Wine
About
by Eric Olson
Well, it's Tuesday evening about five o’clock in the early evening and as the temperature is going down outside, my feelings for Bordeaux go up inside. Haven't touched one all summer as I find them too aggressive in warmer weather but not so in the fall and winter. Just opened the newly arrived Ch. Haut-Gacherie, 2005 vintage and find it a nice "transition" Bordeaux. Certainly not too aggressive, but fairly mild with some modest tannins, and simple fruit and earth flavors. Good beginner wine if your interested in trying what I'm talking about for a modest $12.
The Bordeaux region is close to the Atlantic Ocean in the southwest section of France and produces an enormous amount of wine. The world's most famous wines, Latour, Lafite, Mouton, Margaux, Haut Brion, and Petrus to name a few, make up only a minuscule amount of what is produced and are out of most mortals reach. The good news: this vast ocean of wine produces many very fine affordable wines.
Bordeaux wines are, when made well, rich, layered, fruity, and very, very dry, with complex earth and mineral components that compliment a wide array of foods. They are made from predominately Cabernet Sauvignon grapes when grown on the left bank of the Gironde River, or Merlot grapes when grown on the right bank. A must for all serious wine drinkers, Bordeaux wines are the apex of drinking pleasure when served properly. But, with over 7000 chateaux and over 40 sub appellations, they are a wine student's nightmare. Some thoughts...
All Bordeaux must be made with only five grape varieties: the Cabernet grape dominating on the left bank (or Medoc side); on the right bank (St. Emilion, Pomeral and many other "lesser" appellations), Merlot is the main ingredient. It's takes a real expert to discern the right bank wines from the left, and so my point is, why bother? To search for a St. Emilion, for example, is not necessary. Vintage and price is much more important than appellation. If you want to spend $20 on a St. Emilion, fine, but you might be better off with a wine shop that can guide you to a better $20 Medoc or St. Julien. In other words, it should be a good Bordeaux you should seek, not any particular region over another. Vintages are important in Bordeaux, but as I said earlier they are sometimes self leveling (But What About Vintages?). You will pay less for the 2004 vintage than the highly acclaimed 2005, so the ‘04 may, in fact, be the better value.
On and on we can go but I do not want to confuse or scare you off. The best thing to do is visit your local wine shop and talk about the wines and taste some examples. It is much easier to talk about wine than to write about it. Especially after a few tastings.
I realize that there is an awful lot of stuff you have to know to make informed choices about wine, and vintages probably scare more of you than anything else. What should you know about vintages, and should you really even care about them? Well, to be succinct, the more you know the better. But vintages sometimes are self-leveling: in other words, an inferior vintage of a wine will cost less than a good vintage of the same wine. So might you get a decent value buying a better wine in a lesser year? Hopefully. 
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