Laurent Drouhin from Joseph Drouhin Vineyard in Burgundy will appear at the Bacchus Wine Shop on Tuesday, September 19, 2006. You will have the opportunity to taste 9 selected wines from the Drouhin portfolio (which includes Chablis, Meursault, Puligny Montrachet, Chorey Les Beaune, Chambolle Musigny and Echezeaux).  Any Burgundy fans will appreciate this tasting (and for $15, you can’t beat it). Sign up here. 

The Wall Street Journal has a write-up today of the sweeping changes coming to the wine industry in the US, thanks to deregulation of how wine is sold through wholesalers and the state by state upheaval of archaic inter/intra-state rules prohibiting wine sales. I also learned the Costco is the biggest wine seller in the country.

In the end, these changes mean better wine pricing for us.

Interesting article from the NYTimes yesterday that dissects the ‘market moving’ associated with getting a score above or below the 90pt threshold from wine critics, how the 100 pt system was invented, and its shortcomings.

Today’s WSJ has an important article on the rise of wine counterfeiting (of the likes of Sassacaia, Lafite Rothschild, Penfolds Grange). The sad part may be summed up by the last line in the article:

Claudio Gufoni, a 59-year-old wine enthusiast who lives in Santa Croce sull’Arno, east of Pisa, was the client who was duped into buying more than 100 bottles of the bogus Sassicaia. Although prosecutors confiscated most of his fake bottles as evidence, a few were left behind. Mr. Gufoni says he now serves them to unsuspecting guests: “No one has noticed the difference.“

#1 is in the history books! My sincere thanks go out to Adrienne, Brian, Charles, Gary, John D, John P, Kevin, Paul, and Tom (and yours truly) for coming out last Thursday. They were first in, best dressed, and these gentlemen and lady were kind enough to dress up our inaugural evening! We had some intrepid travelers with us, with Adrienne going to DC and back on Thursday (lugging her bottle of wine in two directions), while John Durham joined us from San Francisco–we couldn’t have had our first dinner without a link to the west coast group live and in stereo. It was so great to see everyone out.

On the food end, we tucked in for the following:

Starters:
– cheese plate, crackers, fig spread
– grapes, olives
– Italian sausages

Main:
– Salad (Boston lettuce, arugula, mint, snow peas, walnuts, and endive).
– Grilled potatoes, mushrooms, onions, corn
– Grilled filet mignon, marinated overnight with garlic, salt, pepper, oil, and a bit of light soy

Dessert:
– Fresh strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, fresh whipped cream

But who really cares about the food? It’s time for a rundown of the wines, those dead soldiers who stood up and were summarily shot down by our thirsty bunch (in very rough order of consumption):

2003 Duckhorn Sauvignon Blanc (the welcome wine, 1.5L)
2002 St. Francis Nuns Canyon Reserve, Sonoma
1997 Kenwood, Artists Series Cabernet Sauvignon, Sonoma
2001 Heitz Cellar, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
2000 Silver Cork…aka Silver Oak…yep, we found a corked bottle in the group
2002 Gemstone, Yountville, Napa Valley
1987 Beringer, Private Reserve, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
1999 Dominus, Napa Valley
1993 Ridge, Monte Bello, Santa Cruz Mountains
1996 Leoville Barton, St. Julien
2003 Tor, Oak Knoll, Mast Vineyard, Napa Valley
2001 Torres, Mas La Plana, Black Label, Spain
2004 Inspiration, South Africa (dessert wine)

The crowd pleasers seemed to be the ’87 Beringer, and the ’93 Ridge (I can’t vote for the Dominus because I brought it, but it was yummy). If memory serves me correctly (and it may not after opening up some after dinner Absinthe), other than the Silver Cork, we didn’t have any real dogs among us. From the average prices on Wine Searcher (www.wine-searcher.com), we consumed over $1,000 worth of wine, with an average bottle value of $75 (the South African dessert wine can skew this quite a bit, for although it’s about $5, you can’t get it anywhere else but South Africa, so add on a plane ticket!).

Thanks so very much for those who were able to attend, regrets to those who could not, and we look forward to making this a regular occurrence (just not regularly at my house…we’ll rotate!). John Piccone has offered to host the next dinner in September, with Dave Morgan taking up the slack in October and Paul DeBraccio for December. Details will follow for dinner #2.