1947 Château Cheval Blanc- France, Bordeaux, Libournais, St. Émilion Grand Cru (2/25/2016)
A 50-ml pour from an untouched, quite age-appropriate-looking bottle at 67 Pall Mall in London. They tried to Coravin it, but the cork sank in immediately. Totally transparent light brick color. Elegant but a touch reticent at the start, it opens with swirling and springs to life after 5-10 min. Mature, totally clean and harmonious aromas of soy sauce, earth, charcoal, petits fours, cinnamon, and baked red fruits/cherry pie. It’s actually something like a Chateau Musar profile, but without any VA and much more regal–not remotely the heady, Port-like character I was expecting. The nose gives me the same sense of snuggling up to a fire in the winter I got from my epiphany 1983 vintage of this wine. The wine also displays an outstanding mouthfeel. It’s got the old-wine viscosity and somehow you can still really feel the tannin, yet it’s simultaneously impossibly lightweight, with the same perceived density as my adjacent glass of water.
Unfortunately, the fireworks I was hoping for aren’t there on the palate. For a wine that was famously left with residual sugar I don’t taste any sweetness at all. There’s a quick hit of flavor, but past the attack I’m left mainly tasting acid and alcohol. Who knows if this was real–it certainly tastes its purported age, but its character doesn’t fit at all with other tasting notes on this wine. Then again, after 70 years, every bottle is different. The score is about as high as I can go for a wine on smell and texture alone. (93 pts.)
Thanks for sharing. What do you know about the bottle? Can you say who (even just in general terms) was the owner and what were the circumstances in which the wine was being shared?
I’m not trying to go on a fake wine witch hunt here, I just wanted to know a bit more about the circumstances since it’s such a famous and rare bottle.
It’s at a wine-themed private members’ club in London. I don’t know how they source–the some told me it probably came from the cellar of one of their main shareholders (he said the name but I don’t remember). The bottle certainly wasn’t ex-chateau: below the main label it had a “PRODUCE OF FRANCE REGISTERED TRADE MARK CALVET J. CALVET & Cie BORDEAUX (FRANCE)” label, so it was clearly imported to the US at some point and then brought back here. The fact that the cork was in such bad shape that it sank in from the slightest pressure, and they had to fish out the little pieces with a cork capturer, certainly gives me faith that the cork wasn’t tampered with. If it was a fake, it was faked by removing one label from a bottle and placing another one on. (I asked to see the cork, but they said it had completely disintegrated). I trust my palate enough to say that whatever was in that bottle was seriously old (say pre-1970) and seriously well-made (to show that much structure at this stage of maturity). But it didn’t taste anything like what I’ve read '47 Cheval is supposed to taste like.
My memory for this wine without consulting my notes is :
2 times absolutely exceptional
2 times very great wine
3 times not exciting
i have decided that with the risk of fakes today I would not be interested to try it again.
Some pictures which tend to indicate that the label of the wine drunk by Dan has been recoated.
this picture shows the ring of a former owner of Cheval Blanc with the same design as the label
There has been different bottlings and labels for the 1947 but I do not see that an original bottling would have a label with such a flashing red mention of “Mise en bouteilles au château”.
I’d be surprised if that bottle was a real 47 Cheval Blanc. It’s sad and true that the majority of the famous bottles available today are fake. Perhaps Don will see this and comment.
In 1998, Chris Wilford found two half bottles of the 1949 vintage in the Acker Merrall Condit store rooms, and sold them to me for just $50 each. Divine.
Oh, yes, he wanted to kill himself for not taking them himself, one moment later.
Bipin Desai – probably one of the living persons with the largest experience of ancient wines – mentioned that most of the 1947 are in decline and no more the stunners they once were and Cheval Blanc is the best example of that theory.
I have had it twice, the first time a really nasty Van Der Meulen bottle that tasted skunky, the second at a large tasting of twentieth century legends including the 1961 Latour a Pomerol. Both were Porty, and I cared for neither, giving my glasses to my neighbor in exchange for his sublime La Mission 1955 and very good but not perfect Mouton 1945.
It is probably on a lot of people’s bucket list, and in its time was legendary, possibly because it was so unique. I think now, thanks to Parker, who loves to compare modern wines to it, the thick unctuous (over)ripe style has become quite common. If only one could compare barrel samples of the 1947 to modern Pavie.
