I’ve attended several of their functions in Washington D.C., New York City, and Pittsburgh. The most recent was at Oakmont Country Club, where DOW 500 hosted a U.S. Golf Open event with TASTED Magazine. True to form, it involved the best of the best wines accompanied by a phenomenal dinner, fun people and an interesting location. 

 

Their latest event - The Rocky Mountain High with Chateau Latour was held in the secluded mountain hideaway hamlet of Bachelor Gulch, (named for the group of bachelors who farmed the site in the early 1900’s). My connecting flight out of JFK had me arriving to Eagle Vail where I took a 20 minute drive to the home of George Middlemas and his lovely wife Sherry.

If our TASTED readers refer to the summer ’06 edition article : The Method and Madness of Fine Wine Collecting, they’ll understand George and the mind behind fine wine collecting. Mr. Middlemas, the founding investor of AOL, also invests glorious amounts of time to his wine cellar rising to mountainous heights.

Driving to their sumptuous home while taking in the stupendous landscape of Mother Nature, the John Denver hit song, Rocky Mountain High, played whimsically through my mind. If my eyes could speak they would say : one would have to look long and hard to find a better twenty minute ride than this. Bachelor Gulch has amazing extended views of the surrounding peaks and valleys with pastoral settings in between.

George and Sherry Middlemas’ uniquely designed log, stone and glass home is an 8800 square foot early Frank Lloyd Wright style that is a ski-in-ski-out. This means George can leave his front doors, ski down to the village and board the Bachelor Express chairlift for the short ride to the 1,600 acres of trails of the immensely popular Interconnect. This provides European-style “village-to-village” skiing between Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead villages on Beaver Creek Mountain. 
    
This DOW 500 Rocky Mountain High event had a reigning wine king - Chateau Latour - and princes who are stars in their own right. The heavenly wines were matched by renowned chef Eric Wupperman, who was more than up to the challenge of pairing them with a magnificent dinner. Upon tasting his sumptuous food it rang a bell. Some years back, I had dined at New York City’s famed Grammercy Tavern where he was the sous chef. The menu was chosen deliberately so as to have strong flavors.

Latour is normally a wine that can stand up to these foods, and the group wanted to put it to the test. At the Middlemas’ stunning, cavernous home, we first indulged ourselves in 1990 Krug. The champagne was showing great and a certain candidate for wine of the night. We had it with hors d’ Oeuvres consisting of :

 

Served with ’70, ‘78, ’79 Chateau Latour

 

 

We “Derelicts of Wine” enjoyed these offerings “family style” - pouring our own, spitting and evaluating every taste. The group felt that the 78 was showing the best. And matching the luscious Latour were the excellent hors d’Oeuvres.

 

Warm Belon Oysters with Caviar, Leeks and Champagne
Served with 1990 Bollinger RD

“This splendid champagne and oysters is a perfect pairing,” George commented. “The wine has plenty of toast and yeast, with a nice long finish. I usually serve Bollinger champagnes with food, since they are strong enough to stand up to it.”

 
 

’66 Latour out of Magnum

 

Prime NY and Bordeaux Braised Short Ribs with White Truffle Pappardelle.
Served with ’82 and 83 Latour

 

 

 

The 25 or so invited guests may not hold sommelier degrees, but these Derelicts of Wine have keen taste buds offering dead-on description and critiques. In keeping with the tradition of TASTED Magazine’s international panel of world class sommeliers, I had our group form a collective final assessment of each wine.

 

COLOR : Golden, almost amber in color.
NOSE : Lots of stone fruit flavors (peach apricot) on the nose with hints of yeast, toast, lemon and a touch of honey.
PALATE :  Wonderful flavors with chardonnay being very dominant…lengthy 45 second finish
OVERALL IMPRESSION : Still very youthful and will drink well for another 5-7 years.

 

“At its finest, the 1990 Vintage is superb,” George added. “Though the style is a slightly oxidized one, it was full-bodied with a robust personality and loads of character. A hearty thumbs up from all of us.”

 

NOSE : Faded, a bit of brett on the nose with some forest, earth and mushroom aromas.
PALATE : The tannins are still pronounced but a bit quick on the finish - there were still some Cabernet Sauvignon fruit flavors lingering
OVERALL IMPRESSION :  Fading glory. “But clearly when at its peak a great wine,” offered George. “We probably drank it a few years late and because of bottle variation, it had already peaked. Older vines do better when in magnums.”

 

“This was the best wine of the flight,” confirmed George. “It was typically Latour with garnet color, hints of cassis and some tannins still showing. Not as faded at the 70 and not as soft as the 78, it had sufficient strength to stand up to the richness of the appetizers while still showing its character. It is at its peak and will stay there for 5 or so years.
Not a great Latour, but a representative Latour.

Note : None of the wines were decanted.

 

 

“This is another favorite Champagne,” George said, “along with Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, none of which I usually serve with food. Salon and other blanc de blancs, while superb, don’t handle anything very well except caviar. Bollinger is a wine with backbone that will last until 2015...  especially if you have English tastes and like your Champagne a bit yellow and faded.”


 

Mr. Middleman summed up the Dow 500’s notes : “Probably the wine of the vintage, and only slightly below the revered ’61 Latour. I had a case of magnums and have tried them over the last 15 years and it always seemed a bit young and tannic. I was worried that it would never mature. Finally, in 2006-07 it emerged from its cocoon and became a beautiful wine. This wine was just reaching maturity some 30 years after being made, and it appears that it will hold this peak for 10-20 more years. A truly great Latour with the characteristic steel backbone, garnet color and great concentration.”

 

“The 1982 Latour was a great wine that, we felt, was peaking early,” George assessed. This ’82 vintage was the highly one that started the escalation of wine prices still going on today. It was also the beginning of the “100 point” wine frenzy that has been bad for the whole idea of enjoying wine. Is a 100 point wine really better than a 97 point wine ?

This ’82 Latour was an atypical one in that it was jammy and fruit forward not the usual Latour which reveals its fruit on a backbone of steel. I suspect that this beautiful wine will fade rapidly once it peaks in about 5 years or so. A great wine, but typical of the French 1982’s that seem more Californian than French.”


 

“Because of the excitement over the 1982’s,” George said, “the 1983 vintage was lower priced and treated as an unwanted stepchild—rated well below the ‘82s. This was a mistake. This wine was a typical Latour, showing truffle notes, black currants and a bit of pepper on the finish. The wine wrier Orley Ashenfelter (an economist) analyses wine through date, not even tasting the wine.

He looks at days of sunlight, mean daily temperature, and rainfall. From this date he predicts the overall quality of the vintage (There is a reason for this which is too long to explain). His system rated the 1983 vintage as being better than the 1982, and he may be right. This wine will last for quite a while, and though medium bodied will plateau rather than peak.”

The ‘66,’82 and ‘83 were served as a flight with dinner.

 

George felt that it had fire and grip and illustrates why 1963 is rated a great port vintage. I noted that is was the only wine to be decanted before any of the guests arrived.With extraordinary recall, George verbalized in rapid fire some background on the Chateau Latour that he loves so dearly.Latour's vineyard is planted with 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, and 5% Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.
The average age of the vines from their most famous parcel, L'Enclos (141 acres), is 40 years. Almost every year, following the selection process, most of what ends up in Latour emerges from L'Enclos, even though there are another 45 acres of vines that are part of the Latour vineyard.

 

The wine is fermented in temperature - controlled stainless steel tanks (first used in 1964), and after malolactic fermentation spends 20 - 26 months in 100% new oak. Afterwards, it is egg white fined, but bottled without filtration. Production in the nineties, when the selection process was especially severe, had been about 16,000-20,000 cases of Chateau Latour, 10,000-12,000 cases of Les Forts de Latour, and 1,800 - 2,000 cases of their generic Pauillac.  Les Forts de Latour, their secondary wine, is often rated above 3rd, 4th, and 5th growths - especially in weaker vintages.

 

Late that night, The DOW 500 Rocky Mountain High experience finally wound down. Some guests departed to their nearby homes, others staying at Bachelor Gulch Ritz-Carlton on Beaver Creek below George and Sherry’s residence. Some of us distant travelers stayed over at their home.
I knew from experience that a night isn’t over with George until he serves up a slew of 100 point rated jokes ! Thousands of them blurt out faster than machine gun fire. The modest man George admitted to stealing some from the great burlesque comedian, Joe Elic, who has attended several DOW 500 events.

 

After having spent a wonderful weekend, it was time to head back to Manhattan. Flying with me over the Rockies was once again John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High tune. Bachelor Gulch and its breathtaking beauty can host a DOW 500 event any time it wants. They had me feeling like a high-end wine derelict and loving every glass of it !

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