Last night Alex and I headed off to Merton College in Oxford to lead a tasting on one of the leading Napa Valley estates: Chateau Montelena. The president and vice-president of the Wine Circle were extremely welcoming, as were the rest of the society, and so we instantly relaxed and were ready to enjoy a superb evening.
Chateau Montelena shot to fame in 1976 with the Judgement of Paris tasting when it won first place for its 1973 Chardonnay. The tasting was lead by UK wine journalist Steven Spurrier who at the time was living and working in Paris in the wine shop Les Caves de la Madeleine. His idea was to pit the best Californian Chardonnays against the best Burgundies and then the best red Bordeaux against the best Californian Cabernets. What happened next was to shock the wine trade all over the world – California won first place in both the white and red categories. What was more astonishing was that most of the judges were in fact French! California and Montelena were definitely on the map.
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| Chateau Montelena |
The film Bottle Shock was released in 2008 and dramatises the events leading up to this monumental 1976 tasting. It is in fact based at Chateau Montelena and centres on Jim Barrett (the owner) and Bo Barrett (his son who would become the master winemaker in 1982). The film helped to further promote Californian wine as well as Montelena winery.
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| Bo Barrett |
Montelena has now been making top class wine for over 30 years and last night we were lucky enough to try 6 different wines: Chardonnays 2007 and 2009; Cabernets 2006 and 2008 and Estate Cabernet 2005 and 2007. The wines showed incredibly well and were extremely expressive. The favourites of the evening were the 2007 Chardonnay (intense, tropical fruits, waxy), 2006 Cabernet (silky, concentrated, plum and black cherry fruit) and the 2005 Estate Cabernet (incredibly intense, blackcurrant fruit, cedar and tobacco).
The students loved all of the wines and were very enthusiastic about Napa Valley wines, which is always good to know. It is just a shame that Alex and I didn’t have Californian accents….
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