One thing I enjoy most in my work (besides drinking all this great wine) is hearing myself talk about it. I especially enjoy debunking the common wine-wisdom whenever I can. I’ve always been something of a wine guerrilla, but my subversive outbursts are rarely more satsifying than when I’m dumping on the Classified Bordeaux business. Don’t misunderstand me. In my twenty-five years of work in French restaurants, Classified Bordeaux were a cornerstone of the wine program.
My beef isn’t with the wines, but with the producers and exporters. Let me say flat out, at the risk of offending the “minor royalty” they presume themselves to be, that they are collectively guilty of ripping off their biggest fans.
The problem has been an exploding market in which naïve consumers are taught to believe that throwing away huge sums of money for Classified Growths is a mark of sophistication. Believe me, it just isn’t true that the acquisition of “hood-ornament” Bordeaux automatically confers wine knowledge on the buyer. And it certainly isn’t true that the only wines in Bordeaux worth buying are the seventy or so members of the club. Or even that they’re ipso facto the best wines.
Bordeaux is a huge wine region, the largest source of quality wines in the world. But like anywhere else, it’s got room for only a few to share the spotlight of international stardom. Uninformed, insecure buyers may be comforted by a presumed assurance of quality, but the many scandals at “Château (pick one)” over the years suggests that a sexy label may be no guarantee anyway.
it just isn’t true that the acquisition of “hood-ornament” Bordeaux automatically confers wine knowledge on the buyer.
You haven’t heard me whine here that Bordeaux is too expensive to buy anymore, because it just isn’t true. In fact, that popular, facile lament is really just an admission of our sadly mistaken belief that the only wines worth drinking are the ones we can’t afford. In fact, excellent value in Bordeaux isn’t that hard to find. We only need to look for wines with value beyond “pride-of-possession”. What about wines that are great to drink?
Until recently, many of the growers in the lower Médoc, St. Estephe, and smaller “right bank” appellations simply trucked their grapes to the local co-op, where they were anonymously blended in the village vat. Of course, there’s no economic inducement to restrain yields in the interest of quality when the farmers are paid by weight.
But now, mindful of the profits raining down on the big players, some have opened small, family operated wineries, where they bottle their own wine. Other estates are coming to a market which historically ignored them as too insignificant or too cheap to bother with.
Excellent viticulture and winemaking by a new generation of producers there is providing us with a wonderful variety of finely crafted Bordeaux. We’ve found among them some of the most exciting wines we offer. And like all Moore Brothers selections, these Bordeaux have been carefully shipped, warehoused, and delivered in ideal conditions.