by: Cameron, staff
From Cameron’s recollections of his European trip in 1993:
I’ll never forget being in Bordeaux with my friend who is Julio Gallo’s grandson and we went to the top Chateau there and flashed his father’s card from E & J Gallo as a president of a certain division and they were like ‘No.’
Go away, right!?
I think the Chateau was Latour, and we got flashed on, so then we kept on driving and pulled into Lynch Bages – which recently had been purchased – and they had completely retrofitted and rebuilt the winery and they were just pouring the 1990 vintage. They invited us in and they poured this wine for us and that was when I saw amazing French oak. That was the first experience of that toasty, nutty note that just captured my imagination!
It was such a…succulent isn’t quite the right word for it…but, it just flipped a trigger in my head. I was like ‘Holy Cow! This is phenomenal!’
It was an amazing wine. It showed very well, and I’m guessing this was around 1993.
We each bought a bottle (that was all we could afford), and I carried that frickin’ bottle of wine throughout Europe with me for about a month and a half. It made it back to the states and lasted a couple of years then it got consumed and it was every bit of delicious as it was when we tried it in Bordeaux.