Asbjørn and I were rushing south down the D2 from St. Estephe to the Bordeaux airport when the gendarmerie patrol car turned on its beacon lights right behind us. In our hurry to get from a lunch at Château Phélan-Segur – with the world’s most charming lady, Ms. Dausse – to catch our plane, the taxi driver had merged into the gendarmerie’s traffic lane a little too brazenly.
The scene playing out in front of us somehow instantly became just another surreal experience of our four-day trip to Bordeaux. Watching the gendarmes pull our driver out of the car and test him with a breathalyzer while berating his navigational aptitude was a strange sight, but it didn’t come close to the hedonistic roller coaster we’d been on since Wednesday. The CBS Wine competition quartet had visited wine estates and met winemakers over lunches and dinners that most people only get to read about. And most importantly, we’d won bronze in the Left Bank Bordeaux Cup 2013, further cementing CBS’ rightful position as a top tier school of dedicated, ambitious people.
We are proud of having reached top three in all our wine tasting competitions and are committed to passing down this trend and legacy to future CBS students.
For the Mouth and for the Heart
The night before the taxi incident, silver platters of oysters on chilled seaweed were already mounted on metal tripods as we entered the fermentation room at Château Lafite-Rothschild around 9 pm, post-competition. The massive room holds two dozen oak fermentation tanks against the walls and a long table seating 150 people ran from one end of the room to the barnyard doors leading into Lafite’s massive garden of roses and strawberries.
The CBS Wine team had finished third in the Left Bank Bordeaux Cup 2013 just ten minutes earlier. How did we feel? Disappointed at the time. But there’s no pick-me-up like the Carraudes de Lafite 2004 that was served with the third course – not to mention the double magnum of Château Lafite-Rothschild 1983 that ensued.
The wine flowed throughout the night that culminated in a double magnum Château Rieussec 1986 (my second-favourite Sauternes). We serenaded directeur général of Phélan-Segur Ms. Dausse with ‘Jeg ved en lærkerede’, we danced with the lovely Cambridge ladies, we partied with the robe-clad Baron Eric de Rothschild, we fought over the merits of Armagnac versus Cognac, and we had a fucking blast. It was the party of a lifetime to celebrate CBS Wine chiseling its name into Bordeaux wine history.
The Grand Maitre of the Commanderie du Bontemps and owner of Château d’Issan, Emmanuel Cruse, reportedly told a fellow jury member when asked what he thought CBS Wine’s chances were: “make no mistake, Copenhagen is good with wine. They were very impressive in the semi-final.” Indeed, we had finished first in the semis ahead of Cambridge, but they drew the longer straw in the final with Wharton in second place.
Our finishing third was a disappointment, but it no longer really bothers us. We have correctly abandoned our ‘underdog school syndrome’. Honestly, we entered last year’s LBBC 2012 with some trepidation – would our skills be any match for well-known private schools and former winners like Oxford and Harvard? We now know that we can drink with the best of them.
Sage Advice from Bordelais Authorities
“Two pieces of advice for the Copenhagen team next time; First, talk more French. Even just a few words before you present the wine or when you finish. Second, get some girls on the team,” Charles Chevallier jokingly advised us when he took the excursion down to our end of the dinner table for a chat. Chevallier is the director of four estates of the Domaines Barons de Rothschild group, most notably Château Lafite-Rothschild and Château Rieussec. And truth be told, he wasn’t kidding about either part of his advice, the wine presentation round (to be discussed in the next post) is highly subjective and scored by a jury of Bordeaux men with libidos unheard of North of the Maginot Line. A cheerful Jean-Michel Cazes – former Grand Maitre of the Commanderie du Bontemps and a legend in Bordeaux – also gave us a pad on the back and told us to come back next year for a real victory.
At this point we’ve laid all doubts and feelings of inadequacy behind us. We’ve come to an acknowledgment of who we are as an organization and the feats that we can accomplish as a team. CBS Wine will be a force to be reckoned with in wine competitions for decades to come, and we are extremely proud to have been part of laying the foundation for future successes.
And we sure look forward to a 2013 fall semester of wine tastings with all you wonderful CBS students in a few months :-)
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ENDNOTE: The following post will go into detail with the final itself and the spectacular level of expertise that we saw this year from all our competitors. On a personal note, I (Thor) will slowly be handing my responsibilities in CBS Wine over to my fellow organizers as I will soon graduate and move on to a new full-time position. I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog so far – I certainly intend to support CBS Wine from the sidelines in the coming years.
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