Notes from a small trade tasting with Serge Hochar in Vancouver.

I hadn't seen Serge in a couple of decades, but he was looking great
and dapper as ever despite some recent health scare. He was on one of
his peripatetic promotional tours and had some of his recent wines with
him.

2003 Hochar Pere et Fils Rosé - Serge says he makes the Pere et Fils
wines to please everyone, while he makes Ch. Musar only to please
himself. Pale pink, pleasant and balanced with a hint of spice, a
middle of the road decent rosé for summer consumption. Made from
cinsault with some Grenache.


2001 Hochar Pere et Fils Red - this wine is bottled after 3 years
(6-7 months of it in wood) and is mainly cinsault. The colour is fairly
light, the nose was ripe with some pepper, and it was balanced, soft
and ready to drink,

1999 Musar - bright wine with leather and spice in the nose, and only
a hint of VA. Medium body, good acidity, and the tannins are quite
soft. Made from cabernet, carignane and cinsault. He considers this a
very good vintage, and the 1995 an excellent vintage.

1998 Musar - a little spicier in the nose, which carries through on
palate, a bit oxidative at the end. Forward wine.

1995 Musar - this was more like the vintages of old that I remember
fondly. More depth to the nose and markedly greater VA, which Serge
indicated was intentional. Sweet entry, quite juicy middle and good
length.

These wines have always been a bit unusual in that the seem to put on
weight as they age instead of the opposite. Hochar himself says that he
thinks Musar should be drunk from about the age of 15 onward.

I asked him about the difference in the showing of the 1995 versus the
later two vintages and he indicated that he had to cut back on the VA
quite a bit after.

He then presented his white wine, serving it last as he thinks it is
the most ageworthy and because he believes that it stands up to the
reds. It is made from two local varietals, obedieh and merwah, which he
posits were taken back to Europe following the Crusades, and became
what we know as chardonnay and Semillon. I have no idea if modern
scientific ampellographers agree.

1999 Ch. Musar White - now showing some colour, musk melon nose, a
bit reticent, and pleasant, full and balanced. One of his only wines
fermented in steel (he prefers concrete for the reds). Only the second
time I've tasted the Musar white, and maybe I just haven't had one
old enough (he went on about the lovely 1952), or maybe it just isn't
my cuppa chai, as I wonder what all the fuss is about.

Always interesting to revisit this producer - I very much enjoyed the
wines from the 1970s, then thought they had dropped the ball a bit in
the 80s. The 1995 was enough to convince me that they can still produce
a pretty interesting wine, and I'll keep an eye on them, if only for
use in blind tastings where you can easily fool everyone, as long as
they don't know that VA clue!

We had a discussion re Musar at '96 Bdx dinner Monday. Opinions are of
course divided. I agree that VA is more characteristic than brett (per
your comments at Robins). In fact VA is about only thing one can count
on in Musar. My problem is the bottle variation. I could stand it not
knowing WHAT I was going to find when it was $20, at $30+ there are too
many dependable alternatives.

But my friend Matt defends them, as long as you drink them 20 years
old.

But Matt & I both can't stand the weird white.

DaleW wrote:

But Matt & I both can't stand the weird white.

Glad I am not the only one a bit perplexed by this white. Underwhelming
to say the least.

Maybe we are drinking it 20 years too soon? ;-)

The "weird white" as you call it, is a strange animal indeed...

While I find it underwhelming at the usual serving temperature for whites
(about 8° C), this wine actually blossoms when served at about 13°C!

And curiously enough, it is one of the few wines that go well with cocktail
sauce, for instance with a traditional "tomate-crevettes" i.e. tomatos
filled with grey North Sea shrimps in a light, home-made cocktail sauce...

Yves

"Bill S." wrote in message
oups.com...

DaleW wrote:

But Matt & I both can't stand the weird white.

Glad I am not the only one a bit perplexed by this white. Underwhelming
to say the least.

Maybe we are drinking it 20 years too soon? ;-)

On Sat, 13 May 2006 08:30:41 +0200, "Yves"
wrote:

While I find it underwhelming at the usual serving temperature for whites
(about 8° C), this wine actually blossoms when served at about 13°C!

Quite. Think of it as a red wine with no colour. In fact it has
noticeable astringency due, I am told, to some skin contatct.

Serve it to someone blindfolded, alongside a light red wine, both
wines ligthly chilled, and I expect many would not be able to
correctly identify the colours of the wines.

I like it.

--
Steve Slatcher
http://pobox.com/~steve.slatcher