I’ve been staring at this wine for a couple of years at a local restaurant. The restaurant is closing, so I decided to indulge.
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1985 Château L’Evangile - France, Bordeaux, Libournais, Pomerol (7/26/2019)
Dark, opaque red. Black cherry and black raspberry, green tea, herbs, with truffles and caramel showing with some air. Soft and round, yet surprisingly full-bodied with an underlying tannin structure. Showing some age, but not old, not with all that fruit intact. Really quite vibrant for a 34-year old wine. Good storage undoubtedly played a part. Delicious overall, and better than I had hoped. (93 pts.)
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They say there are only good bottles, and this was a very good bottle. I think the restaurant (really, the owner, who is a collector) was the original purchaser, thus my comment about the storage. This wine could have been opened at age 50 and still been fresh. This is the kind of wine you hope to drink when opening older Bordeaux.
This was one of the standouts in a L´Evangile/Conseillante tasting some years ago, together with the 1990, 1998 and 1975 …
I had rated it higher, 95 points…
L’Evangile is one among a small handful of consistently solid producers in Pomerol.
Agree the 85 is a fine vintage.
However I do not agree that it is only a small handfull …
imho Pomerol has the highest standard of winemaking, at least on right bank.
VCC, L’ Eglise-Clinet, Conseillante, Trotanoy, La Fleur-Petrus, Latour a Pomerol, Gazin … that’s more than a handful even without naming Petrus, Lafleur, Le Pin …
Gerhard- I agree, but maybe he was including affordable in his thinking.
I remember buying this pretty early in my wine addiction and still have some left.Guess I’ll pull a bottle.
Thanks for the reminder.
Agree with the listed names. Silly me for saying “a small handful”.
I’ll add Clinet, but will leave out Gazin as have not been impressed post 2000.
Great note!
I think we are starting to enter the wheelhouse for 83 and 85 vintage Bordeaux.
yes, Clinet was missing, and I also should add Certan de May and Le Gay … a few others are a matter of opinion (Bon Pasteur, Petit Village, Hosanna, La Croix/Fleur de Gay, Beauregard … et al)
I had the wine in December. As described, but I rated it 95 points.
While in general I agree the 2010 was pretty horrific the one time I had it.
Yeah, well, it’s 2010 and it’s the Right Bank. It was almost impossible to keep the alcohol low. Canon was well north of 15%, and that was under John Kolassa who was a serious traditionalist. Troplong Mondot was if I recall correctly was over 16%.
I bought a couple of bottles of the VCC to keep my vertical going, (even they struggled to keep the wine fresh) but that is about it.
The wines in general on the RB seem to have a great reputation which I don’t get. That being said, I really like the wines of the left Bank.