Learn to Overlook Some Minor, Yet Irritating Flaws

The question was: Which wine was better, the 1973 Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon or the 1970 Souverain Cabernet? The discussion that ensued was lively and included comments about the latter wine being at its peak of maturity and about the former being still youthful and with time left to age.

It was last week, and I was having dinner with four friends. I was thankful that no one asked me to assign a number to each wine. We weren’t grading kindergarten papers here, after all, we were enjoying wine and hedonistically noting the greatness in each. We were looking for good things, seeking enjoyment.

Later, the discussion got me thinking: The sort of wine “evaluation” we had done was far different from the type of evaluation of young wines, where an attempt is made to determine which wines we should buy. In that setting, the wine evaluator assumes the position one would adopt when getting clothes back from the cleaners: looking for something we hope we don’t find--a flaw.

Clearly, the exercises are totally different. With young red wines, evaluation of a dozen, or a hundred new releases is a chore. The wines are rough and tannic and after a few wines, your mouth feels like it has just hosted the Battle of the Bulge. You strain to find nuances and tag them with proper names. You worry about a wine’s longevity.

Assigning a Rank

In the end, you assign it a rank, either with a numerical score or with some rating that allows you to discuss it with your peers. It is helpful in tracking a wine’s development, seeing if it gains or loses against its peers.

Ranking of wines by number when they are young is merely a shorthand method to give a very general impression (and one person’s impression at that) of a wine. Most important, a ranking system gives you no clue whatsoever to the style of the wine.

If you like Chardonnays that are big, chunky, chewy, oak-branch-scented mastodons and dislike those simple, lean, austere Chablis-like Chardonnays of delicacy and nuance, then a fat lot of good a three-star or 91-point rating will do for you.

Sipping older wines with friends at dinner, however, is worlds apart. Enjoyment is the primary goal and you don’t fret over little irritations that might have bothered you in a more critical, sterile setting.

It’s like your understanding of your friends. You take them at face value despite small annoyances; you like them in spite of minor flaws in personality. It’s similar with old wine, especially those bottles you’ve bought and invested money, time and emotion in.

(Even the people help to make a wine taste better. A friend once told me he was having dinner one night years ago with some people he disliked. The wine was a great vintage of a Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, one of the greatest of all Burgundies. He said he didn’t enjoy the wine because, “I didn’t like the people.”)

Any points that a wine is assigned when it is young fade into the background and eventually disappear when you are sitting down at the dinner table to sip an older wine that you have carefully preserved over time. In that setting you forgive minor flaws and try to enjoy what’s left.

Reticent Youth

Earlier in the evening, one of the guests had said that evaluating Pinot Noir when it was young was a difficult task because of the wine’s usual reticence to show much of its potential for bottle bouquet as it ages. He said Pinot Noir tends to be shy of any depth and complexity when youthful, and that the good ones become gloriously scented with bottle age.

I agreed, and that brought to mind an old friend’s suggestion some years ago that the federal government ought to pass a law that prohibits the sale of any Pinot Noir until it is at least five years old. The remark obviously was made in jest, but he argued that no Pinot Noir was worth anything until it had gotten some of that age in bottle.

But then I remarked that many young Zinfandels were hard to evaluate young because of their roughness and tannins; that Champagne was so hard to evaluate young because after a few minutes, the bubbles dissipate and the wine tastes different. . . .

Well, someone said, then it appears that all wine is hard to evaluate when it is young, and it dawned on me that the type of evaluation we were discussing was only for young wines and only for academic purposes.

It’s true that some people try to rate older wine, and I have no objection to that. Michael Broadbent, in his “Great Vintage Wine Book,” and others rank older wines so people who have a few bottles of such rarities will know which wines to drink now and which they can safely hang onto for a while longer.

The other night, before the Cabernets were served, we sipped a 1973 Kenwood Pinot Noir. We all liked the wine and recognized its beautiful patina of age, even though the host of the party said he didn’t think he would have recognized it as Pinot Noir had it been served blind.

Was it great wine? No, but it was very good and very enjoyable. In that setting, it was fun to drink the wine and worth the experience, and no one asked for a rating.

So I go back to thinking about evaluating young wines. The numerical rating system, without careful exposition by the evaluator about what kind of wine it is, is only a vague clue. Does the wine have excessive tannin? If so, will it age out and become smooth in time? If so, how long will that take? Does the wine have any dominant aroma characteristic? Is it a wine you have to cellar for 20 years to finally enjoy or is it a wine that may be enjoyed immediately?

Now let’s take the numerical rating system one step further: the vintage chart.

Vintage charts can be helpful. If you find out, for example, that on a 10-point scale, 1977 was rated a 4 (an awful year) in Burgundy and 1983 was an 8 (a good year), that fact would help you choose a Burgundy in a restaurant.

But vintage charts tell you nothing about individual wines. The differences between one good vintage and another are often embedded in each winery’s bottles.

Many Exceptional Cabernets

For example, people are now raving about the quality of the 1985 California Cabernets now hitting store shelves. And many are exceptional. But there are a number of wineries whose 1984 Cabernets are, in my opinion, better than their ‘85s. (I prefer the ’84 Cabernets of Keenan and Hess Collection, for example, to those wineries’ 1985s.) No vintage chart can hope to make such distinctions.

Occasionally I’ll be browsing in a wine shop or chatting with a sommelier at a restaurant and will ask about a wine with which I’m unfamiliar. It is most bothersome to hear a response based not on the wine, but on a vintage chart’s rating of the year.

Back to the question posed above: Which of the two Cabernets was better?

If I had to make a flat choice, I’d opt for the Caymus because of its life and depth, yet, with the grilled salmon, the Souverain was clearly the choice because of its amazing complexity and maturity.

One astute diner noted later that the Caymus, as spectacular as it was early, was even better after dinner with a plate of cheeses including one fairly sharp white Cheddar. The aeration had opened it; aeration had hurt the Souverain.

Numbers? They have their place, I guess, but I opt for a dinner for five, good friends and a lively discussion every time.

Wine of the Week: 1987 Beaulieu Vineyard Chablis ($4.50)--Chablis has long been used in this country as a synonym for “cheap white wine,” and often the stuff appearing with this designation was bland, sweet or sour, or all three. BV has been making a Chablis pretty much the same way, with Napa Valley grapes, for decades. This wine, 87% from Chenin Blanc, has a freshness rare in wines priced this low and often is discounted to $3.50. The wine is dry enough to beat out some of the similarly priced pop-premium Chardonnays.