New Vintage Exposes Lively Rivalry

At last, the winery has released the Octagon vintage which so excited the elite tasting panel of The Washington Post in the 2-page article of last August 19th. And, again a release of a new vintage in the most honored wine in the Eastern United States has been met by the awarding of the Gold Medal of Chicago’s Beverage Testing Institute, and a numerical score in the “Exceptional” column. At present, the Tasting Room is offering Octagon 2006 alongside Octagon 2005, last year’s winner of the Institute’s World Wine Championship and its most highly rated wine. Not more than one point in BTI’s arithmetical ranking separates these two solid, distinguishable vintages.

This October, Palladio Restaurant’s annual Octagon feast will allow winemaker Luca Paschina to present these two vintages and two superlative predecessors, to frame a 10-year tapestry of this historic wine’s evolution in bottle, and in the vineyards it exemplifies. There is only one place on earth where this occasion could be shared. Reservations would be timely to make now, (540) 832-7848.

But if it’s harder for a grape to get into a bottle of Octagon than any other Virginia wine, it’s largely because not every deserving grape can find its place in a distinctly limited blend. Some must become Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, and win as many Monticello Cups as Octagon has done. Some must become Cabernet Franc Reserve, and be so bold as to be the only wine to outrank Octagon at the Beverage Testing Institute’s competition this year. Smarting from last year’s 93-92 point “defeat” of its 2006 vintage by Octagon 2005, the 2007 Reserve in Cabernet Franc reversed that outcome this year, to be designated Virginia’s Best Red Wine. What makes it scandalously pleasant to confess to this intramural struggle, is that these rivals come from the same vines in the same vineyards, and from 3 consecutive vintages.

In the whites, tempers are cooler but not dulled. At this same 2010 wine competition, Beverage Testing Institute selected the Viognier Reserve 2008 for its Gold Medal, and the designation as Best Virginia White Wine. A style in Viognier praised last year by Michael Broadbent in Decanter for vividly recalling the finest Condrieu, while entirely avoiding oak as well as malolactic fermentation, the Viognier Reserve of this vintage is destined for some of the very happiest Summer dining of 2010, with the capacity to evolve in bottle at least through 2013.

Look to your left, look to your right. Is there a color of wine grape we’ve overlooked?

Reporting in The Washington Post, critic Dave McIntyre writes that a wine tasting which he convened with 6 leading experts proved to everyone’s satisfaction, that Virginia wines do compete with France and Napa Valley in quality, price, and diversity of varietal excellence. Leading the reds was Octagon 2006, the latest vintage of the wine which has been compared to Patton’s Third Army, in its capacity to break through a habitual, entrenched skepticism surrounding Virginia wines. Comparing the results of this blind tasting with the famed Judgment of Paris of 1976, in which California red wines overcame critical prejudice in comparison with those of Bordeaux, McIntyre reports that the same shock was repeated at this event. Fair enough, but now there was this difference: what California had done against one dominant region, Virginia had achieved against two, and after 30 years of improvements in both of them. Octagon was widely suspected, in fact, of coming from Bordeaux -- much as Eliza was authoritatively “exposed" as a Hungarian princess, in “My Fair Lady.”

We compliment two colleagues in Virginia viticulture for success in Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc at this same event. Ultimately, McIntyre says, “local wines can match the best in the world.” For residents of this region, itself, we offer the judgment a cautious customer proclaimed, when Philéo won its Gold Medal in San Francisco -- “It’s OK to like it!” The whole world says it is.

The English wine critic, Michael Broadbent MW, revisited Barboursville Vineyards for lunch with winemaker Luca Paschina in June, for the first time since spending an evening at the winery 6 years and 79 columns ago. A wine expert so internationally respected that the term, “authority” rings hollow and dull, Broadbent trained as an architect but went immediately into wine sales, in which he briskly staked out a career as an enormously trusted arbiter of age-worthy wines, with resolutely unwavering standards and a palate memory steeped in the most privileged tasting notes in the industry, now spanning more than 50 years.

This critic with an architect’s eye for structure, elegance and longevity in wine is the founder of Christie’s Auction Wine department (1966), consultant to collectors, 3-time winner of the Glenfiddich Award for writings on wine, Decanter Man of the Year in 1993, and writer of Decanter’s “Tasting Note” column, month after month for more than 32 years. Broadbent’s first visit to Barboursville reported on his discovery of Virginia Cabernet Franc as “seriously good,” favourably competitive with St Emilion, and resulted in this historic bit of advice to winemaker Luca Paschina: nobody will take this excellent wine, Octagon, seriously, until you produce it as a vintage wine. Six years later, Octagon vintages have won the Monticello Cup twice (2006 and 2009), the World Wine Championship at Beverage Testing Institute (2009), more than 25 Gold Medals and numerous other awards of merit. And, above all, the gracious comments of Michael Broadbent’s Tasting Note 387 for Decanter, dated this August, furnish an encouraging update on what became of his advice: “State’s Evidence: Virginia, 1, California 0.”

Just as importantly for Barboursville, and for all of Virginia winemaking, is Mr. Broadbent’s nuanced and emphatic Five Star rating of two vintages of Luca Paschina’s Malvaxia Passito, the only example of a Passito-style dessert wine known to us in the Eastern United States, and his praise for Luca’s age-worthy Viogniers, possessing “the quality and flavour to match -- even exceed -- Rhône’s finest Condrieu.”

www.decanter.com

The annual Monticello Cup Wine Competition convened on June 29th this year, and within hours it was announced that the panel of judges, consisting of several leading sommeliers of Virginia, had awarded the top prize to Octagon Ninth Edition, 2006, from the region's most competitive field of entries in both red and white wines. Voted a Double Gold Medal in addition to the Monticello Cup, itself, Octagon 2006 followed in the footsteps of Octagon 2004, which took the Cup in 2006, and Octagon 2005, which recently bested every other red wine at Beverage Testing Institute’s World Wine Championships in Chicago. As in 2006, Cabernet Franc Reserve (2007), followed Octagon closely in the rankings, winning the Gold Medal.

This was the first presentation of the new Octagon at any wine competition, and placed it in the company of such other great vintages from this winery as Barbera Reserve 2001 and Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2001, Monticello Cup winners in recent years. Octagon 2006 will be introduced to the public in the winery’s third annual Octagon Feast, Saturday, October 17th, and released for sale approximately the 1st of the year. Reservations for the 17th are still available through Palladio Restaurant at (540) 832-7848.