In this column, I’m going to break one of my own rules: I’m going to write about a tasting. This tasting was held last month at Spago Beverly Hills, and coordinated by Bipin Desai, a soft-spoken professor of Physics and longtime collector from the Los Angeles area. A couple of times each year, Desai gathers friends to share a meal while tasting vintage wines from his and their collections. These wines came from the cellars of Edward Lazarus and Frank & Mary Komorowski, who have, for decades, collected the great old wines of Spain, from the likes of Vega Sicilia, CVNE, Lopez de Heredia, Marques de Riscal, and Marques de Murrieta Castillo Ygay. There were 25 wines in all. The youngest bottle was from 1975; the oldest, from 1938.
I’m not in the habit of writing about tastings. For one thing, it seems a little ridiculous to go on and on about an event that occurred weeks ago; to discuss, in detail, wines that nobody can find, that are so rare you’re not likely to see them, much less taste them, in your lifetime. Furthermore, it feels a little impolite, like saying ‘Wow, dude, those wines were totally amazing; it’s too bad you weren’t there, sucker.’
Then again, if I don’t share this experience, I would feel like I was turning my back on one of the fundamental reasons I do this for a living, or for that matter, one of the reasons I’m alive at all. These wines were so beautiful, so transcendent, that the experience was almost like listening to a virtuoso performance by a great violinist in concert, shared by a room full of awed observers–only the performer, in this instance, gets one chance to perform.
As such, you tend to get lost in the moment; you’re in the presence of greatness, and all you can do is shut up, stick your nose in the glass, and bear witness. As a friend, the poet Chad Arnold, observed recently: ‘Great wine is like great art, and must be approached accordingly. It’s not adequate to say that Queen Dido was a pyromaniac, or that Don Quixote loved exercise. We can’t oversimplify a complex wine any more than we would a complex poem or novel.’
Taking Chad’s advice, I’m not going to reduce the 25 wines I tasted that day into words, at least not exactly. My notes are full of words of course: adjectives of the sort that describe older wines, like leather, dried flowers, tobacco, cedar, olive, coffee, caramel, cocoa, smoke, rose petal, earth, wet soil, brick dust, iron, mineral, black pepper, toffee, praline, black spice, blackberry, black currant, black fig, black plum, salted plum, prune, red cherry, strawberry, cranberry; or speak of the wines’ elegance, delicacy, attenuation, gentility, austerity, and grace. (Don’t even think about tasting notes–I’m not worthy.)
I’m not going to spend any time describing the extraordinary textures of the wines, nor will I note their astonishing balance, their majestic composure, their youth, nor their profound sense of place–even as nothing seemed particularly Spanish about the wines (old Burgundies, for example, taste unquestionably Burgundian; if anything, the experience of tasting these wines felt more universal). I don’t want to dwell on the observation that as we retreated into the decades the wines tended to become leaner, more diaphanous, but the energy coursing through them, like a hearty pulse, was just as vibrant, even in wines the age of my father. I’m not going to begin to imagine the consciousness of a winemaker who crafts wines to still express profundity seventy years after he’s made it–a wine that, conceivably, has outlived its maker.
Part of the joy of this tasting, I think, was the fact that none of us in the room expected the wines to perform so magnificently. With each passing flight, we were astonished by their consistency their uniform brilliance. Sure, a few had faded, and one or two were oxidized. But I have never attended a tasting like this one where we were continually astonished by the new revelations in the glass. (As a testament to their consistency, there was no consensus whatsoever as to which wine was the ‘best.’ We all knew better than to make that claim.) As the afternoon progressed, I believe that all of us in the room realized that we were in the presence of a great performance, and that this shared experience, even for Dr. Desai’s regular guests, was something we would remember for the rest of our lives.
Dr. Desai told us that when he sent out his invitations, he had a hard time gathering a quorum–he was met with a fair amount of skepticism that wines from Spain, even from these great producers, would have held up, or would have the integrity of, say, great Bordeaux. So if there are any suckers in this story, it’s the poor suckers who turned down the invitation. For me it was a great privilege to attend, and I was humbled by the experience; and I’m grateful for the opportunity to try and share it with you.
Old Spanish Wines from the Cellars of Edward Lazarus and Frank & Mary Komorowski:
Marques de Riscal, 1957
Vega Sicilia ‘Unico’ 1957, 1960, 1962
CVNE Vina Real Reserva Especial, 1962
Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia, 1964
Vega Sicilia ‘Unico’ 1948
CVNE Viña Real Reserva Especial, 1950
Marques de Riscal, 1950, 1952
CVNE Imperial Gran Reserva, 1952
Marques de Murrieta Castillo Ygay, 1952
Lopez de Heredia Vina Bosconia Gran Reserva, 1954
Marques de Riscal, 1938, 1953, 1958
Vega Sicilia ‘Unico’ 1941, 1953, 1964
Marques de Murrieta Castillo Ygay, 1942
Lopez de Heredia Vina Bosconia Gran Reserva, 1947
Vega Sicilia ‘Unico’ 1968, 1970, 1975