Lexington comes up lame: The Barbasol Championship, Keane Trace Golf Club, July 13-16, 2023
Ok, the big guns may be in Scotland tuning up for the Open Championship this week, but everyone else is in Lexington, KY playing the Barbasol. Does that mean they (or more importantly, you) don't get to drink any good wine if you're staying Stateside? I just looked it up, Lexington is the 59th largest city in the US. Does it have the critical mass to compete on our terms?
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Before we dive in, we should probably acknowledge this is bourbon country and we'd understand how and why wine might get top billing...
The list at Dudley's On Short is respectable enough although it's somewhat riddled with pedestrian name brands in California. A few higher end surprises peak through. The Burgundy list is small and tends to lean to negociants like Jadot and Drouhin. There are a few misspellings, which always casts a pall. Surprisingly, the selection from Bordeaux is pretty good, with some nicely aged bottles, although prices are a tad steep for some of them.
Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse is more of the same, with a little better look in California and a little worse in France. Perhaps I'm miscalculating the impact of horse country money cause I've never seen a bottle of recent vintage Spottswoode cab for $600 before. Maybe they think they’ve “got you over a barrel.”
I spent another hour looking for restaurants, wine bars and retail stores with credible online inventory but couldn't find a blessed one. Typical is Wine + Market, owned by a "Certified" Sommelier, that doesn't list a single bottle for sale. There are one or two earnest-sounding, natural-leaning stores to try if that's your thing. I never like to throw in the towel, but if you get tired of sampling bourbon, there may be no better option in Lexington than gasp, Total Wine.
