Wow, this wine is amazing right now! This vintage of Pichon Lalande has its reputation for a reason. Dark ruby with little edge deterioration. It’s a monster Bordeaux, but with a finesse that is associated with the “feminine” style of Lalande (compared to the brawn of Pichon Baron). Leather, cassis, raspberries on the palate. Still not at full maturity, so probably 20 years of great drinking left. (95 pts.)
Ha! The last bottle I opened, in 2010, was also corked. But at least it was softening up! The previous bottle, a couple years earlier, needed hours and hours of air time to open up.
Had the 85 a few weeks back, was great, decanted for 1 hour, and served straight away. Nose of earth, forest-floor, mushrooms. On the palate, black fruit, floral, and dusty mushrooms, that went on and on, great length with balanced finesse from Lalande. Would say that it is in the stage of being fully matured now, not sure if I would hold my remaining bottles for any longer, I might be wrong.
First had this about 10 years back and it was a grave mistake (in the French sense: tasted tight and rather like gravel). I suspected it would need another 10+ to smooth out, but I wonder if it’ll ever some out of it’s shell.
And Benjamin, this is in no way similar to the 1985; despite the closeness in years, they are two entirely different animals!
Sounds like the 6 hour decant was the way to go. We opened a bottle recently that needed far more time than the two hours we gave it. Agree that it is potentially magnificent but our bottle had not melded at all and was still quite elemental even at the end of the evening
John, enjoying your notes on this and the 1986 Lynch. Many '86s, oft-maligned for excessive tannins, came into their own 5-10 years ago and have been drinking well since. These are among them.
I have a very high opinion on the PL86 since release, but haven´t had it for 10 years since I´ve got to taste it again - it was tight as Fort Knox … and I decided not to touch one of my bottles for a long time.
However: very different to the 1985 PL which I don´t like very much, rather vegetal and lacking mid-palate and sweetness … (and fully mature for 15-20 years)
How horrible. Wonder what happened. I have read about TCA contamination at Ducru somewhere around that time, but not at Pichon Lalande. And, the couple bottles of 1986 Pichon Lalande that I had were wonderful.
The massive TCA problem at Ducru was the 89. Even there, it wasn’t universal. My couple of bottles were OK. I didn’t hear of anything that massive with 86 PL.