A couple of weekends ago, I attended the annual Wine and Food Festival at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. It's a real occasion, consisting of 2 1/2 days of wine tastings led by winemakers or winery owners. It includes great meals and plenty of opportunity to chat with the hundreds of people who come to the festival from across Canada and the United States.
The highlight of the weekend was a tasting of Bordeaux from 1961. That year is considered one of the greatest of the 20th century in Bordeaux; the weather conditions eventually combined to produce a small harvest of almost perfect grapes — grapes that had just the right balance of flavour, acidity and tannins.
So there we were, the lucky 75 who got to taste one ounce of each from seven iconic châteaux such as Léoville-Las Cases, Pichon Comtesse and Palmer. The tasting cost $400, so each ounce cost almost $60. Pro-rate that and you get a per-bottle cost of almost $1,500. (I noticed that, unlike later tastings, there were hardly any spit-cups for this one!)
Was it worth it? I'd say that everyone who attended agreed it was. But then, what are you going to say after you've paid $400 for seven ounces of wine?
What I found fascinating about the tasting was not just the wines, in the sense that I would normally taste wines, but seeing how they had aged. Very few wines have the ability to last this long, even in the best conditions (all the wines at this tasting came from the cellars of the individual châteaux, not from auctions or stores where their cellaring history can't be guaranteed).
One wine, from Château Beycheville, was in amazing condition, with full fruit and lovely balance. Others were clearly on a long plateau or were beginning to slide off. The least impressive was Château Lynch-Bages. It had pretty much crossed the line: its fruit flavours had given way to flavours reminiscent of soy sauce, and the balance was very awkward. Still, almost all retained an impressive level of quality.
I'm not a wine geek who likes to go on about the superiority of Bordeaux over all other wines, but I wonder how many wines like these are made any more — even in Bordeaux, where there's been a shift toward earlier-drinking, more accessible styles.
But then you have to ask yourself why you want wine to last 40 or 50 years, anyway? Let's face it, by the time people are interested enough and can afford to buy this sort of wine, they're in their 40s and 50s themselves. By the time the wine is ready, they've either been ordered off wine for medical reasons or have lost the taste buds that enable them to enjoy it.
Still, there's real cultural and historical pleasure in tasting wines like this, and thinking that they were made the year Yuri Gargarin was the first man to orbit the earth, West Side Story hit the big screen and the Vietnam War was just beginning.
Women are increasingly prominent in all aspects of the world of wine. Six young female winemakers and château owners from Bordeaux will present their wines at a tasting and dinner at the Fairmont Château Laurier on Nov. 16. The evening starts with a reception at 6 p.m., moves on to a structured tasting of eight wines (6:30 to 7:30 p.m.) and then to dinner, with dishes paired with six wines (7:45 p.m.).
Tickets are $175 each and can be ordered from Vintages by calling 1-800-266-4764.
Today's wines include two Bollini wines from the Italian region of Trentino. Both are reduced in price until Nov. 27 (as is the Bollini Merlot). Another is a new line of unoaked ("naked") foreign-Canadian blends in the LCBO. Why on earth didn't they put these under screwcap?