I had the pleasure of attending a wine dinner put on by Albert Givton recently, at the Blue Water Café in Vancouver, featuring some superb Bordeaux.
It began with duck croquettes and baked scallop gratin palate teasers and some Champagne:
1990 Pol Roger Brut (magnum) – now showing significant colour, this Champagne was more developed than the last bottle I opened a couple of years ago. It showed a nice lemon and vanilla nose, was a tad lean on entry with good mousse, had good length and fruit and a clean finish. Prime drinking.
Next up were a couple of 1er cru white Burgundies with a Dungeness crab course:
2005 Dom. Vincent Leflaive Puligny Montrachet Clavoillon – pure fruit and notes of bread dough in this nose, nice mouth feel and long finish.
2005 Dom. Michel Niellon Chassagne Montrachet Clos St. Jean – nose of citrus fruit and wet stone leapt out of the glass, and clean granite and mineral notes in the mouth, finishing medium long. Very nice. I went back and forth about which I preferred at this stage of development.
The next course was a lovely fat quail stuffed with apple, chard, pine nuts and foie gras on a bed of lentils.
1966 Ch. Palmer – this has always been an excellent wine, one of the top 66s, and while this bottle was very good, I felt it wasn’t up to the standard set by a couple of previous tastings. It was a garnet colour with a paler orange rim, showed mellow vanillin oak in the nose under pinned by mature spicy fruit. The wine was elegant and well put together, and had a nice lengthy finish, but the fruit was neither as abundant nor fresh as my last tasting, so it is likely in slow decline or perhaps this was bottle variation.
1966 Ch. La Tour Haut Brion – this now defunct property (the production was incorporated in Ch. La Chappelle de La Mission Haut Brion after the 2005 vintage) is not so often seen. Doing my home work before the event (I like to get an idea of how the wines have shown in the recent past) I came across a rather dismaying Parker review that stated that the wine was fully mature when tasted in 1981! I approached it then with some trepidation but an open mind. The colour was darker than the Palmer and it showed a funky nose at first and seemed lacking in fruit, finishing with a fair bit of acidity. Oh oh! I left it in the glass for a bit and went back to it and it had accomplished an amazing transformation as it aired. It had added sweetness and fruit and also weight, and was now well structured and quite pleasurable. It would seem that RP had a poor bottle, thankfully. It should be noted that these wines were cellared by Albert around 50 deg., so mature very slowly, so normally show more youthful than bottles stored under less favourable conditions. I mention that to avoid people rushing out to buy at auction and finding the wines much further along than my review would suggest.
1970 Les Forts de Latour – (poured blind with the 66s) - this is in my view the best of the second wines of the first growths, better than Pavillon Rouge (Margaux), Carruades de Lafite, Le Clarence de Haut Brion (formerly Bahans Huat Brion), and far, far better than the rather insipid showing I’ve experienced with Le Petit Mouton (in my view, Mouton itself still rates as a super second, not a true first growth, but that’s a discussion for another time).
This Les Forts has a sweeter nose than the 66s and a backbone of tannin that was pretty firm. The fruit levels on palate were only medium, and there was a green note in the nose that set it apart from the other wines of the flight. Decent. FWIW, I’ve always found the 1990 Les Forts well worth seeking out.
After that we shifted to a flight of 1970 wines with roasted squab:
1970 Ch. Latour – a long time favourite of mine, this showed as expected. Medium dark colour, the nose displaying a slight mustiness that passed to become a classic mature claret nose with lead pencil, cedar, some roasted meat and plumy fruit – delightful. Mellow and long, this is still cruising along, and thanks to Parker, who tasted a fading bottle a few years ago and rated it an 85 in decline, I believe prices have dropped a tad. As with all old bottles, YMMV and beware provenance when buying.
1970 Ch. Petrus – the style of this wine is so different from the Latour as to be almost like switching from Claret to California cab. It showed a lighter colour than the dense Latour, and a nose that featured, nay exalted wood – sweet oak, spicy vanilla melded with all sorts of berry fruit notes, the wine silky smooth on palate, softer than the Latour, and some olive and light earthiness came in with time. Very good length. I’ve only tasted the 1971 Petrus once, and at the time it struck me as even better but I expect that it will be for someone other than myself to try those two side by side to update that evaluation.
Then another blind wine was offered up:
2002 Ch. Haut Brion – dark wine with spice in the nose, lots of softening tannin, decent fruit and slightly high terminal acidity. Some green in the nose with time. It was far along and not a first growth performance – what the heck is happening these days?
The next flight of 1988 wines was pure pleasure and was served with rack of lamb, and potatoes dauphinois.
1988 Ch. Lafite – lighter colour than the others, a fine ‘pudding’ sort of sweet fruit nose with a doughy component as well as the characteristic lead pencil shavings. Mellow wine drinking very well now, with smooth presence on palate and medium long finish. May not yet have peaked judging by the tannin balance.
1988 Ch. Latour – quite dark and with thick legs running viscously down the glass, this wine lived up to the Latour archetype, with some strawberry and hints of mushrrom and forest floor in the nose, a purity of sweet dark fruit on palate that is enviable, and excellent concentration and length.
1988 Ch. Margaux – good colour, a lovely claret nose with floral hints (violets?) and cassis, mellow fruit on palate and impeccable balance coupled to a nice long finish. My favourite of the flight, and usually I’m a push over for just about any Latour. delighted to have this in my cellar!
Dessert course was something I dutifully ignored and passed to a friend, as I couldn’t imagine eating anything at all with the next wine, which WAS dessert.
1975 Ch. d’Yquem – a fairly light lemony colour as these things go – I’ve seen far darker Sauternes that were 20 years younger. The nose was a litany of varied scents – pineapple, apricot, vanilla, honey, toasted almond, coconut, orange peel….I gave up and tasted it. Hugely concentrated in the mouth, not too sweet and with a finish that seemed to go on and on – just when you thought maybe it had petered out, you’d realize it was still there, tapering off slowly. I last tasted this wine seven years ago at one of my monthly wine lunches (yes, the guy that brought this WAS invited back!) and based on that tasting and this I am going to have to declare that this is the best Sauternes I have ever tasted. It replaces the 1967 Yquem in my pantheon. I think when I first tasted the 75 in 1998, it was just too young and hadn’t yet bloomed, but I tasted it again in 2006 and it was really starting to sing and now it is indescribably superb and should just keep on going! From a full bottle.
Last up was a different sort of wine.
1917 Oporto Douro Superior ‘Imperial Reserve’ (J. Vandemeulen, Ostend) – this showed as light amber in colour, with a pink hint, the nose sweet and lightly raisined and a bit hot, sweet in the mouth and well balanced with quite good length. The bottle, which was made in a mould and had some inclusions (i.e. old but not super old) bore a label in good shape and a splash of white paint that I’ve never seen on a colheita before, but we were thinking nonetheless that it was probably a colheita bottled some time between the wars. It really came across as a tawny more than anything else. Interesting curiosity and quite tasty.