WTN: Chavenism and other OTBN delights

Two standouts from a recent OTBN event:

1990 Hermitage Rouge, Jean-Louis Chave
This is the wine that I brought. It is stunningly great--everything that mature Hermitage should be from a top producer in a top vintage. Complexity, power, and balance. The quintessential expression of the syrah grape. No need to hurry up and drink this one. Triple Curly with an extra Woo! Woo!

1982 Pauillac, Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande
This is one of my favorite Bordeaux from 1982, although I've always thought that this chateau did better in 1983. The 1982 Pichon-Lalande is now all about grace and finesse. No Parker whomp-you-over-the-head oodles-of-hedonistic-fruit here. This is an example of why wine aficinados go ga-ga over old Bordeaux. Double Curly Larry.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Is there anything better on this planet than a great bottle of Chave Hermitage? I envy you that. The other's no slouch, either, but Chave H is my very favorite wine.

[David M. Bueker]

Heck of a pair of wines.

One of my vinous regrets is that I came to Chave too late. It was already $70 or so when I first sought it out, and that was a pretty penny for me at the time.

Pichon Lalande makes good wine in off vintages too - have a half case of 1994, a poor vintage but it sold based on the three previous vintages being even worse. It has performed surprisingly decently - will pull one to retaste soon!

J-L Chave Hermitage went out of my price range in the 1990s. The 1990 is the last vintage I bought in any quantity.

-Paul W.

1999 was the last vintage of Chave that I've had, and that only through the largesse of Robin, who offered it up during the Katrina relief lottery that Dale ran here. I was lucky enough to have discovered KLWM back in the early '80s (actually, I recall the opening of the flagship store but at an age well before legality), so have cherished memories of '80s Chave Hermitage (even $30-40 back then) as well as Cornas from Verset and Clape. Alas, I missed out on Gentaz and Trollat, though.

J-L Chave made monumental wines in '83, '85, '88, and '89.

BTW, there is another Chave in Hermitage, Bernard Chave, who also makes Crozes-Hermitage. His was one of the estates we visited on a wine tasting trip up the Rhone valley. The wines we tasted from barrel were nowhere near as good as J-L Chave's, but they were reasonably priced and I bought some of both the Hermitage and Crozes-Hermitage. In bottle they behaved very strangely. On release they had off-putting aromas of hay. Several others who bought the wines reported the same thing. I left mine sit in the cellar. About 15 years later I opened one of the Crozes-Hermitage and it was fine--no off-aromas at all. Same with the Hermitage. Not J-L Chave, but decent wines, and not at J-L Chave prices, either. I don't know what Bernard Chave did at bottling that introduced those off-aromas, but with patience they did go away.

-Paul W.