To Cork or Not to Cork by George M. Taber

Author:George M. Taber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2007-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE: RINGOES, NEW JERSEY

Philip Ward got into the wine business in 1982 after spending ten years as a chef. He has worked since then for a variety of distributors in the Middle Atlantic states and currently is the Eastern U.S. sales director for Bernard Magrez, a major Bordeaux producer. Along the way, Ward has picked up some of the world’s greatest wines, which he’s carefully transported as he’s moved from location to location in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Jersey.

Like many other serious wine drinkers who can remember exactly when and where they purchased specific wines, Ward recalls buying a 1970 Chteau Lafite Rothschild in 1974 at Welsh’s Wines in Lambertville, New Jersey. At the time, he was living in Philadelphia, which has state liquor stores that did not then carry prestigious products. The wine cost only about $15, but it was still a lot for him at the time. Ward, though, knew it was worth the price. After all, some wine experts consider Lafite Bordeaux’s best.

The bottle moved with loving care from Philadelphia to Virginia and then to Chatham, New Jersey, and Sergeantsville, New Jersey, and finally to a farmhouse in the horse country of Ringoes, New Jersey.

Ward was sure that an event would someday come along that would merit opening the 1970 Lafite. In the winter of 2003, that special moment finally arrived. Halsey Blake-Scott, an old friend and former colleague in the wine trade in Virginia, was coming with his wife to visit Ward and his wife in Ringoes. Blake-Scott really knew his wine and would appreciate the magic of that bottle. “I had thirty years of investment in that wine, but Halsey was worth it,” recalls Ward.

The day before his guests were to arrive, Ward went down to his cellar, brought up the bottle of Lafite, and placed it on a table in the dining room so any sediment in the bottle could gently fall to the bottom before dinner the next night. The following day he got out a crystal decanter and candle. Just as sommeliers at the most expensive restaurants do with very old wines, Ward poured the wine into the decanter, holding the candle in back of the bottleneck to make sure that no sediment slipped out. When he was finished, Ward put his nose into the decanter to savor the experience of a wonderful, aged Bordeaux First Growth. “It was corked beyond belief,” says Ward. “It was a very sad experience.”

A special friend was still coming to dinner, so Ward went back to his cellar and brought back a 1989 Chteau Faugères from St.-Émilion. It was a fine wine from a good year and well aged, but not a 1970 Lafite.

The following day Ward thought back on the experience. The worst thing was, he had no recourse. “I couldn’t go back to Dick Welsh, who had sold it to me thirty years before.” But then and “just for fun,” Ward sent an e-mail to Chteau Lafite explaining that he had opened a bottle of its 1970 wine for “some very dear friends” and found it was corked.

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