bordeaux, malbec, and riesling tasting at zachy's

i almost decided to skip posting this since a week has already gone by - but in the interest of balancing the craft beer posts ;D - here goes:

last saturday afternoon (sandwiched between the morning nyrr 8000 and an evening st. patrick's day party), i went down to zachy's (my favorite wine store) for it's weekly wine tasting. three different varieties, riesling, malbec, and bordeaux were on the agenda. my initial interest in the group focused on the malbec, one of my favorite grape varieties - and something i decidedly prefer over it's more popular (and ubiquitous) cousin, merlot.

while the argentinian malbec's (3) were good, and i even enjoyed the trimbach tastings (despite not being much of a white wine fan), the bordeaux selection stole the show - as they say. i can't begin to catalog the entire list - but will note that i tasted my first 100 point (ws) wine (leoville las cases 2005) and most expensive ($975) wine (mouton rothschild 2005) on the same afternoon. awesome.

but despite those incredible two firsts, my favorite bordeaux of the afternoon was - easily - the beau sejour becot 2005 (94 wa)! with this teaser of a description, "intense, full-bodied... revealing notes of expresso roast, chocolate, blackberries, licorice, and truffles," it delivered - and stood out among an impressive list of wines!

sadly (because i could have stayed there all afternoon), the bordeaux tasting ended with 3 impressive sauternes (my favorite white wine, even if it's meant for dessert ;D). the best of those three (none from chateau d'yquem, unfortunately) - was clearly the suduiraut 2005 (93 ws). sweet and complex :D

so while i love craft beer, my heart will always belong to wine.

check out my earlier post on the napa tasting.