Reserve Reservations

Are all “reserve” wines better than non-reserve wines? Hardly. To be sure, they are usually bigger, deeper in flavor, oakier, fatter, richer and more showy, but often the regular bottling of a company is just as good--and a lot cheaper.

A good example is the 1987 Chateau St. Jean “Reserve” Cabernet Sauvignon, which sells for $38 a bottle. The wine is potent, powerful in fruit aroma, with huge amounts of toasted oak and cherries, a load of sandalwood and cedar and hints of vanilla and cinnamon--in short, just about every flavor you could expect from Cabernet.

And that’s the problem: Too much of everything. It is a tasty, yet confusing wine that has nothing like the charm of the regular bottling, which sold for $16.50.

In this case, the reserve bottling is simply a case of more meaning less.