TN: Domaine de Chevalier 1970

Garnet at rim, medium-red at the center.

Upon first opening, the wine smelled fresh, with aromas of red currant and other red fruit.

Over time, aromas of ash and a metallic bretty smell emerge. Also burnt match, mercaptans.

The intensity of the mercaptans seems to vary over time, but does seem less at beginning, as soon as the bottle is opened. This evolution in the wine’s aroma is is consistent with previous bottles I have had of this wine in the last year or two.

As the mercaptan smell varies, when it is less, there are other nice aromas in the wine. But when it is strong, it is really rather off-putting, with a rather simple dual smell of warm cherries and rubber.

Has anyone else experienced this variation in mercaptan aromas in old Bordeaux?

Is this an example of how winemaking was not as clean decades ago as it is today?

On the palate, the wine is rich and complex, some cocoa and delicate flavors of coffee, red fruits, nuts.

There is more complexity and enjoyment on the palate - blood orange, nuts, fruit, earth (what you want from old Bordeaux) - than on the nose, considering the mercaptan smells.

If not for the mercaptans, I would be glad to have more bottles of this - aside from that, it still has life and has underlying good qualities. But there is just too much other good wine out there to swim through these mercaptans.

Because of this flaw, I would not search out this wine in the future.

I’ve quite enjoyed the '70 DDC in recent years, but no longer have. 50+ year old wines vary a lot, but mercaptans are a reductive fault, which I wouldnt have expected. If you are on East Coast and have more, I’d be willing to buy anything you have left at auction value.

Thanks. I’m not a mercaptans expert but the aromas were strong sulfur, matchstick, also a strong ash quality that seemed to combine the aromas of sulfur and a metallic quality.

I can appreciate a smallish amount of cigar ash aromas, when combined with the other fine aromas of an old Bordeaux.

I am on the East Coast. I believe I have one bottle left. Not necessarily looking to get rid of it.

I agree that it doesn’t make sense to be a reductive flaw and get worse with air.

At any rate it has led me to study a bit more about mercaptans!

Thanks for the note.
Your bottle sounds a little damaged, or just plain past peak.
Maybe some storage at room temp. could have accelerated the aging, and the growth of some contamination (bacteria, brettanomyces, or other unwanted lifeforms).
Many things can happen in 40-50 years.
Better luck with the other one.

-Søren.

thanks for the response

I was wondering that myself

at first I just considered the odor to be “cigar ash” but the smell was stronger than that

Well I decided to open another bottle tonight.

Not the sulphur burnt match quality of the bottle yesterday but there is a rubber note no the nose which is not particularly appealing, perhaps a variation on the sulfur contamination of yesterday’s bottle.

Chalk it up to a bad lot, bad storage perhaps as Soren suggested.

Given that, I would have to revise my take on the wine - there is a lot of goodness going on in the wine. The complexity though isn’t as distinctly perceptible as it would be in what I would imagine a proper bottle tastes like.

I’ve had some metallic/tuna can notes in some 1970 Bordeaux. Others didn’t seem to pick those up, but maybe I’m overly sensitive to that. However at ~ 4+ decades a lot of the bottles are going to be hit or miss anyways. Maybe the odds can be tilted in your favor if you’d had the wines under your care the whole time, but I still get noticeable bottle variation in cases by age 15-20.

Metallic notes to me generally indicate a wine that is over the hill