by Julian Schultz
julian@oxfordwineroom.com

                     

The Castle was host to a wine circus for adults, horse respecters, horse protectors and horse rescuers. The mammoth event attracted some 400 thirsty bibulous aficionados who crowded the four tables containing 24 wines and a table of beer variety. Hungry gourmets eagerly partook of hot hors d'oeuvres, hot baguettes, toasted bread rounds, crackers and cheese varieties, fruit selections, dips and spreads. Three hours later no one departed hungry or thirsty. 

And many who participated in the lotteries for prizes and in the silent auctions left the Castle beaming with their winnings.

If Barnum & Bailey, Ringling Bros. had promoted the event, they would have heralded it as "The Greatest Wine Show On Earth."

I noted instant camaraderie among the guests as they sniffed and sipped and exchanged perceptions of their wines' attributes. People introduced themselves to one another and eagerly recommended wines they thought were outstanding. 

Smiles all around? Yes! Frowns? I observed none, despite shoulder-to-shoulder crowds at the tables waving their wine glasses for fills and refills.

(All prices shown are special prices for wines and beers provided by Mass. Liquors.) 

Even Woebegone Willy was all smiles as he sipped his Cristalino Brut non-vintage sparkling wine, $7.99. Exuberantly, he addressed a small group of similarly smiling sippers: "What is more romantic than a graceful wine glass filled with pale, shimmering bubbles rising languidly to the surface? You and your beloved surely must look into each other's eyes, slowly raise your glasses and sip the cool, sensual liquid of the stars."

Astounded, I congratulated Willy for his hidden-talent poetry; had he undergone personality change?

Willy laughed, said that I hardly knew him and advised that I stick around for more surprises.

We sipped other wines of Table One, Classic Wines: excellent wines at delightful price values, such as Murphy-Goode Fumé Blanc 2002, $13.99, and Santa Ema Merlot 2002, $10.99. Outstanding were Avila Pinot Noir 2003, $13.99, and Graffigna Malbec 2003, $9.99.

Willy asked for my assessment of the Fumé Blanc. Aaah, now I would out-do him in pursuit of the purple prose: "The nose suggests sweet grass, lemon and oak spice. Rich flavors of citrus, green peppers and creamy oak swagger, cavort and snooze on the palate. A swashbuckling finish completes the wine with panache, élan and a mouthwatering elegant impression; lively, complex, balanced; should be sipped only on knees and with holy devotion."

I'm afraid I aroused Willy's jealousy: "Huhh! From my observation your favored Fumé was yawning behind its hand, bored - and I, too; yet you, the self-proclaimed expert, extol its virtues. How say you to that?"

I suggested he buy a bottle and sip it next week. "Wine changes," I said. "It is not the same each time we drink it. And we change: We are not of the same palate or mood each time we drink the same wine. So it's a silly, naive game we play when we accept as irrefutable gospel another person's critical assessment of the wine...because it differs from one's first time one-time experience with it. So I ask you to forbear negative comment and try it again."

Willy muttered something sounding snide and sniffed and sipped his Graffigna Merlot. He tasted it thoughtfully, and then disposed of it in a container. He requested the Avia Pinot Noir. After tasting it, he suggested that I listen to his evaluation of both wines:

"The Pinot Noir offers coveted minor-key attributes of a young Grand or Premier Cru Burgundy, so I theorize that when I taste it after it has matured, I will enjoy wine magnificence reserved only for the worthy bacchanalian - namely me.

"The Graffigna is a big, plum pudding with road tar sauce; it doesn't ape anything else I can remember. It is grand, ponderous, deeply scented - even great with garlicky food, Julian! Yes, profound and awe-inspiring."

I admitted to Willy that he had me there, that I couldn't nearly approximate his evaluations. I didn't say, however, that I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but I did tell him I liked the wines and now own some.

As we approached Table Two, Carolina Wine, I suggested he dispense with the wine oratory, which did not impress me. He grimaced sour-faced but accompanied me. 

We sipped and agreed that the Casa Lapostolle Sauvignon Blanc 2004, $9.99, and the Masi "Campofiorin" 2001, $14.99, were superb; a shade behind them was Peter Lehman "Clancy's Red" 2002, $16.99.

Willy concurred when I suggested that not only were these wines of excellent price value but they were filled with delight and excitement: "The fruit, bursting with flavor and generous on the palate, reaches out and grabs us here, there, and everywhere, and doesn't know how to let go."

Willy noted that I sipped, savored and spit; he asked why, as he did, I didn't swallow the wines.

"I imagine people screaming 'drunkard!' at me," I said, "should they observe that I swallow the wines. I fear they would bruit it about that I was participating in a squalid bacchanalia, and I would get kicked out of the Paxton Tumultuous Temperance Union. Let me assure you, Willy, and the PTTU, perhaps only a tenth of an ounce trickles down my throat and I spit far, far more of our precious beverage into the containers."

We pushed our way to Table Three, Ideal Wine, where we heard tasters oohing and aahing over Kaapzicht Estate Red 2002, $15.99, and pleading for refills. With burly Willy doing the shoving, we got our fills. And, yes, the Kaapzicht was a treasure that would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of Bordeaux or Burgundy at 25-percent the price. 

Willy was exhilarated: "Concentrated fruit and tannin bruise the lips and palate. So intense, it needs a half-decade or more to acquire genteel manners -- sort of burrowing, sort of billowing in the depths now. Forget elegance, forget la-di-da here; this is a serious, powerful, profound wine with purpose; wild and feisty, intense and concentrated, rough and ripe and fleshy. My dormant psyche, my liberated libido ---" 

I interrupted, desiring to get my licks in - no telling how long he would ramble on. "Ponderous and brooding," I said with studied wrinkle-browed profundity, "a monument to oak and tannin that I can taste and feel in the back of my mouth; a mass of plum and raspberry fruit sweeps over the palate, slides down the throat and lies in eternal afterlife."

Willy groused that, hypocritically, I wasn't adhering to my suggestion that we not indulge in purple prose oratory. He quoted sneeringly from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, and recks not his own rede (doesn't follow his own advice)."

That did it! I was determined to ditch him after we had finished tasting the other wines at Table Three. But I had to figure out how he should get rid of me. 

I gave high marks to Gracciano Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 2001, $17.99, and La Vigne Blanche Sancerre 2003, $19.99. Willy agreed their quality was very good, but decried the prices as being too high.

My notes on the Montepulciano: "a liberal barrel ass wine; its lacking razor-thin delicacy and optimum balance are less important than our getting vaulting fruit and flavor; good ringing oak here, laced generously with berry and stone fruits, herbs and spice, and graced by warm supple tannins; closes with an ostentatious, grandiose flourish; a fruit salad of a wine."

My notes on the Sancerre: "Austere dryness balanced by luscious, creamy, seductive citrus and spicy fruit; voluptuous texture, sleek swallow, and fruit forever farewell."

His eyes rolling, his mouth gaping, Willy purposefully shook my hand and said that he preferred to finish the tasting with the "buxom brunette of conspicuous cleavage over there." Vainly, I looked; I observed no titillating BB of CC.

Too bad my purple prose subterfuge was successful in my ridding myself of Willy and his bulk: The Gilbert Distributors Wine Table Four was so crowded with firmly planted-in-place tasters that I almost didn't get near enough to Wendy Leo, pourer and Gilbert wine rep, for her wines. With some heaving of the guys around and some pinching of the lassies' round...finally, finally, I made it to Wendy.

She had five wines. I sampled each one. And I, also, became a firmly planted-in-place taster. Shhh! Don't tell anyone; I swallowed - yes, Julian swallowed - Stephen's Cellar "Rocky" 2001, $11.99; Tobin James "Made in the Shade" Merlot 2002, $16.99; and my tried and true favorite, Victor Hugo Cabernet Sauvignon 2001, $19.99. I abstained, albeit reluctantly, from swallowing the fruit laden, crisp, zesty "Day in the Country" Chardonnay 2003, $8.99, and the "Buttonwood" Sauvignon Blanc 2003, $11.99. Both are superb wines and are exceptionally price-valued.

I would have preferred to drink the three red wines five to six years hence to catch their more mature fruit aromas and flavors. It would be fascinating to see how they should develop with some age. Expectedly, they should acquire more spice and more earthy and leathery aromas; they would become less fruited as they gained complexity and elegance. Would they be any better five or six years hence? No, just pleasingly different. I suggest your buying some for now drinking and some for that tomorrow.

"I'm baaack, Julian." Willy had made it to my planted-in-place side. "She was with a 300-pound football player with arms like oak trees and a face like a maddened rhinoceros. I was lucky I didn't try to lay my irresistible charms on her....Say, that pourer is a pretty classy prospect. Think I'll lay some charm on her after this event concludes."

Willy admitted that his nose and palate may have already become fatigued when he described the Stephen's Cellar 'Rocky': "The nose of mint, oak, dust and berries promise great things, but other than being quite pleasant initially, the flavors on the palate seem to turn somewhat synthetic and weedy/stalky on the palate."

I disagreed: "It has the grand bouquet of age and the fun fruit of youth. Think this, Willy: 'toothsome texture, plush, voluptuous, bosomy, amalgam of flavors, vibrant.' This 'Rocky' would confidently chaperone delicately seasoned veal, chicken, duck, or turkey, but it might whimper with roast beef seasoned with heavy-handed steaming garlic cloves."

With respect to the Victor Hugo Cabernet Sauvignon that has never failed me, I felt the same rush of emotions as I remembered the first time I tasted this wine - ecstasy. I recalled the words of a winemaker about one of his Bordeaux wines when I became serious about wine 50 years ago: "There are some wines so magnificent that after tasting them, there is little left in life to live for."

My not being a devotee of beer, I cannot comment on them. I did observe, however, considerable enthusiasm from some dozen good ol' boys as they downed and repeated, downed and repeated, downed and repeated the similarly priced Heron Pale Ale 6pk. $7.69; Bolt 117 Lager, and Imperial Stout.

And these vassals continued a back-and-forth trek to the Castle King's Room to relieve ......

The crowd seemed to grow larger as the afternoon was approaching five. I would have liked to taste every wine, but this aging body had enough buffeting about at the tables that were swarmed with enthusiastic oenophiles.

Very rarely in my wine tasting experience have I tasted 24 wines and rated each one B-plus (88/100) or higher - most of them higher. 

Kudos to Karin Orsi, who organized the event for the second successive successful season, and to her crew of equally dedicated "horse people" who ensured that the afternoon would proceed without glitches. Theirs is a heartwarming volunteer effort to benefit horses in need or in peril.

No surprise that Castle maitre d'/master sommelier, Jim Nicas, smoothly moved the event along with crowd control and with prompt and generous replacement of dwindling food on platters.

Wine Pick: Victor Hugo Zinfandel 2002, $19.99, deep berry aromas explode on the palate with generous lush flavors of blackberry, currant, unsweetened chocolate and nutmeg; rich tannin and vibrant berry flavors complement the spice, black pepper and oak, resulting in a lingering piquant finish. Some wine, indeed!

Wine Pick: Victor Hugo Petite Sirah 1999, $15.99, aromas of ripe plum, toffee and varied spice with black pepper and spicy/grapey oak in the background; a mouthful of elegance with rich tannins and toasty oak followed by an extended rich finish. Awarded five Gold Medals in 2001 wine competitions.

 Email Comments to Julian at:
julian@oxfordwineroom.com