I tasted '05 Bordeaux with Robert Parker

Robert Parker was on stage talking about how wonderful 2005 Chateau Haut-Brion tastes, but my glass smelled like copper, cheese and scorched earth. I whispered to people on both sides of me, "Is there something wrong with this wine?" I think we got a bad bottle but I, never shy of expressing myself, was afraid to raise my hand.

You have to be Tim Mondavi to challenge Parker; he was one of the few people to do so last week at Parker's 5th annual wine seminar & tasting at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone.

Though open to everyone, the event draws mostly wine industry luminaries who can afford the $2,000 cost to spend the afternoon tasting amazing wines with the Emperor.

The lineup of wines was stellar: all 2005 Bordeaux. "I think in my 30 years this is the greatest vintage I've tasted," Parker said.

He explained that while the top chateaux have made comparably great wines in other years, 2005 was superb across the board. "I've never seen in Bordeaux so many minor wines from little appellations -- so many good wines at that level," he said.

However, while Parker praised the "value wines," what we tasted were the superstars. Whaddya expect for $2,000?

Southern Wine & Spirits provided 11 bottles of each of the wines. Parker estimated buying one bottle of each on the open market would cost a total of $12,000 to $14,000.

The lineup:

Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc, Pessac-Leognan
Chateau Pape Clement Blanc, Pessac-Leognan
Chateau La Conseillante, Pomerol
Chateau Bon Pasteur, Pomerol
Chateau Trotanoy, Pomerol
Chateau L'Evangile, Pomerol
Chateau Cheval Blanc, Saint-Emilion
Chateau Haut-Brion, Pessac-Leognan
Chateau La Mission Haut-Brion, Pessac-Leognan
Chateau Pape Clement, Pessac-Leognan
Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Pauillac
Chateau Latour, Pauillac
Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac
Chateau Margaux, Margaux
Chateau Ausone, Saint-Emilion
Chateau Pavie Macquin, Saint-Emilion
Chateau Angelus, Saint-Emilion
Chateau Troplong Mondot, Saint-Emilion
Chateau Larcis Ducasse, Saint-Emilion
Chateau Pavie, Saint-Emilion

Obviously, many of these wines were fabulous. I was swooning over the L'Evangile when Parker said, "I think my colleagues at Wine Spectator -- didn't they score this wine 100 points? (pause) Someone said yes? Shame on you for reading that."

He got his biggest laugh of the day with that line. After taking a sip, Parker said, "I think this is beautiful. Maybe the Wine Spectator got that right."

Parker said he came early to the auditorium to ensure that the correct wines were poured -- an obsession of his.

But I was not the only one to occasionally wonder if my glass held the same ambrosia as Parker's. I was writing these notes about the Lafite Rothschild -- "Mmm. Black cherry, raspberry, plenty of fruit, good structure and backbone; long, long finish. Wow, this is delicious." -- when Parker called it "backward and tight."

"I would much rather have the '03 and the 2000," Parker said.

Tim Mondavi, from the back row, said, "It's rich, it's delicious. I think it's fabulous." Thanks, Tim! Parker said there may be bottle variation.

When I retasted at the end of the day, oak had come to the forefront, and it did seem tighter. So maybe we had aeration variation. But it was still too nice to call "backward."

Parker's own 100-point wine, Chateau Margaux, was pretty and easy to love: plenty of berries on the nose with a slight savory prosciutto-like note. On the palate, it had lots of raspberry and blackberry and very gentle tannins -- a very nice fruit bowl, though without the promised complexity of the aroma. It raised the question, for me, of what makes a wine perfect.

This was not my favorite wine of the tasting, nor was it a wine that would make you drop to your knees and thank God (that would be the l'Evangile or the Ausone). But I do believe any red-wine drinker, even Alice "I'm making a career out of bashing Parker" Feiring, would like it. Complete consensus in wine is rare. Parker's comment was, "You get great purity of fruit." If that makes it a 100-pointer, so be it.

Parker understands the impact his scores have.

"I love Bordeaux. I love to buy it," he said. "If I like a wine and give it a good score, it increases in value and so does my wine collection."

My neighbor turned to me and said, "There's the quote of the year," and indeed, that statement looks a lot worse written down than it sounded at the time. I don't want to play gotcha on this, because while I don't always agree with Parker's favorites, I usually prefer him to his often-shrill detractors. Parker is passionate about wine and has phenomenal taste memory; he can put wines like these in historical perspective almost as well as the winery employees who taste them all the time.

Anyway, sticking with the topic of cost, Parker believes the '05 Bordeaux are like luxury houses in today's market: many are in the hands of investors who thought they would flip them but have discovered the market is softer than they thought.

"They're stuck with them for a while," Parker says. "But that's not a bad thing."

The Ausone, which was just amazing, is a great example. Parker says recent auction prices put it at $3,000 a bottle. Even if it's the best wine of a great vintage, and smaller production than the rest, there aren't many people in this economic climate who are willing to fork over $3,000 for one bottle. I wouldn't. Well, maybe. If I learned that a zombie virus had been released on the East Coast and the flesh-eating undead were inexorably taking over, I would buy a bottle, sure, if no good vintages of Romanee-Conti were available on the way to buy pickaxes.

But I'm not a grown-up lucky sperm; $3,000 has meaning to me. If it didn't, why wouldn't I spend it? I'd rather have a bottle of '05 Ausone than spend three nights in a luxury resort hotel. This wine was intense.

Parker says it's a 50-50 blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc. The aroma is like falling on your face into a blackberry patch in a pine forest by the sea (channeling my inner WineX), except I left out the notes of huckleberries and citrus. The flavor is actually a little closed now. There's plenty of blackberry, but it's quite tannic and dense. With the jump-from-the-glass aroma, overall it's very impressive. Parker said, "This is probably a 100-year wine." It was one of several times he said he wished he could live longer to drink these wines in a later state of maturity. (Understandable for a man with a great palate, he loves to eat and is getting pretty wide. His face is still young for a guy in his 60s.)

I wouldn't call Parker eloquent, but he is succinct; maybe that's his greatest strength. "The greatness in wine, or the greatness in food, is the ability to build intensity without heaviness," he said, talking about the Ausone.

I've got more to say about this tasting, but this post is getting long, so I'll stop here and post a part deux tomorrow.