the typical retail price per bottle.

Wine Math

Here are a few other tips on wine financials and what to pay for wine and how to use wine with the right financial outcomes.

Buying very expensive wine

In general don’t! During my life, I expect that I have purchased over 5,000 bottles of wine. I have never paid more than $1,000 per bottle. In fact, only twice have I paid between $500 – $1,000 per bottle and that was for (1) a 1971 Penfolds Grange, and (2) a full bottle of a 1971 Chateau D’Yquem – both birth year wines for my wife’s 40th birthday party.

I have spent over $200 per bottle about 40 times, including the two bottles mentioned above, another 8 or so Grange, a dozen 2005 Bordeaux’s, some excellent Montrachets, and a few special bottles of Napa Valley wines. And every other bottle of wine I have purchased has been less than $100. Therefore, I have spent more than $100 per bottle for less than 1% of the wine I have purchased.

There are excellent bottles of wine well under $50 per bottle. I have had some truly outstanding wines for $10 – $20 per bottle. And most people cannot tell the difference or in fact, actually like more the cheaper wines because they are more open and ready to drink, and the taste is something they are more used to. Be hesitant to spend over $30 – $40 per bottle unless you really know your wines.

Doing BYO (Bring Your Own)

I love BYO and you save a fortune! I have often brought great wine for a special occasion in a restaurant and saved thousands of dollars. Plus I can pick out exactly what wines I want from my cellar. For some of my birthday functions I have brought between $500 – $800 worth of wine and buying the equivalent wine in the restaurant would have cost me $2,500 – $3,500. That is a great savings!

Expect to pay up to $25 per bottle or $25 per head for corkage. While this may add $150 to the cost of the meal, it is still far cheaper than spending $3,000 for the wine! The corkage fee is very reasonable and includes them decanting the wine, pouring it for you, replacing and using their best glassware, and clearing and cleaning the glassware. I usually also bring a nice bottle along to gift the sommelier or owner also to let them know I appreciate being able to BYO.

Many restaurants, including Tetsuya’s allow you to do this. Or just ask and many restaurants will be glad to provide this service for you even if it is not listed as a service. BYO means a bill for a great night out that would be half of what it otherwise would be and most restaurants are glad to just have your food business.

Buy aged wine instead of current vintages

There is a glut of wine on the market – more people are selling than buying. Therefore, aged (and ready to drink) wines can be had for about the same cost as current vintages. Why spend $500 for a bottle of current vintage Grange when you can get the 1981 or the 1985 for the same price or just a little more. You would need to cellar the 2007 Grange for at least 20 years, while you could drink the 1981 or 1985 immediately!

Cellaring a bottle of wine usually cost between $2 – $3 annually. Therefore, if you need to cellar a bottle for ten years, it will cost you $20 – $30 per bottle in addition to what you paid for it! There is so much aged wine available that it does not make sense to buy a current vintage when you can get an aged and ready to drink bottle for the same amount or even cheaper than the current vintage. Someone else has paid for the storage and care and you do not have to! Nor do you have to wait a decade or more to drink it!

If you can get a great bottle of vintage wine for less than 25% more than the current vintage, you are getting a steal.

Cooking with wine

My wife makes a great beef stroganoff. She also makes great risotto and a few other dishes that require 100 ml of white wine. With the beef stroganoff, we often have an aged Chadonnay like a Montrachet. A year ago, we had the bottle open and were enjoying a glass of $150 Montrachet while cooking, and indiscriminately used 100 ml of the Montrachet as part of our beef stroganoff recipe. It was decadent and delicious, but certainly did not materially make the beef stroganoff any better. It also meant I had one less small glass of a great wine to drink! It also added $20 to the cost of our tray of beef stroganoff!

When we made beef stroganoff last weekend, we drank the same bottle of wine, but I opened a bottle of 2005 Kelman Semillon to be used for cooking. This is a nice wine which I got for free as a land-owner in their cooperative vineyard. The bottle is worth $18 at the cellar door, and therefore only added about $2.40 to the cost of the beef stroganoff.

An open bottle of wine will only last a few days for drinking purposes, but will last several weeks if you are using it for cooking. Therefore, we try to make several meals over a few weeks which require wine as part of the recipe and open a cheaper bottle of wine for the cooking. And the 2005 Kelman Semillon is a very good wine for the money and I am now enjoying a glass while writing this blog! Using an $18 bottle of wine for several meals and several glasses in between is a far better approach than using 100 ml of $150 bottle of wine for cooking!

We also keep about a dozen bottles of both white and red wine we know is no longer good for drinking but can still be used as a marinate or for cooking as need be. The last few batches of Coq au vin we made used a 1989 Lindemans St George Cabernet Sauvignon for marinating! While past due for drinking, it was still great as a marinate.

Hopefully this ‘wine math’ made sense and was useful and helps you get far better drinking mileage out of your wine buying and consumption. Enjoy!

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014. Steve Shipley
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The wines of my 60th birthday were fine indeed!

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Steve Shipley

It was quite a birthday weekend overall, with guests flying in from the US and Melbourne to join those of us already based in Sydney. We started with a Friday evening pre-birthday dinner celebration at Fish at the Rocks (with our out-of-town visitors) with some great wines, including:

1992 Waverley Estate Semillon;
2007 La Belle Voisine Chassange Montrachet;
1996 Lindemans St George; and
2005 Chateau Haut Beregon Sauternes

This on its own was a great line-up! Then on Saturday, I tasted three wines while being a guest on Food in Focus with Natascha Moy. By the time I returned from the show, I had a bit of a buzz having consumed almost 750 ml by myself (one needs to make sure they are voicing the right opinions when one is serving the public like I was that day)!

By the time I arrived home, Jay Huxley, Masterchef, had arrived and was preparing dinner, and what a dinner it turned out to be. A number of our guests (including most who had attended Deanna’s 40th birthday several years ago) thought it was the finest meal they had ever had! They felt that the wine drinking for Deanna’s 40th was the best wine drinking experience they ever had and it came with a great meal, but my 60th was the reverse – the best meal they ever had with a great line-up of wine.

It was my intent to make my 60th birthday the second best wine tasting meal I ever had, but I admittedly fell short. There were two main reasons for this. The first that being my 60th birthday, it was really tough to get birth year wines (1952) that were truly outstanding compared to Deanna’s 40th which had a birth year of 1971 when we had:

1971 Lindemans Limestone Ridge;
1971 Penfolds Grange; and
1971 Chateau D’Yquem

each bottle easily being in the Top 10 bottles I have ever drank! But the most important reason was that Jay had developed such an awesome menu that it was actually difficult to match the very best wines with the food! For Deanna’s 40th birthday dinner, I presented the nine wines I wanted to drink to the chef and he did a magnificent job matching the food to the wine. But for my 60th birthday, I let Jay have total freedom and while he created a killer food line-up, it was difficult to match great wines to every course.

I had been working for a couple of months to pick a line-up of great wines for my 60th birthday, including thinking it was time to have our last bottle of the 1981 Penfolds Grange, and do that just after the 1991 Grant Burge Mesach (given to me for my 59th birthday BTW!) and the 1992 Henschke Hill of Grace. My original line-up of wines for my 60th, included:

1998 Pommeray Louis Champange
1990 Waverley Estate Semillon
2001 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling
2007 La Belle Voisine Chassagne Montrachet
2005 Chateau Brane-Cantenac
1991 Grant Burge Mesach
1992 Henschke Hill of Grace
1981 Penfolds Grange
1997 Chateau D’Yquem
1967 Lindemans Vintage Port

However, once I saw Jay’s menu, I knew I needed to back off the big reds (especially the Shiraz) and I also ‘downgraded’ some of my choices, including moving from the 1990 Waverley Estates Semillon to the 1992 Waverley Estate Semillon (which we had the night before at Fish at the Rocks), and I also decided to drink the 1980 Lindemans Vintage Port instead of the 1967. I only have two bottles of the 1990 Waverley Estate Semillon left and I needed a good bottle and a back-up bottle to share with my wife’s boss who I greatly admire and who is a Semillon fanatic, and I wanted to sip the 1967 Lindemans Vintage Port over several months instead of ‘gulping’ it down at the end of a boozy meal, which I have mistakenly done with some iconic Ports previously.

But the key thing about Jay’s menu is that it demanded more whites than reds and the reds had to be more refined than the big Shiraz’ that I had nominated for the evening. Therefore, I eliminated the:

2005 Chateau Brane-Cantenac
1991 Grant Burge Mesach
1992 Henschke Hill of Grace
1981 Penfolds Grange

I also decided upon seeing the desserts and having some guests who would never have the experience again to go with the 1975 Lindemans Porphry instead of the 1997 Chateau D’Yquem. I only ended up using two wines from my original list being the 1998 Pommeray Louise Champange and the 2008 Grosset Polish Hill.

So what was the menu and matching wines for the evening? It was as follows:

Upon arrival – Bollinger NV Champagne
Tian of Alaskan King Crab, black caviar and radish – 1998 Pommeray Louise Champagne
Sousvide Pork Fillet, red cabbage, cauliflower puree and lentil pear salad – 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling and 2007 La Belle Voisine Nuits St George (Pinot Noir)
Tomato heart and gin shooter, in tomato tea and basil oil – finishing off the 1998 Pommeray Louise Champange and 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling
Smoked eel, jamon croquette with beetroot and apple – Rose Vin de Pays du Vaucluse
Vichy Asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk – 2009 Bouchard Perrin & Fils Puligny Montrachet
Charcoal octupus in romesco sauce and verde oil – 2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
Confit duck in mushroom sauce, abalone and star anise consume – (we continued to drink whatever wines we had going at the time!)
Canon of saltbush lamb in minted pea soup and taro – 2000 Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon
Spiced poached pear crispy wonton, salted caramel and double cream – 1975 Lindemans Porphry
Death by Chocolate – 1980 Lindemans Vintage Port and Bailey’s NV Rutherglen Muscat

As you can imagine, we were quite satiated by the end of the evening!

This post has become quite a bit longer than I had expected, so I will leave my review of the food and wine matching and descriptions to the next post. I just wanted to let you know that this was a very special meal – the best meal I have ever eaten thanks to Jay Huxley and his team, and among one of the best wine drinking experiences I have ever had. Not every meal is like this though. Tonight I am having a Chinese pork bun and drinking a 1997 Rosemount Show Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. But it is still great as I am sharing the evening with my loved one over good food and good wine. What could be better?

If it’s Semillon, make it a Hunter Valley Semillon!

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Steve Shipley

In most parts of the world, except Sauternes and Australia, Semillon is a lesser known white grape compared to Chardonnay, Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc. That is a shame because Semillon is an amazing grape highly influenced by terroir and goes well with a wide variety of food. I love Semillon with eggs (my breakfast wine with an omelet or fritatta!). It also goes well with Thai food, Indian food, pesto (at least I hope so because I am going to try that this evening!), denser fish, and some crustaceans.

It also goes well with cheese or on its own. In fact, I am drinking a glass now as I write this blog. I have a rare opportunity to spend the next few hours uninterrupted, writing and drinking wine, and my wine of choice this afternoon is Semillon. I must admit that I thought a Riesling would go nice with the chicken and spiral pasta with pesto meal we are having tonight, but I wanted to try a Semillon, especially the one featured in this post, which is the 1999 Moss Wood Semillon.

Frankly, I only drink Semillon from the Hunter Valley or Botrytis Semillon in dessert wines from Sauternes; such as the world famous and world best Chateau D’Yquem (which I claim is the best wine in the world in a previous post). Why would you do anything else? Hunter Valley Semillons are without comparison. I have had some Semillon from Margaret River blended with Sauvignon Blanc in the Pierro LTC which is an excellent wine for the money and the 25% Semillon makes the Sauvignon Blanc actually drinkable and a good wine to match with fish. I do not enjoy Sauvignon Blanc as a grape. For starters, it is the most identifiable and pronounced tasting grape there is. If you cannot blind taste a Sauvignon Blanc, you are going to have a tough time recognizing any other type of grape. Sauvignon Blanc just does not have the subtlety of flavor that the other grapes do. People often describe Sauvignon Blan as tasting like “cat’s pee!” This should be all the commentary we need to steer away from Sauvignon Blanc!

I was recently given a bottle of the 1999 Moss Wood Semillon. Moss Wood is one of the premier wineries in the Margaret River and makes a magnificent Cabernet Sauvignon. Therefore, if I was going to experiment with a Semillon away from the Hunter Valley, this would be a good one to try.

This wine is very flavorful with melon tastes and still has some acid. However, it is not well balanced and seems like the flavors are fighting with each other and fighting my palette. With 13 years of age, you pick up some great flavors (and it does have a beautiful color which provides anticipation that this will be a great wine – only to disappoint once you drink it), but for a museum Semillon, one could do far better back in the Hunter Valley. (See my post on Museum Semillons for some great recommendations.)

I was told this wine had some variability with the corks, but the cork I removed was in perfect condition. The bottle I have opened is as good as it is going to get for this wine. It is enjoyable enough to drink and I will continue to write with a glass at my side and have some more with dinner, but it would not be among my favorites. Twice I have brought this wine over to friends for a meal, but have not opened it, and glad I am tasting it alone as this is not a wine that I would delight in sharing. Again, it is decent enough to drink, but with so many great, inexpensive wines, why go with a ‘decent’ wine?

If you are going to go for Semillon, make sure to get it from the Hunter Valley, or Sauternes if you can afford it!

Five best wine meals ever – Part 1

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Steve Shipley

I have had some great wines in my lifetime. Most have been memorable of their own accord. But the memories that last forever are when you have a line-up of great friends, great food and great wine, all which match perfectly. The memories of those times are enjoyed forever!

Over the next few weeks, I will be describing each meal, the event that warranted it, the friends involved and the wines, all which made the evening special. But the ranking to make my Top Five all-time wine drinking meals is judged on the wine itself and the wine line-up being truly great. While the friends and food added to the evening, they did not contribute to how that evening ranked – only the wine counted!

In this post, I will provide the event, and the list of wines. In subsequent posts, I will describe the friends and food that matched the wine that made those evenings special. My Top Five evenings (in reverse order) are the following:

#5 evening – My 59th birthday – November 26, 2011, at The Cut Bar & Grill

2005 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon
2000 Waverley Estate Chardonnay
2000 Houghton Museum Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
2000 McWilliams Mt Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
1975 Lindemans Porphry

#4 evening – BPAY Architecture and Support team reunion – August 29, 2012, at The Cut Bar & Grill

2009 Bouchard Pere & Fils Puligny Montrachet
2007 La Belle Voisine Nuits St George
1990 Lindemans Limestone Ridge (Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz blend)
2000 McWilliams Mt Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
2006 Chateau Reuissec Sauternes

#3 evening – My 58th birthday – December 2, 2010, at The Cut Bar & Grill

Pommeray Brut Champagne NV
1998 Tyrrell’s Vat 9 Shiraz
2001 Yalumba Octavius Shiraz
1981 Penfolds Grange
2005 Château Haut Bergeron Sauternes Dessert wine
1997 Château D’Yquem Sauternes

#2 evening – Deanna’s 41th birthday – March 17, 2012, at home with Jay Huxley Masterchef cooking

1998 Pommeray Louise Champagne
2009 Hugel Alsace Riesling
1990 Waverley Estate Semillon
2007 La Belle Voisine Nuits St George
2005 Chateau Brane-Cantenac (Margeaux)
2005 Château Haut Bergeron Sauternes
1997 Château D’Yquem Sauternes

#1 evening – Deanna’s 40th birthday – March 19, 2011, at Lindemans Winery

1998 Pommeray Louise Champagne
1987 Lindemans Padthaway Watervale Riesling
1990 Waverley Estate Semillon
1996 Wolf Blass Grey Label (Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz)
1996 Lindemans St George Cabernet Savignon
1995 Yarra Yering Dry #1
1971 Lindemans Limestone Ridge (Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz)
1971 Penfolds Grange
1971 Château D’Yquem Sauternes
1957 Lindemans Vintage Port

While we have had some evenings (such as our anniversaries) where the wines have been just as spectacular, they were limited to two bottles. What made the Top Five truly stand out was that we had more friends and more wines to sample, enjoy and compare.

I am actually not sure if I can write about the great time we had for Deanna’s 40th birthday without passing out as just writing up the list has me quivering! I am uncertain if we will ever be able to top that evening, but my 60th birthday is coming up in a few months, so we do have a reason to try! Hopefully, I can use that night to knock off the current #5 and possibly reposition a few of the other four spots!

A Cloud with a Silver Lining!

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Steve Shipley

The night before last I became sick with a viral infection in my lungs and yesterday it felt like I was ripping my lungs apart every time I coughed. I have had the shivers and a small head cold also. I finally went to the doctor this morning and got a script of antibiotics for the bacterial infection that was in my lungs (in addition to the viral infection). Needless to say, I have been drained of energy, sleeping most of the time, and certainly have not had a desire to drink wine, nor the energy to write about it.

However, like most passions, I found I was really missing both (1) drinking wine, and (2) writing about it. While I have had a number of topics about which I wanted to write, I just could not get focused enough to turn out a column. Last weekend, I cranked out four blog postings of some size and complexity to have available for publication during the week. This weekend’s efforts are limited to this one post.

But I found myself constantly thinking about wine, and was able to pull up memories of how different wines tasted. And that is the silver lining in the cloud! I realized that even if I am at the point health-wise where I do not have the physical ability to ever enjoy wine again, I will always have memories that I can draw upon to continue to savor the experience. And a great part of enjoying wine, is not just the tasting but sharing the experience with others!

I recently found out from one of my MW (Master of Wine) friends that we start to lose our palate around the age of 65. This greatly concerned me as I am 59 and have more wine than I can drink in the next six years! However, he assured me that the loss of capabilities is minute and really of concern more so for wine judges and ‘super tasters.’ For example, James Halliday, the great Australian wine critic is in his mid-70s and still able to perform his avocation at the highest level.

I plan on drinking wine regularly for the next 20 – 30 years (God willing), and hope that my taste buds are up to the task. However, if they are not, then I am still certain that I will enjoy the experience, but utilizing my memory more than my taste buds! And it might be a real blessing as I may no longer be able to discern that small, but quite noticeable difference between the 1997 Château D’Yquem (at $300 per half bottle) and the 1998 Château D’Yquem (at $180 per half bottle)!

1988 Lindeman’s Verdelhao – one of the best white wines I have ever drunk

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Steve Shipley

“Yes”, that’s correct – Lindemans’ spelled “Verdelhao” that way back in 1988. Most Verdelhos will not last more than several years in the cellar. But somehow we got our hands on two bottles of this great wine back in 2006, and had one in 2008 which I remember as being superb. This Verdelho was definitely built to last!

Our friends, Owen and Lucie, recently got engaged and we have been looking for a time to have a great meal together, which is far too infrequently, and our next meeting for dinner was scheduled for 1 September! But a class they were scheduled for over the weekend was canceled and we happen to be free which provided the opportunity to get together this last weekend, and we jumped at it.

They wanted to treat us to a meal at their house because we had recently given them a bread maker we were no longer using. Owen and Lucie are really nice people, great cooks and have a great palate for good wine. Therefore, it is always a pleasure to share a meal and wine with them and I put ‘extra’ effort into selecting wines we can drink together.

Owen really wanted to provide the wines that evening and we were going to just bring a bottle of the 1998 Pommeray Louise Champagne as a celebration of their recent engagement. This is one of the world’s best Champagnes and the celebration was worthy of such a fine wine. And I was glad to have an easy time of it, by selecting a great wine to match the celebration, not the meal – that would be Owen’s job that night!

However, Owen called me in the afternoon, and informed me that we would be having a very slightly seared tuna steak with guacamole and chili (which could be added in for taste) followed by a fried lightly battered flathead fish. He had some great reds picked out (which I will describe in another post as to how well they went with the tuna and flathead!), but wanted to start with a white for the cheese platter before the meal, and have an option of a white with the fish if we so wanted that choice instead of the reds.

I had to put on my thinking hat and see what I could come up with. It would have been very easy to pick out a good Sauvignon Blanc or Semillon / Sauvignon Blanc blend, but there is nothing special in either of those choices.

Fortunately, I came across my last bottle of the 1988 Lindemans Hunter Valley Verdelhao. I knew this would be a magnificent treat regardless of what food we matched it up with, assuming the bottle was still good. I had been keeping it stored for the last four years between 2 – 6 degrees Celsius and ready for drink instead of the normal 14 degree Celsius of my cellar. I believe this helped ‘save’ the wine as it maturation process would have slowed to a trickle. Also, knowing the cork was almost 25 years old, I found a back-up bottle (1999 Moss Wood Semillon) if needed, and brought along my Ah So cork screw. The Ah So cork screw is about the only way to get old cork out of an old bottle. It is designed to be able to get old and soggy corks out of the bottle, but you still need to be careful and use only a small amount of pressure when putting the Ah So around the cork. I have had several incidents where the cork has been pushed into the bottle when not careful.

As delicate as I tried to be, the cork broke half-way through. Fortunately the cork did not appear compromised, just weak and soggy. Then I had the issue of not being able to secure the bottom half of the cork without pushing it into the bottle. It was not my intent to filter or aerate the wine since the structure of a 25-year-old wine is fragile at best. However, at this point, we decided to do that with a slightly larger mesh which was able to remove any cork from the wine without causing too much damage to the little remaining structure. To stop the cork in the bottle from catching in the neck and slowing or stopping the flow of the wine when pouring, I used a chopstick to hold the cork away from the neck, a method that works really well if you ever find yourself in that situation.

I was certainly excited to find when pouring the wine into the decanter that it had a rich, golden hue to it, without any indication of a brownish or other “off” color which means the wine is past its best drinking period. And once I brought the decanter to my nose, I knew we had struck “liquid gold!”

Starting off the evening with this bottle of wine set the stage for everything that followed – it was a magnificent evening and meal overall. The wine was huge and robust with great flavors of mandarin and tangerine, and a texture which seemed to float over the tongue. Just holding the wine in my mouth was a thrill, experiencing everything the wine had to offer.

I have drunk a lot of wine in my time, but this would have to be in my Top 3 white wines ever along with the 1971 Chateau D’Yquem and the 1991 Lindemans Sauvignon Blanc.

Why I think Chataeu D’Yquem is the best wine in the world

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Steve Shipley

Many people believe that Chateau D’Yquem is the finest wine in the world and it is difficult not to agree with that assessment. For starters, the French classify their wines according to an appellation rating of Premier Crus and Grand Crus of First, Second, etc. growths down to Village and Table wines.

In the top tier are such stars as Lafite Rothschild and Haut-Brion, and a few others. However, only one wine in the world has ever been given a ‘premier cru superior’ and that is Chataeu D’Yquem. I was first introduced to the wine by my great friend, Michael Axarlis, when four of us were out drinking one evening. We had the 1997 vintage and it was truly magnificent. Several months later, it was Deanna and my 9th anniversary and we celebrated by having a bottle of the 1997 and then tried the 2004 for comparison. It was sinful to drink the 2004 that early – most Chateau D’Yquems should be laid down for 20 – 50 years or bought for the next generation. We then found a few bottles of the 1997 and the 1998 vintages at a ‘reasonable’ price (it is also one of the most expensive wines in the world!) that we now have in our cellar.

Thomas Jefferson also proclaimed it as one of his most favorite wines and purchased a lot of it for himself and the White House when George Washington, and then he,were President.

In total, we have have drunk 7 bottles of Chateau D’Yquem in our life, including 4 of the 1997 vintage (a great year!), one from 1998 (which we just had for our 11th anniversary, and the 2004 vintage which was part of our 9th anniversary. But the greatest bottle of all was the full bottle we bought and shared at Deanna’s 40th birthday party. As Deanna proclaimed, “It’s like having sex in my mouth”!

Now I will be a bit more restrained and just say that it is the best wine I have ever had, and I will tell you the reason why it is different from all other wines that I drink. When I open a great bottle of wine and pour a bit into the glass to ‘nose’ it and taste it to make sure it is OK, I am often taken by the great bouquet the wine has and how it seems to fill my senses. But with EVERY bottle of Chateau D’Yquem I have ever had, my reaction to ‘nosing’ the wine is one of a physical reaction and pure elation.

My nostrils flair and my chest starts to pulsate. (I could graphically compare this to another experience where this happens, but will pass for now!) The intense pleasure of smelling a Chateau D’Yquem actually overwhelms my body which is no longer under my direct control. It is like my body has struck a perfect harmonic motion with the universe.

While I have had some truly great wines over the years, it is only Chateau D’Yquem that does that to me and it has done it EVERY time. These pictures (the two immediately above) have been taken from our 11th anniversary dinner (a few weeks ago) and the vintage is 1998 which was not a great year (by Chateau D’Yquem standards!). However, it was still a remarkable wine. At our 9th anniversary dinner when I did this with the 1997 vintage, I brought the glass to my nose about 15 times in a row and the physical reaction occurred each and every time.

Chateau D’Yquem is a unique wine in terms of the labor that goes into making it, combined with the perfect location to be able to grow the grapes. They use a Botrytis Semillon and have 11 pickings over 21 days. This is much more labor intensive than most makers of a Bortytis Semillon desert wine which have one picking when they think most of the grapes have enough botrytis on them. With Chateau D’Yquem, each grape is ripened almost to perfection, and not an average of the entire batch of grapes, with some being too ripe and others not ripe enough.

We only open a bottle to celebrate very special occasions, but have great joy when we do. I have drunk many outstanding wines in my day, but nothing makes me pulsates like Chateau D’Yquem!

SAZ in the Cellar

Wine appreciation and enjoyment

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