Vintastic! A Taste of Grand Cru

Nancy Wallace, Christopher Chan, Aisha Kabani

On Thursday, Nancy Wallace and Andy Frey and Aisha Kabani joined me for the second in the series of Vintastic! wine tastings at the Rainier Club.  It was more than a sell-out event, so Christopher Chan, the Rainier Club Director of Beverages & Spirits had to quickly make some last-minute adjustments to his tasting menu in order to accommodate all the guests.
As in our prior tasting, Christopher was again a wealth of knowledge about each of the areas and wines that we tasted.  He reminded us that the Premiere Cru labels are only five:  Chateau Latour, Chateau Haut Brion, Chateau Margaux, Chateau Mouton Rothschild, and Chateau Lafite Rothschild.  We took time to identify the color and then the nose of the wine both above and in the glass before actually tasting.  And again, we identified numerous floral, fruit, herbal and earth notes through our olfactory senses before we actually tasted each wine.

My favorite of the eleven wines we tasted was the 2002 Chateau Pichon-Baron de Longueville Deuxieme Grand Cru Classe, Pauillac, France, but I also loved the 2002 Chateau Coutet Premiere Grand Cru Classe Sauternes, France which was our final tasting wine.

Here is the full list of wines:

2000 Franck Bonville Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Champagne, FRA

2007 A. Bichot Chablis, FRA

2007 C. Moreau “Les Clos Grand Cru” Chablis, FRA

2008 Lucien Albrecht “Cuvée Romanus” Pinot Gris, FRA

2002 Lucien Albrecht “Pfingstberg Grand Cru” Pinot Gris, FRA

2005 Ch. Pibran Cru Bourgeois Pauillac, FRA

2002 Ch. Pichon-Baron de Longueville 2iem Grand Cru Classé, Pauillac, FRA

2006 Clos L’Oratoire St. Emilion Grand Cru Classé, FRA

2004 Saint-Croix-du-Mont Late Harvest Semillon, FRA

2002 Ch. Coutet 1er Grand Cru Classé Sauternes, FRA

Next week I look forward to the third Vintastic! tasting which is titled "Double Gold - The Best of the Pacific Northwest".