43 bottles of Château Beaucastel with Bob Parker
Mark's Duck House, Falls Church, VA
Tasted Friday, August 12, 2005 by Eric with 5,590 views
Introduction
In the most recent Hospice du Rhone auction, Robert Parker donated a mixed case of Château Beaucastel with vintages heading back into the 1970’s. A small group of collectors decided to band together to win the auction lot and then share the wines in a tasting. We also gambled that we might be able to convince Bob to join us in opening the wines if we planned it around a meal close to home for him at this convenience. Our gamble paid off, and Bob also invited along a few special guests: Pierre Rovani, Mark Squires and Lettie Teague. The other attendees included Christine Huang, Scott Manlin, Mat Garretson, Craig Collins, Wilfred van Gorp, Jeff Leve and myself. Bob brought a few extra surprises, and the auction winners also chipped in various vintages of the Vieilles Vignes Roussanne as well as a complete vertical of the stunning Hommage à Jacques Perrin super-cuvee.
(click image for larger photo)
And so at 11:30am we found ourselves in Falls Church, Virginia sitting down for a ‘little bite’ of dim-sum at Mark’s Duck House. At our last tasting with Bob in February I had run out of steam and ended up closing my eyes for a few minutes (there was some jovial debate as to whether I had actually slept). This time I was determined to grit it out. Despite a long prior evening, I was armed this time with a nice, big spit-cup (I like to spit most wines in a tasting) as well as a nice dose of Starbucks.
Flight 1 (1 Note)
We started out with an interesting and educational treat. When the 1988 Beaucastel was bottled, Bob also asked the Perrin family to do a private bottling of several of the individual cépages instead of the usual blend (which can comprise up to 15 different varietals).
Flight 2 (7 Notes)
Now the dim-sum started to fly, and over the course of the meal we powered our way through a delicious and relentless stream of dumplings stuffed with sweet shrimp, crab, lobster, pork & scallions (both steamed and then crispy pan fried), BBQ pork, BBQ pork buns, pot-stickers, garlic crusted softshell crab and then Peking duck. I’m sure I forgot a number of dishes as well, but man on man it was yummy!!!!
We started out the real wines with a 7-bottle flight of the blanc Cuvée Roussanne Vieilles Vignes.
Flight 3 (4 Notes)
From here we settled into 17 vintages of the normal Châteauneuf-du-Pape dating back to 1969, such a joy to see through the ages:
Flight 4 (5 Notes)
This was a flight of mostly weaker vintages apart from the 1985, but frankly all the wines showed very nicely.
Flight 5 (4 Notes)
Now we started getting to the serious wines with the always spectacular 1989 and 1990. The 1990 was the clear wine of this flight, not even close with anything else.
Flight 6 (4 Notes)
As good as the prior flights, this four vintage stretch is just off the charts, especially the 1998. I think the 1998 may well be the best Beaucastel in time. It easily cleaned up this flight since the 2001 was out of the running.
Flight 7 (8 Notes)
As if that wasn’t enough, now we opened up a complete set of Hommage à Jacques Perrin. I wasn’t taking a lot of notes here, but we are talking about some seriously chewy and wonderful wines made from old-vines Mourvedre. I loved them all, although in the case of the 1994 and 1999 one wonders why they just didn’t beef up the regular cuvee and hold off on releasing a Hommage. For the others, the 1989, 1990, 1998 and 2001 were just utter standouts, basically flawless wines, although stylistically probably not for those that don’t like wines of massive extraction. Even though they share little in common with the regular bottlings, there was an amazing parallel between the vintage personalities of the regular cuvee and the hommage bottling.
Closing
Thanks to everyone for an utterly memorable experience, truly fantastic!
1988 Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape
France, Rhône, Southern Rhône, Châteauneuf-du-Pape
Individual Cépage bottlings: We compared the 1988 Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, Counoise, Cinsault and Muscardin. (There were also a couple of 1989 bottles, but I didn’t try them.) It was rather amazing how different they all were. The Syrah was peppery as one would expect, the Grenache a bit non-descript, the Muscardin extremely fragrant and also nice on the palate, and my favorite was the Mourvedre with a high-pitched nose (Pierre said it smelled like Raid which was true) and chewy, muscular palate. The Mourvedre also changed a great deal with aeration. Very interesting!
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