A lot of my friends from my wine club like the 2016 vintage of Bordeaux . It seems to have all the qualities of a great vintage without being to powerfull or jammy . We decided on a large blind tasting with a few ringers included , one which was fabulous .
My take : an excellent vintage , and a lot of the wines are drinking beautifully today . Amazing quality .
My wine of the night was a glorious Leoville Poyferre , followed by the Sassicaia ( ringer ) which was the group’s favorite ( 10 tasters blind ) and in third place a ripe juicy Vieux Chateau Certan .
Other excellent wines : Smith Haut Lafite , Brane Cantenac , Angelus ( hommage a Elisabeth Bouchet) and Chevalier .
The Haut Bailly , Carmes Haut Brion , La Gaffeliere came after and were still very good .
The other ringer Cheval des Andes ( Mendoza Argentina ) was the only one that I did not like all that much .
2016 is evolving in a vintage that I really love , I wish I had more …
Btw , at the end of the night , I served another wine blind . Most people said Pauillac ( Mouton , Lafite or Latour ) from an excellent vintage eigthies of nineties . It was the amazing Beringer 1977 Cabernet Sauvignon ( Napa ) private reserve . What a wine , people born in that year should really try to find this gem . Strong tobacco nose , very pure spicy fruit , long and powerful , wow.
Thanks for your notes. I’m a 1977 vintage myself and will be on the look out for that beringer! Were any of the 2016s being shut down at all? The last time I tried a few higher tier ones in 2021 they seemed to be closing up.
Any particular thoughts regarding aging on the 16 Sassicaia? I have a 6pack and have not opened any. Had a few sips at a tasting once and it was fantastic, but never sat with it. Trying to figure out when I will get into my first bottle.
Hello! Also interested to hear about decanting, I have a couple of 2016 3rd growths and 2nd wines I’ve been thinking will be worth checking on in the next two years, but I have very little experience decanting wine in this age range thus far. Thanks!
I had a 2016 Montrose last weekend where I opened it in the early afternoon and followed over the day into dinner. I drink very little Bordeaux and almost none this young anymore so I lack a little context for what I was drinking. I grabbed a Montrose because I’ve been intrigued by what folks have said about the wine in recent vintages. Well, I was reminded what the word “backward” means wrt wine. It did open up over the course of the evening and worked pretty well with a ribeye. What struck me is how buried the fruit was by the structure, loads of tannin but fairly fine grained and plenty of acidity. It was really compact and unyielding the entire time, more of an intellectual exercise rather than a pleasurable one. There were moments when the fruit would linger on the palate or a note of graphite would really come to the fore and there was good mineral twang. It certainly seems to have something and seems to get universal praise. What do folks think the drinking window will be on a wine like this? With space at a premium, I wonder if I should just let someone else cellar it and look for it at auction in 10 years.
Montrose has always been like this. I’m 58 now, the 2014 is the last vintage of Montrose that I bought. As much as I love the 2016 I’m not buyer of Montrose. Last year I just backfilled for more 2005, and it ain’t ready.
I’ve had it twice. One early bottle showed super open and was the best young Montrose I’ve ever had. The other one later was completely closed. Re drinking window. That’s extremely tricky to guesstimate. It might be closed for 20 years but it can be open in just a few years (probably before closing down again for some time). But yeah, it probably won’t reach a first peak before 2050.
If you like a young Montrose the '20 is amazing and worth trying. Then let 'em sleep for at least 20 years. Mom is 103 so I am still hopeful to live long enough…
Most of us did not decant the wines , just opened them a few hours before the blind tasting .
The wines we choose were the ones we thought would be very drinkable . So no Montrose , Mouton or other wines that need time to open up .