Pt. II – In the Church of Wine ...
What does the last bottle of 1870 Lafite taste like?
A few weeks back, I started telling the tale of a peerless wine experience. If you’re a fast-forward-to-the-good-parts type, sure, start here with Part II. But I recommend a rewind to Part I for newcomers. This 153-year-old juice is indeed worth the squeeze.
Recap: Our intrepid S.E.A.L. Team Vinx is pulling legendary corks at Marcel’s in Washington, DC. Their mission to Serve, Elevate, Anticipate, Lubricate involves large-format unicorns – 1.5-liter magnums of wines you might see once, twice, never – served to a mix of French, Japanese, American collectors and enthusiasts. At the center of it all: the most influential wine critic of the past century and two 19th-century paragons including planet Earth’s last known mag of 1870 Lafite-Rothschild. Robert M. Parker Jr. revolutionized wine with his 100-point rating system and newsletter, The Wine Advocate. Parker is an undisputed kingmaker. His scores, high and low, have such seismic effect that entire regions and vintages see market swings in value depending on what he thinks. In fact, once wine producers calculated the global impact of a 95+ Parker score, they started adjusting winemaking styles to fit Parker’s preferences. A wave of “Parkerization” in the 1980s-1990s threatened to homogenize the entire wine world as ring-kissing sycophants bent the knee toward an ‘International style’ of lush ripeness, showy oak, and higher alcohol.
Love him or hate him, Parker knows his shit. He’s 76 and retired and someone else runs the newsletter now, which made this night even more interesting. No posturing. This whole affair was purely about the pleasure of surrendering to historic wines.
Let’s establish a few things. Of course wine is subjective, as is anything involving our imperfect five senses. My red is different than your red, for instance, because I suffer from a mild deuteranomaly color blindness. Yet, even if an ice cream critic doesn’t love Rum Raisin, an objective professional puts aside personal taste to assess measurable qualities. Is it made with top ingredients and technique? Is it a true example of classic Rum Raisin style? Does it outclass other Rum Raisins you’ve tried? Funny, with ice cream, no one seems to have a problem taking a lick and saying, “You gotta try this. It’s friggin delicious!” Yet, with wine, people too often hedge opinions, waiting for pros to rhapsodize a review before planting their own flag. “Wh-wha-what do YOU think?”
The truth is, sommeliers don’t exist to tell anyone what delicious is. You already know – even if you can’t articulate it quite yet. I can show you new kinds delicious and I can provide context that expands your what/why of delicious, but I’m not here to play mind games and convince you. Regardless of what you think about Bordeaux or Robert Parker or affluent folk opening hundred-thousand-dollar bottles, I can tell you with absolute certainty that these wines were objectively first-class.
With all of the objective parts solidly in place – quality of wine, veracity of provenance, serving temperature, glassware, menu, etc. – we were free to fall under the spell of wine’s subjective parts: story, emotion, fellowship. This is how the 1870 transformed from mere wine into a wormhole to the divine.
You can hear it in the moment we extract the cork.
Living in the former capital of the Confederacy, that 1864 Lafite struck me for other reasons. I couldn’t help but play the mental movie of what I know was happening in my city, in my neighborhood, at that time. The wine was a whisper of its former power, but man oh man, it still purred.
But the 1870.
White wines gain color with age, turning from near-clear / pale-straw / bright gold toward browner hues due to oxidation. Red wines lose color with age. Pigments and tannins polymerize, joining up in chains of molecules that drop out of solution when they get too long. That’s why you find sediment in old reds: it’s all of those precipitated color compounds and tannin. In order for a wine to last half an eternity, it needs a bulwark against Father Time. Sugar, fruit, acid, and tannin are all natural preservatives and more = longer. Large-format bottles aren’t just baller fun. They, too, slow aging and extend wine life. Add-in cool, humid storage conditions away from sunlight and temperature flux and you’re primed for long hibernation.
“[1870 is] One of the greatest pre-phylloxera vintages and still magnificent if well kept. Crop reduced by spring frosts, a bakingly hot summer and early harvest - September 10 - in good conditions. The result: opaque, massive, concentrated and long-lasting wines. .... Anyone thinking Lafite produces only comparatively pale, light, delicate and feminine wines has never heard of, let along tasted, the Lafite blockbuster of all time.”
– Great Vintage Wine Book, Sir Michael Broadbent, Master of Wine
To last 150+ years, a lot of lucky stars must align. Fortunately, this once-in-an-eon vintage forgotten in a once-in-a-century cellar led to a once-in-a-lifetime find. If not for meticulous documentation of this wine’s journey from Lafite to wine seller to Scottish Earl to Christie’s Auction House to respected collector to our table, we’d have suspected a counterfeit. The 1870 not only had energy for another 50 years, its core of color was still intact – unheard of for a wine of its age.
Most wines at 50 or 100 years old have long since shed their fruitfulness and shifted to savory secondary and tertiary notes. Think: fecund soil, mushrooms, herbs, and all of the other things that fleshy fruit becomes once it falls from branch to earth to deliquesce and desiccate. We don’t drink mature wines for their inky color and berries, we drink them for their transformed pigments, evolved texture, and ethereal bouquet that only time affords. Here’s the craziest thing. That 1870 still offered lip-smacking acid. The tannins that held this wine together since the Ulysses S. Grant administration did their job. And the wine had a brilliant, unmistakable skein of cherry running right through it – Luden’s Wild Cherry Cough Drop, to be exact –with that distinctive Bordeaux, herby, medicinal marker plain as day. Acid on top of candy wrapped up in Formula 1 finesse.
That night, Parker reflected on what a 100-point perfect wine even means:
It must redefine greatness for you.
Also, I have to add a caveat. Whether it’s a 100 or 96 or 97, you realize that you are creating expectations on people that read that review and buy that wine that may not meet their expectations. You’re creating this incredible myth, but I believe that you have to be totally truthful. If that’s what you believe, put your stake in the ground and say, ‘I believe this is a perfect wine.’ And you live by that even if other people don’t agree with you.
We’re so privileged to have these. It’s really remarkable. Wine, it bonds us. It’s living history. And to drink something like this – so vibrant, great aromatics, just fresh. It’ll probably last another hundred years.
– Robert M. Parker, June 6, 2023
The gentleman who shared the 1870 Lafite at Marcel’s bought two magnums at the famous Christie’s auction of 1971. That day, forty-one mags from the trove of ancients discovered in a forgotten haunted cellar at Glamis Castle in Scotland were released into the wild. The collector shared one of them with Parker decades ago at a dinner in Tokyo prepared by ‘Chef of the Century’ Jöel Robuchon who earned thirty-two Michelin stars during his career. He refused to serve food with the 1870. “It must be savored by itself,” he insisted.
We followed suit and served the 1870 without accompaniments. Any sommelier worth his winescrew will tell you, the proper pairing with a course of unicorns is reverence.
Are you digging SOMMniloquy?
Late August mornings in Virginia are starting with that unmistakable hint of September crispness. Autumn is on the horizon. Stay tuned. Next time, I’ll spill some fagioli about why I keep dropping Italia into my prose.
