From Mighty Oaken Barrels, Many of the Finest Vintages Grow

The sweet smell of success in the wine industry is oak.

Like fine Corinthian leather in a new car, new oak barrels impart an aroma to red wine that can be sweet, cedary, even toasty. To wine makers, that indicates profitability, since the cost of new barrels is so high these days that only the successful can afford them.

There’s more of that new oak aroma in Bordeaux red wines over the last few years, partly because most of the producers in that French region have had the funds to afford new barrels and make better wine. Success breeds success, and the Bordelais have been blessed in the last decade with a plethora of good luck.

Unlike the poor vintages of the early 1970s, the vintages since 1975 have been beneficent to Bordeaux, not only in quality but in quantity. Great vintages of red Bordeaux in 1975, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1983 and now the imminent 1985s were combined with good vintages in 1976, 1979 and 1984 and the result has been nine years of good fortune out of 11. Only 1977 and 1980 were rated off years.

Plowing Profits Back

Moreover, some producers are saying the 1986s could be better than the already-acclaimed 1985s.

All this has meant strong profits for most properties, which, said Anthony Barton, owner of the chateaux Leoville-Barton and Langoa-Barton, means the producers can plow profits back into the wineries and vineyards and produce even better wine. (It didn’t hurt, too, that a potential disaster vintage of 1982 was turned into a most acceptable one with modern technology; more about that later.)

Improvements in wine can take many forms, but the one most noticeable to me in Bordeaux is in the new oak barrels used to age it. During the last decade or so, I have noticed that some of the slightly musty, casky smells I detected in some Bordeaux have been replaced by cleaner scents--more like vanilla, sandalwood and cedar.

Barton is somewhat amused by terms used to describe wine, and at a recent tasting in Calabasas staged by the Duke of Bourbon wine shop in Canoga Park he had the audience in stitches, reading a tract he wrote some time ago for a British newspaper on the term wet dog as used to describe the aroma of some wines.

Dissecting ’84 and ’85

The evening, complete with half a dozen chateau owners, was a dissection of the two most recent vintages of red Bordeaux to be released, 1984 and 1985. The former has been rated by some wine experts to be just shy of the sump; the latter is rated a step from nirvana.

In fact, the chateau owners spent more time defending the ‘84s than I ever heard in defense of the Edsel. They argued that although the weather wasn’t ideal, the wines are “quite decent,” “not as bad as you’ve read,” etc.

Jean-Michel Cazes, the delightfully humorous, easygoing owner of Chateau Lynch-Bages, said of the ‘84s: “They have been very down-rated in the last few years, but the wines are almost ready to drink and we really think it’s going to be a useful vintage.”

The term useful may seem a backhanded compliment, but whereas Americans find the word best applies to something like a wrench, the French and British use this term to denote a wine that is acceptable, worthy of being served though perhaps not of being praised.

Prices Up, Sales Down

In years past this would have been a vintage for April 16--the day after pockets are emptied by the tax man. Yet after tasting many of these wines and then looking at their prices, I have concluded that I won’t often use the term bargain when referring to them.

Though the wines are not bad, their prices are.

The price of the French franc, sitting there at 5.8 or so to the U.S. dollar, means that prices for all French products are about 40% more expensive than four years ago when the franc was above 10 to the dollar. Thus prices for all French wines are up, and sales of all French wines in the United States are off an estimated 25% because of it.

The word most used in my tasting notes of 10 Bordeaux from the 1984 vintage was “hard,” meaning the tannin level of the wines was so high in relation to the fruit that I didn’t feel they were worth spending upwards of $18 a bottle for. Nine of the 10 wines tasted were that price or more; the 10th was unavailable.

(I felt the best 1984 wine on the table was Domaine de Chevalier, which sells for $37.)

Some 1984s may come down in price, what with a huge amount of them still unsold and sitting in warehouses. I recently saw ’84 Chateau Gloria selling for less than $10.

The 1985 Bordeaux are another story. Although I haven’t had many of them yet, those I’ve tasted show ’85 to be a very good vintage, producing wines that have good fruit, superb balance and suppleness.

Cazes added, “The wines have good acidity--and for us, that means low acidity,” pointing up the fact that in off-vintages such as 1984, the higher acids can add to a wine’s astringency.

‘Wonderful Structure’

Finding a “best wine” among the ‘85s was a chore. Each had its strong suit. But one of the most concentrated wines was the Cos d’Estournel ($38), with an intense, powerful aroma of fruit and spice. A higher tannin level was slightly bothersome, but there’s wonderful structure.

The most complex wine was Chateau Lynch-Bages ($29)--in spite of a hint of that “wet dog” aroma Barton joked about earlier. (As Barton would say, it was only a chihuahua.) Cherries and cedar mingled with mint and anise in a harmony of power and finesse. A wine to cellar and monitor.

Miklos Dora, the agent for the late Baron Philippe de Rothschild, was sitting next to me, and he and I used the same word simultaneously to refer to the Chateau Figeac ($55): pretty. It had a lovely floral character, very fruity and elegant, with a delicate yet fairly rich finish. But note the price.

For sheer value, the 1985 Chateau De Marbuzet ($10) represents a glimpse of what great Bordeaux can be at a price. Not very concentrated, the wine still shows its new oak and soft, bright fruit character in a most appealing package.

I was also impressed by the ’85 Domaine de Chevalier ($49): rich, smooth with a grand, delicate finish; Chateau Clerc Milon ($21): good fruit, slightly harder, but with ample complexity; Chateau Pichon-Longueville ($29): slightly toasty, with great fruit and mint, built along classic lines; Chateau Leoville-Barton ($27): violets and spice, delicate fruit, soft finish; Chateau Les-Ormes-de-Pez ($16): concentrated black cherry and cedar but with a slight earthy component.

The white-haired Dora, no stranger to marketing Bordeaux in America, acknowledged that selling these wines, as good as they are, won’t be easy because of their high prices. And he said that when he was in Bordeaux recently for the funeral of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, a number of Bordeaux producers told him not to waste his time selling wine in America; the market was dead, he was told.

“But when the prices went up, I told the wine makers, ‘You have to court the American wine consumer. Talk to the drinking public.’ Because when prices drop, the market will be here.”

For Bordeaux lovers the high prices of the ‘85s are disappointing, but at least the wines are superb.

More notes from the Bordeaux tasting:

--Wine makers agreed that, were it not for temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks coming into the Bordeaux region in recent years, the 1982 harvest (considered to be excellent) could have been a disaster. Because of an unseasonal hot spell during the harvest, grapes arrived at wineries very warm and that could have produced off flavors. By chilling the juice before fermentation began, the harvest was saved.

--Pichon-Longueville-Baron used to be the name of the chateau; the Baron was added to differentiate it from Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, its neighbor.

Last June 15, a French insurance company acquired the Baron and placed Cazes in charge. “And the first thing I did was to take the sign (with the word Baron) down,” he said. “And the second thing was to open the windows. They had never been opened.”

--Barton said he recently was accosted by a wine investor who had bought a lot of wine and now realized that selling it wouldn’t produce much of a profit. He asked Barton for advice. Said Barton, “I told him to add to his investment--to buy a corkscrew.”

--Cazes said the recent funeral of Baron Philippe de Rothschild in Bordeaux was attended by hundreds of wine makers, paying homage to the grand gentleman who had done so much for Bordeaux, for the French wine industry and for wine consumers the world over.

Cazes said the Baron was revered for his love of wine, and all acknowledged that he was one of the most powerful men in the world of wine. His passing diminishes the vinous landscape.

“It was a clear day, no clouds in the sky,” said Cazes of the funeral. “And as they were lowering his casket into the grave, there was a roll of thunder.”

Wine of the Week: 1986 Silverado Vineyards Chardonnay ($12)--stunning value in a most drinkable and age-worthy wine. It doesn’t have a buttery or oaky forwardness, as do a lot of big-style wines, but there is an amazing citrus and spice aroma and a very long finish. It’s one of the most complex wines I’ve tasted, lean and yet supple. About 22,000 cases were produced. Silverado’s superb 1985 Chardonnay, which won multiple gold medals, sold out rapidly. This wine is better.