By Darius Sanai, Editor-in-Chief
As a collector of, and investor in, wines, I like to serve interesting and unusual wines to my guests, as well as the classics. This can be a two-edged sword, however. Traditions burn powerfully, rooted as they are in brand and desired perception as much as they are in quality.
If a head of state or CEO wants to impress her guests, she (or her cellarmasters) are likely to choose a famous Bordeaux or Burgundy, as they would have 100 and even 200 years ago. (Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States, amassed a fabulous collection of Bordeaux while living in France, including Chateau Latour, Lafite, and Haut-Brion, and had it all shipped to Virginia when he moved back.)
I tend to do the same to guests whose tastes are either traditional, or unknown to me. If I serve an important client I don?t know bottles of Hundred Acre Kayli, Sloan Estate, or Dalla Valle Maya over dinner, he is far less likely to be impressed a priori than if I serve him Lafite or Latour. A client with only a passing interest in wine may feel insulted that I am trying to trim costs, when in fact those three Napa Valley wines cost the same, and in some vintages, more, than the Bordeaux classics ? and get the same, or better, scores from influential critics. The same applies to wines like Penfolds? Grange ? Penfolds is a supermarket brand, but Grange is most definitely not a supermarket wine ? and Guigal?s Cote Rotie La Turque, La Landonne and La Mouli...