I get it, really I do. But. Wine lovers rejecting Bordeaux is akin to Americans hating on George Washington. It’s an integral part of wine’s history, its mystique, and its hold on our imaginations. Plus a lot of it tastes really, really good.

I was fortunate to experience this first hand a few weeks ago, when Snooth Editor-in-Chief Gregory Dal Piaz opened a few choice Bordeaux for a group of wine writers. The line up included:

1986 Cos d’Estournel (a little stern, but likeable)

1989 Cos d’Estournel (velvety and seductive, if a bit hollow)

1986 Lynch-Bages (corked, alas)

1988 Château Meyney

1989 Château Meyney (my favorite of the bunch – well-balanced, highly drinkable, and remarkably fresh)

1990 Château Meyney

No single wine was perfect, but each offered a snapshot of what Bordeaux can offer: elegance, balance, structure and, of course, longevity. Old-fashioned virtues, I guess, but ones that every wine lover should learn to appreciate.

Besides, without Bordeaux, what would the cool kids have to rebel against?

The experience went something like this: following a very pleasant half-hour of chatting with fellow invitees/bloggers and the supremely charming Jean-Marc Gallot, president of Ruinart, we took our places, which were set thusly:

Each of the 8 vials in the box contained a different scent, which, according to the brain trust (nose trust?) over at International Flavors + Fragrances, was present in Ruinart’s Blanc de Blanc champagne. It was our job to identify each of the smells and match them to the correct answer on a pre-printed list of 16 different aromas. Of course, we each had a glass of the Blanc de Blanc to help us along.

With Gallot teasing/encouraging us, we sniffed and scribbled away. Was #2 lemon…or grapefruit? The table arrangements held clues — like this little pot of pink peppercorns:

You’ve heard of blind tastings? This was more of a “blind smelling,” which put our collective olfactory skills to the test.

1. The folks over at LVMH are some damn fine marketers. Ruinart is the oldest continuous champagne house, and one with a slightly below-the-radar profile here in the U.S. This event was the perfect way to position Ruinart as a “boutique” brand, less mainstream than Moët or Veuve-Clicquot, but more accessible than Dom Pérignon or Krug. Gallot is the perfect guy to lead the charge. He has that all-too-rare combination (at least in the wine business) of American openness and French, well, Frenchiness. When I asked him what he liked to drink when he wasn’t drinking champagne he said he loved Bordeaux but…was beginning to really enjoy Burgundy. In New York, where obscurity is often touted as a virtue, and it’s nearly impossible to keep up with whatever the wine hipsters are drinking (“What you mean you’ve never had Grolleau? That was so 2010!”) it’s refreshing to remember that one can very happily stick to the classics. (If one has the budget for it, that is.)

2. Delicacy and simplicity are not the same thing. The chief virtue of Ruinart’s Blanc de Blanc is its finesse. Made from 100% Chardonnay — that’s what “Blanc de Blanc” means — this champagne is definitely on the lighter, crisper, end of the spectrum, which is the style I prefer. I think of champagnes like this as “lacy,” although I’m not sure how helpful that comparison is for anyone else. Nonetheless, it’s fair to argue that most of the smells they gave us were somehow present in the wine itself. I might take issue with the white peach, and I definitely wasn’t buying the pineapple (not coincidentally, the only one I got wrong), but ginger, jasmine, cardamom? Why not? Just because a wine is delicate or subtle, that doesn’t mean it can’t have a lot going on. I think it’s particularly difficult to detect this complexity in champagne, where texture (i.e., those bubbles) rather than aroma/flavor, makes the strongest first impression. Hence my classification of this wine as “lacy.” If that word doesn’t make intuitive sense to you, so be it: but I’d encourage you to pay as much attention to a wine’s texture as to its flavor. This is easiest to do with the extremes — say, sparkling at one end of the continuum and port at the other — but it’s not too hard to detect the silkiness of a good Pinot Noir or the roughness of a too-young Barolo or Bordeaux.

3. Wine bloggers are a competitive bunch. I’ve been to some fancy schools over the years and live in a city filled with Type A personalities, but nothing compares to a roomful of wine writers trying to out-smell and out-taste each other. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps the subjectivity of wine-tasting makes it all the more important that we state our opinions with authority? Or because an evening of sipping champagne in each other’s pleasant company doesn’t feel enough like work, so we have to be extra-serious in our wine analysis? Whatever the reason, I’ll cop to it as much as the next wine blogger. God knows, I’m still annoyed I only got 7 out of 8 right. Do you think I can turn in an extra-credit assignment?

OK, on to business.  A few weeks ago I got an offer via Twitter (I’m @spinthebottleny, if you’re so inclined) for free samples of Bordeaux from the region’s trade promotion council. I’m still new enough to this game to be thrilled by an offer of free wine, so I signed up. And as a PR/communications professional by day, I was curious to see how Bordeaux is marketing itself these days. Believe it or not, these guys are actually in a lot of trouble. Once you get beyond the famous names that sell for stratospheric prices — Lafite-Rothschild, Château Margaux, Château d’Yquem — there’s a lot of undistinguished plonk coming out of Bordeaux and many small producers are totally unequipped to compete in the global wine marketplace. (Michael Steinberger goes into great detail on this in his book on the demise of French cuisine, Au Revoir to All That.) Wine is poetry, wine is transcendent…but wine is also a business, and a hard one at that, filled with people who struggle to make a decent living.

That’s why I died a little inside when I tore into the “Life Goes Better with Bordeaux” FedEx package they sent me. Not to look gift wine in the mouth, but I was beyond bummed to see the marketing materials they had enclosed. First there was a dial indicating what type of Bordeaux you should drink based on your other wine preferences, pictured above. Eg, if you like Chilean Sauvignon Blanc, you have to try white Bordeaux Supérieur (Sauvignon Blanc is the primary component of dry white Bordeaux). The whole thing had a chintzy Designer Imposters “if you like Giorgio, you’ll love…” feel to it. Plus there’s something a little desperate about offering up Bordeaux, the historical nexus of the wine universe, as playing second fiddle to the rest of the world’s wine regions. Then there were the food matching notes. The overall message of this campaign is clearly to make Bordeaux more accessible. But with pairings like Glazed Grilled Duck Breast for the Larose-Trintaudon and Maccheroncini with Lobster & Cauliflower Sauce for the Clarendelle, they totally missed the mark. I don’t know many people who cook like that regularly, and the ones who do already know plenty about Bordeaux. What’s wrong with steak for the red? Or a lobster roll for the white? Both would be fine matches. The final tragic piece of the puzzle was a huge, slightly psychadelic poster that follows that same aesthetic of the promotion campaign’s Web site.

Still not sure what I’m supposed to do with it. Hang it above my bed? I don’t see how any of this is supposed to revive the mid-priced segment of the Bordeaux wine industry.

The white wine they sent, the 2006 Clarendelle, is a blend of 44% Sauvignon Blanc, 46% Sémillon, and 10% Muscadelle. The nose was interesting enough, with herbal, citrus rind, toasted almond and Golden Delicious apple aromas.  I’m not in love with oaked Sauvignon Blanc — to me, treating this fresh and sprightly variety with heavy oak is like drowning a beautiful piece of grilled fish in a heavy cream sauce — and I ran into some of that problem here. The wine is fine, although it occupies an uncomfortable place: somewhere in the gray area between fresh, bright, aromatic (unoaked Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling or Grüner Veltiner) and round and unctuous wines (Chardonnay, Viognier). You can see why this wine would be hard to market. With a suggested retail price of $19.95, I don’t see it as a great value, either. (To be fair, I saw it online for as little as $14.99, which sounds more like it.)

The 2004 Larose-Trintaudon, while still pretty basic, offers a little glimpse of what can make Bordeaux great. A blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot, and aged entirely in French (of course) oak, it has that lovely gentlemen’s club library smell of cedar, spice, leather and pleasant mustiness that makes me feel like I’m paging through a fragile old book. All the more ironic that  I spilled it on my laptop:

There’s fruit here, too — blackberries and a little raspberry — as well as some dark chocolate. Suggested retail is $17.99 but I saw it online for as little as $10.99. For $11, you could a lot worse–but for $18, you could do much, much better.

Last night was one of those exceptions. My dear friend Marco opened a (half) bottle of 1997 Château d’Yquem, one of the world’s most acclaimed wines. It’s a sweet white wine from Sauternes, a region in Bordeaux, that’s incredibly expensive to make. When the weather’s just right, botrytis rot attacks the grapes, causing them to shrivel up and concentrating the sugars and flavors. The rot takes its time to work its way through the vineyard and affect the grapes, which means that it requires several passes during the course of harvest to collect the grapes at just the right time. The picking is done completely by hand, sometimes grape by grape, which, as you can imagine, is pretty laborious. (And also helps to explain the astronomical prices. My buddy Marco got this half-bottle as a gift, but it would have set him back nearly $200 if he had paid retail.)

The botrytis rot, age, and the predominant grape variety used (Sémillon, accompanied by a smaller percentage of Sauvignon Blanc), all help to explain the stunning gold color. White wine darkens as it ages, and Yquem and other Sauternes take on beautiful amber and tawny shades as they get older. Aromas of dried apricots, buckwheat honey, toasted almonds, and even mushroom jumped right out of the glass. The palate wasn’t quite as complex — at least at first — with flavors of dried apricot and peach taking center stage against a backdrop of savory smokiness. I wasn’t disappointed, exactly, but Yquem is such an iconic wine, I was practically expecting the skies to part and reveal a chorus of angels as I took my first sip.

Then a funny thing happened. I tried it with some Roquefort — blue cheese and Sauternes is a classic food/wine pairing combination — and that snapped the wine into focus, like a final sprinkling of salt over a sauce. And suddenly, this new taste emerged, one I had experienced many times but never noticed as a distinct flavor: the taste of apricot skin. Tangy/fruity/sweet, with an edge of bitterness, and entirely different from the taste of apricot flesh.  The same way a great photograph can teach you to see something you’ve looked at a million times before, this wine helped me helped me understand a flavor I’d taken for granted my whole life.

After this mini-revelation, I took a break from the Yquem (the conversation had taken a particularly raucous turn) and realized that even 10 minutes after my last sip, the flavor of the Yquem was still vivid in my mouth. In fact, I could still taste it on our cab ride home. It made me realize I don’t pay enough attention to length when I’m tasting. It’s one of those factors that I’m trained to consider and note as part of my diploma classes, but I usually treat it as an afterthought. The Yquem was a great reminder to slow down and pay attention. If you have the good fortune to try this wine, remember to take your time. (And don’t forget the Roquefort.)

A great place to start is Bordeaux, where the red wines are a blend of up to five permitted grape varieties. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are the stars of this classic wine region, while Cabernet Franc and Malbec usually play supporting roles. Waiting in the wings is Petit Verdot. (It’s pronounced Vair-DOH). The grape has dark, thick skins, which add color and tannin to the Bordeaux blend. It also adds spiciness and and a firm intensity to the wine. The downside of Petit Verdot is that it ripens late in the harvest season, which, in temperate Bordeaux, means that in some years it doesn’t really ripen at all.

Some intrepid producers in warmer regions are trying their hands at making wines starring Petit Verdot, like this 2006 Deen De Bortoli Vat 4 ($13.99) from South Eastern Australia. I can see the potential here. There’s some good spice on the nose — cloves and nutmeg — and the firm tannins made it a decent match for the skirt steak I served it with. But the wine spent 12 months aging in American oak, and the wood clouds the taste of the fruit, like a film of dirt on a glass window. Petit Verdot sometimes has a hard, rubbery character that reminds me of a pencil eraser, a quality that’s in full effect here. In theory I support the idea of a predominantly Petit Verdot wine, but in this case I’m not loving the execution. Back to the drawing board on this one, guys — I promise that the next BKaG will feature a wine I actually like.