White Bordeaux

The next wine we tasted was a 2005 Chateau Carbonnieux from the Pessac-Leognan appellation of Bordeaux. This was the most expensive bottle we tasted so far at $42. As far as wine goes I guess that is not that much but for someone like me who typically buys bottles wine in the range of $10-$20 at the local liquor store, and most often the grocery store, I was expecting greatness for $42.

The wine was 70% Sauvignon Blanc and 30% Semillon. I do not recall if I ever tasted Semillon but I know I tend to like Sauvignon Blanc so it was another indication I was going to like this wine. On the other hand this is the first white wine we tasted that was aged in oak. I am sure there are a lot of quality white wines aged in oak but the my first thought was of the cheap Chardonnays I have often tasted which I am not a fan of.


The wine had a deeper color, was less acidic and had more body than the previous wines we tasted. Some of that I assume is due to the age and some may also be due to the addition of the Semillon grape in the blend. The wine had a more intense smell than previous wines. I am not comfortable with identifying the various aromas of wine yet but I can say for sure that the smell of the oak came across very strong. My wife who has a much better sense of smell than I do also said she sensed aromas of vanilla, musty and mulling spice. I did sense the drying sensation from the tannins.


So overall what did we think? ... In our first few tastes we really did not like it. This was a 42 dollar bottle white Bordeaux so we tried to warm up to it but we did not get there. We decided that maybe we needed to have it with some food so we broke out a few types of crackers, unfortunately, we had finished some nice cheese we had earlier in the day. The wine actually tasted worse with the crackers. Eventually we moved on to some whooppie pies we had for desert. We tasted the wine again and it actually was not bad. I am not going to suggest you buy this wine to accompany desert but something about the sweetness of the whoopie pies made this wine much more palatable than with the saltiness of the crackers. As I learn more about food and wine pairing maybe I will understand why.


This brings me to another issue I have with our current method of tasting. In general we are sitting around tasting wine by itself. I know there is an art to pairing food with wine and the same wine may be great with one dish and not so good with another. However, with no food what should we be looking for? When I took a wine tasting class a few years ago the teacher used the term deck wine, meaning that it is a good wine to drink by itself just handing out on the deck with some friends. I think without understanding food and wine pairing our ratings are primarily based on if the wine we are tasting would make a good deck wine.