NYC Bordeaux tasting

[JCNorthway]

Looks like a reprise of a 95 vs. 96 BWE event - but not at BWE prices!

Comparative Bordeaux Tasting
Vintages 1995 & 1996
Thursday, November 14, 2013
6:30-8:00pm
Tribeca Grill
375 Greenwich St., New York, NY
$600 per person

Join Hart Davis Hart Wine Co. in New York City for an exciting walk-around tasting featuring the highly-regarded tandem vintages 1995 and 1996. Of the twenty Châteaux represented, we will pour all five of the First Growths: Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Latour, Margaux and Mouton Rothschild. They will be joined by traditional favorites La Mission Haut-Brion, Cheval Blanc, Pichon-Lalande, Lynch-Bages, and Léoville-Las-Cases.

The weather for the 1995 vintage consisted of a mild winter and early spring followed by a dry, hot summer. The best wines are very ripe and display good concentration and structure. The weather patterns for the 1996 vintage were unusual for a great year - warm and dry in June and July and then cool and damp throughout much of August. The wines from ‘96 are rich, complex, and beautifully balanced, packed with ripe, pure fruit.
We hope you can join us as we taste and explore these great vintages.

A preview of many of the wines to be opened:
Château Angelus
Château Calon-Ségur
Château Cheval Blanc
Château Cos d’Estournel
Château Ducru-Beaucaillou
Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste
Château Gruaud Larose
Château Haut-Brion
Château La Conseillante
Château La Mission Haut-Brion
Château Lafite Rothschild
Château Latour
Château Léoville-Las-Cases
Château Lynch-Bages
Château Margaux
Château Montrose
Château Mouton Rothschild
Château Palmer
Château Pichon-Longueville, Baron
Château Pichon-Longueville, Lalande
*Wines subject to change.

ONLY A FEW SPOTS REMAIN
For more information or to make reservations, please contact
Gwen Brooks at 312.854.0096 or events@hdhwine.com.

[jal]

So many wines, so few friends in attendance. I am not even remotely tempted.

[DavidG]

Great lineup, but like Jacques I too have become less and less enamored of large tastings over the years, especially if it's a group of people I don't know. I suppose if there were some once-in-a-lifetime wines that I just had to try, but even then the cost for those sorts of events is so high and the time and pour size so limited that it really devalues the experience. My ideal wine tasting is 6 or 8 people with 8-10 bottles and an entire evening to spend together. Or for larger groups, at least mostly composed of friends like our BWE gatherings. It's fun to meet a few new faces, but when everyone is new and there are tons of wines there's just too much going on for this old fart to absorb at once.

[AlexR]

I'm puzzled.
This does not compute.

My BWE friends never struck me as closed to new blood...

Gosh, if a bunch of wine lovers were willing to pony up for a tasting (presumbably a tasting dinner) as good as this, I would naturally embrace them as kindred souls...

You can be sure that if I were anywhere near the venue, I'd be there!

Alex R.

[Jay Winton]

and who is president of HDH these days? Does the name Ben Nelson ring a bell?

[DavidG]

Not closed to new blood, just overwhelmed with 50-100 or more new faces and a similar number of wines to "taste" in rapid succession, where everyone's so focused on getting to the next wine that they don't have time to socialize. I see they've got "only" 20 wines on the list, so that's not as unmanageable as I thought when I first glanced at the original post. It's not like the Wine Spectator extravaganzas where there are 100 different wines to "get through."

Preferring drinking to tasting and small gatherings to large is not the same as being "closed to new blood."

I wonder if Ben will be there?

[Tom In DC]

Ben's president of the auction side of the house. Messers Hart, Davis, and Hart are still very much a part of the company.

Alex, did you notice the $600 ticket price, the "walk-around" tasting format, and the 90-minute duration? My elbows aren't sharp enough anymore to ensure a taste of 40 wines in 90 minutes....

[AlexR]

David, Tom,

Sorry, I read the description a little too quickly - and surely didn't see the $ 600 price tag!

Alex

[JimHow]

Sounds like a yucky event to me.

[stefan]

$600 to taste 20 fine wines in an hour and a half? Count me out.

[DavidG]

Well I was wrong again. Looks like 2vintages of each of those 20, plus maybe a few more? Still a speed tasting. I'd much prefer a dinner like the Tesseron/Pontet Canet event in Chicago.

[Musigny 151]

A quick calculation; about $10,000 on the table. Say 20 pours to the bottle, + cost of the place, and it strikes me as break even with no margin for error.

I am not really a fan of the short pour mega tasting, but it is not outrageously overpriced.

[DavidG]

Fair enough, Mark. For me, it wasn't the cost (not that it's cheap!) as much as the format that was unappealing.

[Musigny 151]

Could not agree with you more. As I grow older, the allure of tasting small quantities of trophy wines gets less. In this case, there is even less interest as most of the wines will be entering adolescence, and the expensive first growths will be the least approachable. Another ten years, and the tasting might be a little more appealing, but only if I were tasting as an exercise in deciding what to buy.

[RDD]

I am with you guys.
A prefer fewer bottles, a few friends, a great menu and time to enjoy it all.

[Jay Winton]

I prefer tasting with the BWE brethren.

[JimHow]

There is no better way to drink wine than to drink wine with a BWEer.

[DavidG]

Wine and bweer together? Next thing you'll be telling us to mix wine and hawd wiquer.

[JimHow]

BWEers are the best, most fun, wine drinkers in the world.
the rest of them out there are shit heads.

[DavidG]

Ohhh, the pweople! I agwee with that. The dwinking pwart, not the shit hwead pwart.