Overpriced, over-sold, and over-hyped!

I'm talking about the Grand Cru Lounge at the Washington, DC International Wine & Food Festival held on February 14 and 15. The Grand Cru Lounge is billed as an exclusive part of the festival: " - Pamper yourself by visiting the ultra-special Grand Cru Wine Lounge. Sample the best of the best and taste creations from the area's top chefs." What I experienced yesterday was nothing of the sort.

I attended the Grand Cru Lounge last year and in 2007, the year it debuted as part of the festival. I attended because the Grand Tasting part of the festival had become so popular and overcrowded that even the trade hours were too much. In both of the two previous years, the Grand Cru Lounge was as it was billed: "Reserve level wines will be featured in this separate and sophisticated setting for the most serious wine enthusiast. All wines have been hand-selected and will be presented at specific times throughout the day. Several top winemakers will be on hand to discuss their wines as they are poured. A limited number of tickets are available in order to maintain a high-quality tasting experience..." Each year, the tasting was held in a very large, circular room called the Pavilion, with the Pavillion Prefunction room also being used. Many restaurants were represented, serving tastes of some of their signature dishes. The wines were for the most part the ultra-premium selections from excellent wineries, known and obscure, from all over the world. A live jazz band played, and some of the guests even danced. Overall, the Grand Cru Lounge events in 2007 and 2008 were a good value and an excellent experience.

Not so this year! At 2 p.m. those of us with tickets were admitted to a long, narrow, tomb-like room. As is my habit, I proceeded through the room to the back, to scope out what the offerings were and to avoid the crush of people at Table #1. Maybe I didn't read the description of this year's event properly, I'm thinking. I got to the back of the room, and the only chef I saw was from the Occidental Restaurant, and he was arranging pastries on a display. There was also a table set up with Capitol Chocolate Fountains. A cheese display was in the middle of the center of the room, near the back. It had a nice selection of cheeses, fruits, breads and the like. But it was so large it made the already-cramped room seem more cramped. Walking back up towards the front of the room, I saw a beautiful display of colorful crudite, with some bowls of dressing on the side. By the time I got back to the very front, the room was completely full and there was very little room to move, let alone approach the tables to try to get a taste of wine. The room was more crowded than the Grand Tasting, and the selection of wines was certainly not up to par with the previous years'. Where was Hunt Cellars? Chateau Julien? Where was Nage and all of the other great restaurants from before? So I paid $125 to eat raw vegetables and cheese and crackers with my samples of wine? That was the only savory food being offered. As for the desserts, well, I did not pay $125 to enjoy a sample of Jadot Puligny-Montrachet 2006 with a chocolate-covered strawberry marshmallow. I didn't sample the desserts because I don't eat chocolate and I'm not a big fan of sweets. By 4:30 p.m., a full hour and a half before the event was scheduled to end, several of the wines were gone, and so was I.

I'd love to hear comments from those of you who attended this year's Grand Cru Lounge, especially if you attended in previous years. I will be contacting ResourcePlus Shows & Events to express my dissatisfaction with this event. I hope you will, too. Just click on this link: http://www.wine-expos.com/Wine/DC/contact-us.asp?SHID=47699716.04953754.

My Wine Adventure at Moët & Chandon

A few years ago I visited the esteemed Moët & Chandon Champagne cellars in Epernay with a wine travel company called Wine Lovers Tours (a great company—check them out at http://www.vintagetours.com)/. Our group of about 20 people was in the middle of a fascinating private tour of the cellars. I was busily taking artsy-fartsy photos of the dusty bottles in the dark and deep vaulted chambers of this 33-mile labyrinth, when I turned around and realized that I was all alone.

I ran to a fro looking and listening or my group. I heard a sound and ran toward it. I came face to face with a cellar rat (the human kind) on a forklift. In my panic I couldn’t think of the right words in French to communicate my plight to the man. He looked amused and on his forklift began to chase me around a large stone pillar. As I tried to avoid being run over, I pleaded in English with the man to help me find my group. He just shrugged and motioned for me to go up a steep flight of stairs that I had not noticed before.
I ran up the stairs and found myself back in the reception area where we had begun our tour. It was only later, after I was reunited with my group and we completed the tour, that I realized what an amazing opportunity I had passed up. I could have stayed “lost” in the Moët & Chandon cellars with all of that wonderful Champagne until someone in the group noticed that I was missing. I doubt that the few bottles I could have consumed would have been missed!

Wine faults are subjective?

Earlier this week I attended a Burgundy tasting and dinner led by Allen Meadows, "Mr. Burghound." We tasted Burgundy wines all from the 2005 vintage, 8 wines before dinner and 3 with dinner. During the tasting portion of the program, Allen was talking about Brett, and how he enjoys some wines with "a little Brett," but that too much causes the wine to taste metallic, and he doesn't enjoy that. He went on to ask rhetorically, "Aren't all faults subjective?" This was part of his larger discussion about how wine tasting is subjective, and he tried to make the point that just as how we perceive the flavor of wine is subjective, so too is how we perceive wine faults.

I heartily disagree with this premise. While I do believe that so much of our perception of the flavors and aromas of wine is subjective, I think a faulty wine is faulty and there is nothing subjective about it. It is only the degree to which the fault is perceived from person to person that varies. For example, I am highly sensitive to TCA in wine ("corked wine"), so when I smell a wine that is corked, I smell the TCA and not much else. When a person less sensitive to TCA smells a corked wine, that person may only perceive that the wine smells flat and lacks aroma. The person is not perceiving the TCA, only the effects of the TCA on the wine. The TCA masks the other aromas and flavors of the wine.

On the other hand, Brett (Brettanomyces, a wild yeast that reacts with the chlorine with which corks are sterilized), has an additive effect on the wine. It adds aromas to the wine while leaving intact or even enhancing the other aromas. Indeed, some wine lovers feel that a certain amount of the "earthy," "barnyard" aromas of Brett are desirable in a wine, especially in Old World wines such as those from the Rhone Valley or Burgundy. But that does not mean that we perceive the Brett differently; it means that the degree to which we perceive the Brett and how we feel about it varies.

So how is this different from the subjective way in which we perceive a wine? Perhaps the best way to explain the difference is to use the explanation I give to "newbie" wine drinkers when they ask me, "How do you taste all the different flavors, like cherry and raspberry and currant, in a wine? Isn't that what wine tasting is all about, being able to discern the different flavors?" My response is no, even after tasting thousands of different wines, "wine tastes like wine to me. I don't try to figure out if I'm tasting cherry or raspberry or currant." I taste the wine and decide whether it's balanced, has good structure, is varietally or stylistically correct, and of course, whether it has any technical faults like TCA or Brett.

Do you agree with Allen Meadows that wine faults are subjective, or do you agree with me that they are not?