Wine Jeopardy

Ahh, the guessing game…I remember the rather well dressed piker attempting to sneak in a carafe of fine wine. "Remember the corkage fee", I remind the waiter as I nod to the not so sneaky dude at the banquette. I make sure he has the right glasses for his wine and so appear with a quartet of the large Bordeaux stems in hand. When he offered a glass to me with a healthy splash of an obviously richly extracted red wine, well, what could I say? The near opacity of the wine gave me an initial clue as to the body of the wine. I gave my professional swirl and tilted the glass filled with heady aromas and inhaled a well-measured lung-full of air over ‘round and through my dendritic receptors located so strategically in my vast and cavernous nasal/sinus system. “Mmmm, this is a fine wine from Bordeaux” I venture. The ladies at the table twitter and prattle, “Oh, he know it is from Bordeaux”, in her charming but imprecise Anglais. A good start, a fairly typical bouquet with the telltale cedar aromas led me to the visceral conclusion that this indeed is classic claret in my hand. I sip noisily and slosh and swallow letting the full experience of the finish progress. The gentleman was warming to the occasion and proffered this, “As one attempts to deal with vintage let us start with the decade. His logic led me to the conclusion that though this wine is in no way tired or fading it is most certainly not of a recent vintage. It did not have the monster quality of the ’90, nor did it possess the elegant austere, and to me the quintessential air of claret that is the signature of the '89 growth. Blocky and square-jawed like the '88’s it was not. Regal, plump and perfect are my thoughts on the '85 wines, no this was something different. This had obvious breeding and Left Bank sensibilities but a power and finesse that I do not often get to taste. “This wine was born in the eighties and furthermore this is from the 1982 vintage”, perhaps I wasn’t so confidant as all that, but I knew this was greatness and it is not a bad thing to cajole the guests from time to time. The look in the gentleman’s eye told me I was three for three.
I am lingering much too long at this table. Fine, if I was ‘just’ the sommelier, but I am the floor manager as well and must move more quickly than this.
Okay, I am thinking this is one of those ‘old dude’ wines that I am unwilling to pay $150 or more for the prestige and old-world charm of a classic growth Bordeaux. I’ll pay for Quintessa or Insignia before I drop a bundle on many of these archaic old chateau wines. That being said, this wine kicks! If more folk had the opportunity to taste this wine, there would be a lot more people who love it but can’t pay the price. So, and then…
Dammit, I have stated that it is 1982 Bordeaux from the Left Bank and I still have the one guess left. I don’t want to be wrong now, as I have done well with the education I have given myself. I have never experienced this wine before so now I must truly guess.
“My last guess is that this is from Latour”, I venture gamely.
I must be satisfied with an average of .750 as I whiff on the 1982 Chateau Mouton Lafite. The epitome of ‘old dude’ wine dressed up in a new suit driving a Z-3, sure fooled me. I thanked the gentleman profusely for allowing me to play such a wonderful game, "Won’t you come back often, this was fun". For that ‘education’ I whip out my Manager's card and take the corkage fee off of his bill. I mean, it was already decanted and all, yes? CS

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