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Hail To The King Baby

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  • Posted: 9/10/2017
  • Categories: Wine
Comments Off on Hail To The King Baby
Baller.  An expression that implies you are super rich, super successful and super awesome.  I feel this way on only the rarest of occasions, like when I get to hang out with the Four Horsemen (to refresh, that is Ed Vinson, our B&W Director based out of the mothership in Fairfield, OH; his No. 2, my younger brother from another mother, T.J. Askren; my immediate boss and friend, THE Todd Wiggs; and yours truly) and drink “baller” Bordeaux like Pavie and Cheval Blanc.

To preface a bit, prior to this gig, I rarely had the opportunity to try wines of this magnitude.  Only once in a great while would such an opportunity arise.  These days, while it is still not all the time (wouldn’t that be nice?) it somehow feels these opportunities come with a bit more frequency.

Wines like these almost warrant some sort of story – not a cursory overview of aromas and flavors subjectively derived by some doughy-eyed critic but epic tomes, like a Viking battle saga, or the ending of some thousand-year curse against a deposed royal family in ancient China.  At the very least, a tale of beautiful, epic love, like Tristan and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet.  Family and friends who don’t quite get the level of geekdom I exhibit when I talk about wines such as these give me so much grief at times:  “Oh Kevin, it’s just grape juice!” or “I don’t get what you are saying” or even “You are such a nerd!”  

If they only knew…

Chateau Cheval Blanc Saint-Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classe 2008.  Just magical.  Black cherries, bitter chocolate, mint, graphite, crushed stones… I could spend all day with a vast litany of tastes and smells, but when you get to be a wine like this, you envision riding up to the castle of your beloved on a majestic white horse (Cheval Blanc=white horse, tee hee) as a fanfare of trumpets announces your arrival to all within the castle walls.  You get the idea.  This is magnificent, and in the presence of comrades such as these, Hail to the King, baby!

Chateau Pavie Saint-Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classe 2008.  Full-bore hedonism comparatively speaking.  70% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon.  Deep, resonating notes of chocolate, mesquite and black currants stirred up with black peppercorns, lead pencil and truffle shavings, this is much more unctuous than you would expect from Bordeaux.  Talk about your carnal pleasure.

These are the reasons why I do what I do, why I love this business, and why wine is far more than just a widget to me.  Wine is Art, wine is Poetry, wine is Music, wine is Life.

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