After the insanity of the holidays, I was ready to get back to my “learning wines”, even though our holidays were wine filled. (We spent several days winding up California’s Central Coast visiting wineries in Santa Barbara, Solvang, Los Olivos and Paso Robles. I was relieved to come home without any cabernet sauvignon, but lots of Rhone style wines and pinot noir! Biggest lesson learnt from the trip however is that you cannot take your children into the tasting rooms in Solvang-- not good news for our crew. Next time we’ll skip that town and its danishes- though yummy- and spend more time in Paso where our older son can run around outside and look at the grapevines).

At any rate, so out of practice am I with my Give Me Grapes routine, it was on day two of drinking this , the 2005 Cháteau Lafleur-Gazin, that I realized I had failed to take any tasting notes. Oops! But first, the facts.

Having finally moved to the right bank, this wine is primarily merlot. Pomerol is teeny, but this small area produces wines that are often reputed to be among the best in all of Bordeaux. Although there is no classification system in place, some of these wines fetch even higher prices that first growths from the Médoc. The land, like many other places in the larger region, is a big gravel bank, and is mostly flat.

One of the most famous Château in Pomerol is Château Petrus. Since I can’t afford the thousands of dollars needed to taste that, I opened this nice little bottle of Château Lafleur-Gazin. Since the wine is made mostly from merlot, it doesn’t typically need as much aging as left bank Bordeaux, and this wine was 5 years old. However, after my first small sip it was clear the wine was pretty tightly wound. I poured the rest through the aerator. After being exposed to air, however, it really opened up and became the opulent, softer and slightly fruity wine I would expect. We drank the second half of the bottle the next day and it was quite fantastic, better than day one. I think I’m going to be a right bank-er...

The Score: ★★★★