March 14: 2016 Bordeaux, Napa

A very memorable tasting was held at the Gandara home in Napa on Sat. March 14.  Usually their tastings are known for the excellent wines, but this time I believe the lasting memory with be the use of surgical gloves for all the attendees.  Hopefully we’ll all be laughing at the memories of the coronavirus scare in the years to come, but it was definitely on the minds of club members this evening.  Kudos to the Gandara’s for handling such a difficult situation with professionalism.

Despite all the concerns and last minute cancellations by a number of people, we did have 22 attendees and 20 tasters to enjoy the great wines selected for us.  In what was very unusual for this club, we picked the lowest price wine ($25) as our #1 wine!  That wine was the Chateau Godeau (St-Emilion), a blend of 90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc.  Editor’s Note: Good luck trying to find this wine.  I searched online at K&L and Wine.com to no avail, and ended up only being able to purchase 2 bottles from a website in NJ at $40/btl (incl. shipping).

A close 2nd was the Chateau Maillet (Pomerol), at $43 and with 72 points, just 3 points more than the top wine.  The #3 wine was the Chateau Sansonnet (St-Emilion) at 81 points and $42.  It was my personal favorite and Dr. Dave recommended this as a wine to purchase for the cellar.  I found it available at K&L for $50.

All wines were purchased at either K&L or Wine.com.   Full results for each wine and individual voting can be found below:

Here’s the prices for all of the wines including pretastes: 2020-03 2016 Bordeaux

For a complete description of all the main tasting wines, click here: Critical Acclaim 2016 Bordeaux Tasting Wines

For a complete description of all the pre-tasting wines, click here: Bordeaux CritAcclaim Pre-taste Wines

Our Hosts: David & Diane Gandara

Time to show off the surgical gloves.  I hope we won’t be doing this the rest of the year!

ANNOUNCEMENT

WHAT:    2016 Bordeaux
WHEN:    Sat. Mar. 14 at 6 P.M.
HOSTS:    David & Diane Gandara

The 2016 vintage in Bordeaux Has been called “second coming of age of Bordeaux”, because of the beauty of these youthful wines and the evolution in style (in part the reflection of ongoing climate change over many years).  For a variety of reasons, there are lots of top quality wines at modest prices ($40-55), albeit not from 1^st-2^nd growth, which remain prohibitively expensive.