Community Tasting Note

• csimm wrote:

  January 15, 2023 - As a standalone, this wine was initially a tad confusing to me. likely more due to my general stupidity (as usual) than the wine being some sort of enigma. Here's why - The texture was exceptionally glossy and polished, with a creamy mouthfeel that bordered on confection (again, texture-wise; not sweet-wise). The fruit was somewhat muted, with the varnish taking center stage throughout the execution. The flavors that did emerge were quite twiggy, with a forest floor component prominent on the nose and the palate. Did I catch this wine in transition? Is it trying to push out some tertiary flavors but hasn't quite reached the mushroom and cedar threshold yet? Or has the fruit and flavor faded by now that it will become meh in a few years? ...I'm sure some Rod Serling-type has the answers to traveling through this wine's other dimensions of sight, sound, and mind.
  
  I had a hard time "grading" a paper that I didn't understand, but kept thinking the author who wrote it was much smarter than me. What was I missing...?
  
  Well, what was missing was...food! Throw in a perfectly cooked pork tenderloin (thanks sous vide!) with a brilliant Asian peppercorn sauce and you have a pairing that made the orchestra of the Marcassin's delivery align in perfect harmony with the fare.
  
  How to score? I dunno. It's a style thing. It's a pairing thing. It's a relative cult-to-price-comparison-and-access thing. It's a is-it-worth-the-hype thing. It's all the things that wine geeks can pontificate about and decide what's objectively right and wrong about a subjective experience with a particular bottle of wine. Psychology over science I suppose.
  
  I know there will be some admiral of the Marcassin Militia here who, because I'm an outlier and not on the Eyes Wide Shut Marcassin allocation mailer, will find my drivel, well, drivel-some?,... but I always find certain wines fascinating in terms of where they seem to land in the cult marketing category in relation to the wine itself. Like, how would I call out this wine if I had it blind? It's polarizing in some ways. I guess I'll have to discuss this further with my wine therapist at our Tuesday session.
  
  A very generous contribution to the evening that I was fortunate to examine and pick apart. Long...long...story short(ish), I liked it very much with food and thought it was a unique expression of the varietal on the domestic front, especially at a decade in age. Best advice from someone who might be seen as a Marcassin infidel: Drink with food. THAT is where this wine becomes exceptional.

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6 Comments

• Canoehead commented:

  1/16/23, 11:18 PM - The best wines are food wines. Period. How they react/evolve with what they’re paired with is the ultimate alchemy. Wine is not a cocktail it’s an accompaniment to food and occasion. No one’s decanting a first growth or grand cru in an alley somewhere. It’s meant to be paired with food. Let the Marcassin Admiral huff and puff and try to rally the troops in some form of dissent and disapproval. A wine’s true test is it’s match with protein, fat and the company around the table. The Marcassin’s enigmatic properties need food. Period.

• csimm commented:

  1/17/23, 9:09 AM - Absolutely. I completely agree with you my friend. While I do like to academically pick though the merits of a wine in its standalone capacity just for the sake of geeking out and pretending that somehow it matters in some way to examine a wine before pairing it, wine is indeed designed for food. The Marcassin reinforced that in spades. It did exactly what it was supposed to do: the wine elevated the food, and the food elevated the wine.

• JPF16 commented:

  2/10/23, 8:53 AM - Great writeup... thanks for taking time and thought to post.

• csimm commented:

  2/10/23, 9:59 AM - Hi JPF16. Thanks very much. I suspect this wine is a universal 'win' for any Marcassin fan. Enjoy! Cheers!

• JPF16 commented:

  3/15/23, 10:51 AM - Thanks again for the notes, will be trying it Friday night with dinner and the suggestion that it's better with food, combined with others who say decant, decant, decant should optimize this first try at Marcassin.

• csimm commented:

  3/16/23, 9:13 AM - Sounds like a game plan for success! Looking forward to any write up you do on it and hearing about how it all turns out!

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