Château Ducru-Beaucaillou Saint-Julien 2ème grand cru 1970
On our 40th wedding anniversary it seemed appropriate to open this bottle. After a struggle with a crumbly cork whose sides seemed to stick to the bottle (a candidate for the sabre as several bottles have been like this), here is how I perceived this wine.
C: Quite deep but transparent brick red (apart from a few cork particles which got through the filter into the decanter)
N: An ethereal combination of dried sweet red fruit, blood, tomato, pencil shaving and leather. (These bottles have all had this blood note which was much more marked when younger.)
P: Making a quiet statement; linear in shape showing round flesh, quite lively acidity, good depth, still enough firmness for support and fine length which let those lovely aromas from the go on and on at the rear of the palate. So a fine claret in its late maturity but by no means senile; not my most sublime claret ever (Latour 45 and Palmer 61) nor even my best this year (Léoville-Poyferré 82) but lovely; 17.5/20++.
Interesting Germaine was notably less enthusiastic than me complaining about lightness and lack of richness (but she also complains about tannins in younger wines). Certainly the restrained statement of older claret does not please everybody and food pairing with such wines is difficult. For this occasion we chose veal cooked in a light mushroom sauce and I thought that the wine held its own well.