We’re usually not the types of folks who attend those “we’re tasting the best of the world against our wine to see how we do” tastings. Bob Mondavi used to host gigs like that in the 90′s and they would usually match up a great vintage oftheir Cab with a crappy cvintage of Bordeaux (think 1992) and trumpet the results (Shockingly, Mondavi won! ; – ) till they were blue in the face.
So it was with a little trepidation that Tris and I headed to Valentino Restaurant in Santa Monica for a horizontal tasting of 2006′s hosted by the legendary Leonardo Frescobaldi. We’re fans of the man’s wines, we think he’s genuine and he put on a nice tatsing for us here at the store the night before, so we were feeling a little warm fuzzy when we walked in.
We saw the competition on the table: Opus, Dominus, Cos d’Estournel, Haut Brion and Sassicaia were going to go head to head with Frescobaldi’s 2006 Mormoreto. This could get ugly.
But then Old leo threw us a curveball. We were going to taste all the wines non-blind! Leonardo wasn’t looking for a ‘winner’, just a ‘placer’. He was only interested in seeing if his boy could hang with the big dogs…and hang it did. It was honestly pretty fun tasting all these wines without the pressure of the ‘bags’. The people were relaxed, the room was relaxed, and there was a lot more dialogue back and forth about the wines.
General consensus? Mormoreto held its own. It’s a delicious wine, insanely fruity and well-balanced. But the winners this day were Sassicaia and Dominus. Check out the tasting notes (don’t look for a ‘number’, as we ain’t much for ‘scoring’):
Dominus 2006- This one started off tightly wound then cedar and mint aromas began to emerge, along with the classic old school Napa curranty fruit. Very ‘south side’ of the valley (read Yountville), as the wine opened a more prominent floral character emerged and the wine juiced up a bit. We love what Moueix is doing at this property since he started to make a “Napa wine in the Bordeaux style” as opposed to a “Bordeaux wine in Napa”. Gorgeous, really…
Opus One 2006- Coconut, vanilla, dust, black fruits, this wine is more obvious than the Dominus, more overtly oaky. More of those grippier, chewier 2006 tannins here, which the Dominus seemed to avoid. The wine’s a bit hot on the finish and the wood program seems to dumb it down. Least impressive wine on the table today, but we think this program is miles ahead of where it used to be…
Haut Brion 2006- Chewy, but certainly the most elegant wine on the table. Classically chock full of minerals, gravel, tobacco. It was a shame that the wine seemed to detonate with air and triple in fruit just as the tasting was winding down (isn’t that always the case?) and they wouldn’t let us take our glasses to lunch! Dagnabbit!
Cos d’Estournel 2006- Not an elegant wine by any stretch, today the house style of Cos seemed to be bumping heads with the terroir. Impressively concentrated, but the wine seemed to be in a bit of a funk, a battle being waged between the wine’s St. Estephe ‘road tar” attributes and it’s tannic backbone. Some dark fruits and cocoa emerged with coaxing but the wine was a bit of a jumble today…
Sassicaia 2006- This is pretty ripe and pandering. In a blind tasting I’d call this one from California at the start but the Tuscan coast terroir started to amke some headway at the end. Just a delicious wine, it was shocking how deeply fruited this wine was. Very Cabernet, a deep cassis edge to the black fruits, with a nice little cedar thing going on, this iwne was the omst generous of the afternoon and picked up complexity as it sat, kind of a reverse Haut Brion…
Frescobaldi Nippozano Mormoreto 2006- Insanely fruity, with a little mint popping up. This is really ripe Merlot, with the underpinning of the classic 2006 vintage putting in an appearance but getting swamped by all that fruit. If this and the Sassi are any indication 2006 looks like the pick of the litter since 1997. Outstanding wine. Not the best on the table today, but certainly not the worst…
Lunch afterwards was pretty darn good, actually. Seems as if Piero Selvaggio has a new chef from Sardinia manning the stoves that has the ‘nonna touch’, all three of our courses hitting the spot as if grandma were in the house cooking them.
