Last week, we attended the Master Wine Class Dinner co-sponsored by world-renowned wine educator Kevin Zraly and Sherry-Lehmann. This particular event, held at Park Avenue Cafe, featured two well-respected chateau owners, M. Prats from Cos d’Estournel and M. Hubert from Chateau Angelus, both from Bordeaux. The reception began with a tasting of each chateau’s second label wine as well as Lucas Carton champagne (poured from magnum). The champagne was especially nice with the lobster roll hors d’ouerves.

Moving into dinner, we were given a sample of one wine from each chateau with each course, with the Angelus from Bordeaux’s right bank served on the right and the Cos from the left bank, poured on the left. The first pair was from the highly vaunted 2000 vintage. Both wines were wonderful, but I was partial to the Cos. The other pairs were drawn from older vintages as far back as 1986.

While both chateau consistently receive high scores, the ability to taste them side by side was especially useful as the Cos is typical of other left bank Bordeaux in that it is heavily Cabernet Sauvignon dominant, while the Angelus (as with most Pomerol and St. Emilion wines) was more Merlot focused. Accordingly, the tasting provided the opportunity to see how the different blends play out in the finished wine, allowing for stylistic differences among wineries.

As a notable highlihgt to the evening, we had the good fortune to meet Kevin Zraly and discuss our wine school venture with him. He was most gracious in his willingness to speak with us and share his own experiences. He has long been someone I have admired and I still have the 1985 edition of his Windows on the World Wine School book. If you don’t own his book, you can look for more recent editions (2005?). It is a terrific resource for wine lovers at all levels. Finally, we also worked up the courage to introduce ourselves to Michael Aron of Sherry-Lehmann letting him know that we have been including his wines in several of our previous newsletters. All in all, it was a fabulous event and added much to our own education.