Friday, February 8, 2008

Analyzing Napa Cabernet

I started a discussion over on the Parker Board yesterday, which I figured I'd link to here. My point is that people are quick to judge California wines in their youth in a way that we are trained not to do with Bordeaux. We had a '98 La Mission Haut Brion at the Pratt's lunch and people judged it for what it would become. Much younger California Cabs were judged for what they are now. I'm not sure this is fair to the wines. Yes, they are monolithic and rambunctious, but is that any different from many young Bordeaux, even traditionally styled ones. What was the gorgeous and massive 1986 Margaux like at release? I would guess pretty damned big and I'm sure someone can tell me for certain. Bordeaux is Bordeaux and Napa is Napa in a whole lot of different ways and I love that dichotomy. Still, to the extent that we try to look at wine objectively in terms of our intellectual analysis, should we not be consistent?

There's some interesting replies over there.  Check it out.

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