Saturday was the annual Bordeaux tasting hosted by John Rimmerman of
Seattle's Garagiste Wines. All wines were 2002 vintage, decanted two
hours prior, then poured back into their bottles.

After teasing us with an e-mail listing a dozen or so labels, John
handed out a note sheet with 21 "potential" wines. There were only 16
bottles on the tables, all of them wrapped in foil to ensure a blind
tasting. His system: Taste them all, rank them from 1-16. Also, turn
in a sheet ranking your top five.

There were approximately 50 participants, ranging from novice tasters
to wine writers to wine makers. A wide range of palates, to say the
least.

Here is how the wines finished in the voting.

1. Pape Clement
2. Mouton Rothschild
3. Latour
4. Osoyoos Larose. This year's ringer turned out to be the new release
from British Columbia!
5. Palmer
6. Leoville Barton
7. Lafite Rothschild
8. Margaux
9. Lynch Bages
10. Haut Brion
11. Cheval Blanc
12. Pichon Lalande
13. Leoville Las Cases
14. Cos D'Estournel
15. Vieux Chateau Certan
16. Montrose

My top five choices we

1. Mouton Rothschild (#2)
2. Lynch Bages (#9)
3. Pichon Lalande (#12)
4. Pape Clement (#1)
5. Cheval Blanc (#11)

Just under those I ranked the Latour, Osoyoos, and Margaux, which, if
I'd tasted at some other point in the proceedings, I might have ranked
higher. I don't know what that says about my palate compared with the
other tasters, but I nailed down the overall top two in my top five,
with overall numbers three and four barely trailing. (I didn't assign
point values to any of the wines.)

John said he expected the Pape Clement to be the #1 pick, but when
asked his favorite, he surprised many of us by citing the Palmer.
Though it finished as 5th overall, I thought the Palmer had way too
much funk. I lumped it in with the Vieux Ch. Certan (some complexity,
but too much alcohol), the Lafite (well-balanced, but an odd finish)
and the Montrose (took one sip and almost gagged, tried another sip
and dumped it) as my bottom four.

My biggest surprises:

Let's start with the 2002 Cos. Holy moly! This is the wine Parker
raved about, gave it a 95-100! I tried to buy this wine a week ago
from Premier Cru at $60 pre-arrival, and it was scooped up before I
could respond to their e-mail. Now I'm wondering why. My notes:
"Immediate nice hit in the nose, dissipates fast; watery; no flavor."

The Margaux fooled me. It was big alright, but I thought it had a lot
more cab franc than the 8% listed by the winery. Conversely, I thought
the Cheval Blanc had Margaux qualities about it, and was
well-balanced.

JJ

thanks for interesting notes. I'm going to a big '02 tasting next month
(though only Medoc and Graves) and look forward to comparing!

JJ - any chance for more detailed notes on the 2002's (besides their
relative rankings)?

And Dale, look forward to seeing your notes as well.

Mark

On 20 Jul 2005 07:12:38 -0700, wrote:

JJ - any chance for more detailed notes on the 2002's (besides their
relative rankings)?

I took very short notes, mostly just for my own reference so I could
sort out my 1-16 ranking. I know several of the other people who
attended, and I'll see if I can get copies of their notes. Even if we
didn't agree on the rankings of particular wines, a collection of the
notes would at least give an overview.

JJ