It was nice of Ed to ask me to fill an empty chair at his monthly tasting group’s latest get-together. The very general theme was red Bordeaux. All wines were served blind in a single flight after being decanted by the restaurant staff.
1966 Château Trotanoy Pomerol. The color of the first wine is garnet, with some definite lightening evident at the rim. Boy, are the first few sniffs of this gorgeous! And it holds onto a lot of that over the next few hours before starting to fade later in evening. Lovely aromas of cedar wood, green pepper, dusty earth, fennel, old leather and persimmon are at the fore, but when the sweet red fruit notes poke their head out the wine just soars to even greater heights. It is a bit inconsistent from sniff to sniff, but those jackpot moments elicit swoons from me. In the mouth, it is dry but fully-fruited with cassis, spice box and pretty floral elements riding above abundant earth tones. It is medium-bodied and fairly rich, with great length and persistence of flavor. It doesn’t show much if anything in the way of tannins, but it still seems awfully healthy to me. This is an absolute treat to drink, and was my official Wine of the Night.
1973 Château Pape Clement Pessac-Leognan. Having had this wine four times over the past six months or so, I was pretty positive that this was the wine I brought. Thankfully, this bottle was showing great (only one of five has shown marginally from an 11-bottle lot purchased at auction earlier this year). This is a lighter, much paler color and is a touch cloudy in appearance. On the nose, it presents airy but beautifully pure and transparent aromas of strawberries and raspberries to start off with. It then begins to pull in some still ethereal but earthier notes of old cracked leather, lots of tobacco leaf, other green plant matter, rhubarb and light caramel. Overall, this bouquet is gentle and open-knit but engaging and pretty. In the mouth, it drinks light and easy, with a nice sense of airy balance that goes more for purity and complexity than for depth and richness. There are no tannins at all, but there is a crunchy acidity running all the way through to give this life and tension to go with the feminine red fruit and fine spices. A few hours into the tasting, it does begin to show signs of cinching up and drying out, but for a good while this was drinking really nicely.
1979 Château Margaux Margaux. This bottle opens up with a rather ornery dose of musty old attic on the nose, as if the bottle is grumpy to have been woken up from its slumber. After about 25 minutes, that dusty musty element seems to have morphed into something more like crushed mint leaf and old cedar closet riding above red fruits that take more and more of a center stage with time. There is also a bit of caramel or chocolate-coated cherry sensation with this nose that again seems to settle down with time. In the mouth, the wine is medium to full-bodied and very fleshy-textured. There is a good deal of grip to it and the red fruits and abundant spices are gentle and mellow yet persistent. It has a smooth flow that ends in a spicy, chalky finish of moderate length. A second glass later in the evening feels much more ashy and toughly-textured, though, with a dry finishing acidity and a hint of tougher tannins than one would suspect based on the initial glass. It still has very good length, but is turning a bit chewier and less elegant. Overall, the wine surely hits some high notes, but I’m just not quite sure what advice to give with regard to decanting and so forth, as it seems to need some time to open up on the nose, but more time also evidently toughens up the texture.
1986 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande Pauillac. This wine also smells a bit musty to me and from time to time I also sense a little sharp whiff of chlorine. Although there is some debate at the table, a few of us slowly begin to become convinced that this is a CORKED bottle. Indeed, I think it has to be, as the nose shows only a little bit in the way of complexity or nuance. It seems rather tamped down and closed up, in fact. On the palate, it is much the same in terms of seeming dull, simple and repressed of expression. Every once in a while something interesting seems ready to poke through, but in the end I just gave up on this one and called it a flawed bottle.
1988 Château Cos d’Estournel St. Estephe. This has to be among the worst CORKED bottles of wine I have ever encountered. Utterly undrinkable. What a pity.
2003 Château Greysac Medoc. The obviously corked bottle of ’88 Cos was generously replaced by the restaurant with another blind entry. Sadly, while others had some fairly nice things to say about this wine, I was not really a fan. To me, this has a strong core of vulcanized rubber aromas that I never care for. There are also notes of black olives, dark earth, black currant and wood that taken together seem raw and youthful. In the mouth, this is indeed very young. It features flavors of black fruits, black licorice and black beans. It has a kind of rough and leathery texture in need of some time to smooth out. It has a juicy cool acidity that I like, but also a significant amount of tough-edged and rather chalky tannins. Also, for me, the alcohol is protruding a bit from time to time—making my palate tired and worn down after just a few sips. Give this time.
1982 Château Leoville Las Cases St. Julien. The bouquet of this wine leads off with lots of dark cherry, black raspberry and cassis aromas before starting to mix in strong notes of sliced green pepper and more subtle bits of worn leather and ash. A twinge of volatile acidity seems to rear up early but fades about an hour in and never returns. In the mouth, it is a bit chewy in texture, but offers up lots of enjoyable dark flavors such as bittersweet chocolate, black cherry and loamy dirt to go with leafy notes and some grilled pepper. It has a cool acidity to it that I like, as well, but the wine just never really seems to find its full footing—never really reaching a level of cohesiveness or completeness. Instead, it seems to sort of pull up short. Others at the table are saying it has a hole in the middle of it. I don’t see that at all, but I agree (certainly once it is unveiled) that it falls short of what it ought to be.
1990 Château Troplong Mondot St. Emilion. This wine smells rather roasty, treacled and overdone to me. It gives off big aromas of kirsch, fruit cake and prunes that seem like they are from a rather warm vintage or perhaps from a damaged bottle (or both). On the palate, it is warm and ridiculously rich, with lots of slightly-cloying sweet chunky fruit that feels too fat and blowsy to me. It turns coarse and leathery and unappealing toward the back of the mouth, with lots of bitter smoke notes and ticklish tannins converging there. This is disappointing.
1993 Château Leoville Barton St. Julien. There are a lot of jalapeno pepper aromas on the nose here, along with tomato leaf, dusty dirt-bombs, old library and menthol notes that support the red currant and gentle cassis fruit elements that seem content to play mostly in the background. In the mouth, though, it has plenty of heft and a solid richness of fruit and overall flavor. It has good density to it, with the nice ripe red currant and cherry fruit allowed to shine. It has real fine acidity levels that give it a pleasing liveliness and length. It is not crazy complex or anything, but the balance makes it well-rounded for current drinking pleasure. I think this is a solid showing.
1979 Château Haut-Marbuzet St. Estephe. The nose of the Haut-Marbuzet is complex and charming--featuring lots of dark smoke, fine mocha, lead pencil, earth, bell pepper and crushed raspberry aromas that work together quite nicely. A second glass a bit later on is richer and more full-blown, with more of a sweet fruit edge to it, but still with very good layering and complexity. It is very tasty on the palate, with rich flavors of juicy cassis, pretty dried cherries and a fine earthiness to go with a fine acidic twang. It is medium-bodied but never lacks for concentration or definition. The texture is smooth, though some tannins do seem to coat the teeth a bit after a while. It finishes with nice persistence and a bit more of a bitter earthy quality, but still plenty of sweet and juicy dark fruit. I like this a good deal and voted it my official #2 wine of the night.
At this point, we voted for wines of the night and revealed what each one was. We had initially been told by the wait staff that there was another bottle left upstairs that was corked. We asked to see the bottle, which came to the table unopened! In reality, it was just that the cork had gotten stuck in the neck of the bottle and the top of the cork smelled rather musty to the staff. So, they sort of gave up on it. Once we knew this and once we learned that the wine was the 1982 Chateau Cos d’Estournel, we insisted we give the wine a try and proceeded to wrench the cork out. I am very glad we did, as this was quite likely the true wine of the night!
1982 Château Cos d’Estournel St. Estephe. The nose here is wonderfully fresh and lively, with plenty of lovely fruit right out front. Aromas of sweet cherry, raspberry, leather, moss and soft wood are vibrant and youthful yet dynamically complex. This more or less kicks butt and just keeps pulling one back in for additional sniffs. It is dry in the mouth, but full of big flavors like black currant, blackberry, dark smoke, earth and rocks. It is glossy-textured and classy-feeling, with a pinpoint acidity that seems to cut right through the big structure this wine is still sporting. It all works in perfect harmony right now, yet it also gives off an obvious and effortless vibe of being a wine with a lot still left in the tank.
Overall, it was a really fun night, with just a bit too much bottle variation for a few wines that should have showed a lot better (e.g. 1979 Margaux, 1982 Leoville Las Cases, 1990 Troplong Mondot). Others, though, showed better than one would expect (e.g. 1979 Haut-Marbuzet, 1973 Pape Clement), so perhaps it all sort of evened out in the end? Sometimes that’s just the way it is!
-Michael