A Very Disappointing Bordeaux

I’ve not posted a wine from Bordeaux so far on the blog, so I thought it was about time that I rectified that, unfortunately it’s not as I would have liked it to be. A little while ago I managed to come across one in my local supermarkets fine wine selection, it had been reduced as they were a bin end, which I decided to take full advantage of and bought two bottles, with the view that if I liked it I’d go back and get some more, if they had any left. I have to admit it was a good reduction, they were originally £19.99 and had been reduced to just £4.99, bargain, or so I thought.

The bottles in question were a 2005 Medoc from Chateau Le Lescot, which is a Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot blend, which I looked forward to tasting. We had some friends round for dinner and I thought this was the ideal opportunity to bring it out.

In the glass it had a deep ruby/garnet colour, which is what I would have expected given its age, on the nose it had quite pronounced aromas of dark fruit, predominantly blackcurrants, so far so good, but that’s where it started to go downhill. On the palate you got the fruit and a good amount of ripe juicy tannins, but it had a searing acidity with it, which just did not go with the rest of the components of the wine, and made it for me an unbalanced wine and a disappointment. I thought it actually may have been slightly oxidised, so i opened the other bottle to see if that was any better, unfortunately it wasn’t. I may have been very unlucky and got two bad bottles, but I doubt it.

This unfortunately is not a wine that I would recommend, the later vintages may be better; I’d like to hope they are, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend or buy this wine myself again without tasting it first.

A Secret Wine

A French PR agency, Clair de Lune, recently organised a competition for wine bloggers, called the Secret Wine, which I have to say was a fantastic piece of publicity. It was open to the first 85 to register and the winner was the first blogger to correctly name the wines we’d been sent. It attracted bloggers from all over Europe and even as far away as New Zealand and Canada.

We all received a package of three wines that had been rebottled, sealed with synthetic green stoppers and labelled with the Secret Wine logo and a random number, so as not to give us any clue as to what the wines were.

After tasting the wines, and getting myself quite confused as to what I thought they were, I went through all my notes from previous tastings to try and give me an idea. Rightly or wrongly I presumed that as the agency was French, so were the wines!

Wine No. 079, had a deep ruby colour with dark fruit/cherry and forest fruit flavours, with a good level of acidity and tannin, reminded me very much of a Bordeaux blend more from the left bank than the right though. My guess was a St Emillion.

Wine No. 390, had a deep ruby/purple colour again with flavours of dark fruit and cedar, giving away the fact that it had been oaked, again a good level of acidity and tannin and a reasonable length of flavour. This time I went for the right bank in Bordeaux and guessed it was a Haut Medoc.

Wine No. 714, had a much lighter ruby colour, very light flavours of red berries and a low level of acidity and tannin, which led me believe it was a Beaujolais, as it was quite a simplistic wine so I went for standard Beaujolais and not a Beaujolais Village.

Having posted my answers on the website, it became very obvious very quickly that I wasn’t right. The interesting thing has been seeing everyone else’s guesses, and the wide ranging answers that everyone has given. Four days in still no one has won, and I dying to find out what they were, can someone please hurry up and guess them correctly!