What is a cult wine?

What makes a wine a profound experience and not just a memorable one?

I try to only buy memorable wines. As wines are brought to me at the restaurant or as I taste at an event I rarely commit to buy a wine immediately. Rather, I might wait a day or so--then If I am still thinking of that wine--well that is what I want to happen. I want to serve a wine to our guests that resonates. A wine that they think about the next day as they visit wineries and other restaurants, I want them to think, the wine I had at La Toque was better.

The special qualities that a transcendent wine has to offer are often universally recognized. Famous wine like 2001 Chateau d’Yquem or  2000 Latour are 100 points wines but you can get them, its just going to be expensive. Sometimes the cult wines are expensive, but not profound. On Saturday we had some guests that drink Rochioli West Block Pinot Noir and Shafer Hillside Select and then ordered Gemstone. But found it to have strong herbal tones that they found objectionable. And so I was called to the table to explain the wine to them. “People told us this was a great wine, that they preferred it to any other Napa Valley wine. How come we don’t like it as much as the Hillside Select? It has an herbal quality. I talked about the Gemstone for a bit to explain how it is a different wine that Shafer Hillside. I said that Paul and Suzie Frank looked for five years to fine the right property where all of the Bordeaux varietals would grow well. I mentioned that I have tasted Gemstone in blind tastings against Colgin and Shafer and Screaming Eagle and Gemstone was everyone’s favorite. But that part of the Gemstone philosophy is to blend Cabernet Sauvignon with Cabernet Frank and Merlot and Petite Verdot and that some people think that Cabernet Franc has a herbaceous quality.

This group were nice people, They clearly belong in the “if it reminds me of chocolate covered cherries then it a 100 point wine” school of wine consumption.  I don’t have a problem with that, if some one knows what they want and it makes them happy, well fine, happiness is the goal.. There were so excited to be able to buy a wine that they couldn’t get, they didn’t know what the wine was, they just knew that it was a cult wine.

On  the other side of the room, wine collectors had brought in two bottles from their cellars, 1986 Chateau Mouton Rothschild and 1999 Dalle Valle Maya. I am sure they expected an evening filled with discussion about the two wines, a comparative battle as the merits of each wine might be analyzed. That did not happen. It was an interesting battle if your idea of interesting is the sinking of the Spanish Armada or a Minnesota Viking Super Bowl.

1986 Chateau Mouton Rothschild was everything you might expect, bright cassis, cigar box notes, with leather and dried mushrooms. Parker gave the wine 100 points, the Wine Spectator 99 points. The 1999 Maya was better. How ever you might rank the Mouton, the Maya was five points better on this night. The Mouton was memorable, the Maya, profound. The only wine this year that I have tasted that was as good is the 1986 Chateaux Margaux.

1999 Dalle Valle Maya, 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Cabernet Franc. As you and I know some people don’t like Cabernet Franc in Napa wine. Ok, then, more for me. Tasting the 1999 Maya reminds me of Cheval Blanc but at the next moment reminds me of only Maya, that it is a wine, unique in the world., and that pleasure of  tasting it is a special event. Truly great wines only compete against  themselves.  

Our guests on table 4, who tasted the Mouton and the Maya, no doubt, came away from the experience, enriched and convinced that Maya is a cult wine. Our guests on table 12 that decided that Gemstone was no Shafer Hillside, are clear which of their wines is a cult wine and which is a pretender. A thousand times every day, great wines are rated against other great wines and the paradigm of cult wines shifts and the marketplace adjusts. Regardless of power of Parker or Laube, the high score is just the beginning of the journey, corks are pulled and wines are tasted, judged and ranked.

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