1996 Leoville Las Cases

WINE TALK
#1

I was going to write something about drinking alone in a good way, where you want to focus on the wine 100 percent, which I cannot do with anyone else around unless they are equally focused just on that wine, and I’ve never been in that situation because I don’t live in my mom’s basement and neither do my friends as far as I know.

Anyway I opened this out of spite against “Them”, those who say do not treat yourself well. Out of all the wines I’ve ever purchased I have the most intense relationship with this vintage of this wine.

Opening it was a political statement {EFF YOU WORLD} but it turned into useful wine information. This wine has turned the corner: It is young-ready! Absolutely beautiful. But very young. In the first half hour you have to brace yourself a little. Then you don’t. Clear and pure as a mountain stream. With decades to go but why wait.

I’m now going to check out 1986 and 1996 Bordeaux prices on Wine Searcher. Time it is, young Jedi. A year ago I had a 1986 Pichon Lalande which showed the same…it’s suddenly ready to be appreciated.

#2

Also I’m cooking a brisket for the first time – really good Farmers Market stuff – and I accidentally had all the ingredients at home including real chili sauce! This is indeed an auspicious night! except my 16 year old will eat dinner at midnight.

Flavor profile? Masculine, linear. Beautiful like the statue of David, not like the Sistine Chapel, which to me is sort of Gevrey. Angry but complex Gevrey.

Van Gogh, the really lovely paintings that are not famous and that do not show despair, just beauty, which I have just learned about this year? I don’t know. Older Riesling?

Mahler? You’ve drunk that night every great wine ever made and you find out your best friend hates you.

#3

If you’ve never loved an Australian wine don’t read this. Mozart? Chris Ringland Three Rivers. So many notes.

#4

Beethoven? umm…no wine compares.

Great New World wine? Look up my namesake great grandfather who wrote kickass American symphonies (after saying eff you to his hidebound New Hampshire famliy and growing testicles under German tutelage) or Charles Ives (his rival so I’m supposed to resent him) or Aaron Copeland, whose music is pure Americana but I hear mournful cries of Kristallnacht victims even though he is profoundly of the American idiom and beautiful to listen to.

Jesus. Germany and Jews. What a clusterf***. Beauty and evil and unimaginable suffering.

#5

Rambling, but a good read, and thanks:

#6

That 1986 PLL seems to be bi-modal. I had bottles ten years ago that I loved, and we had one last year that was pretty tough.

I’ve been afraid to drink even my 1994 LLC but I suppose I should try one. Maybe we should get back to Potsticker King.

#7

Sounds like one hell of a brisket.

#8

Masculine, David, Gevrey (angry but complex), Van Gogh, Riesling, Mahler, Mozart and Drei Fluesse: Enough about your darn brisket - tell us more about the wine :wink:!!!

#9

George,

Just love our tasting notes.

Far too many people drink their (cru classé) Bordeaux too old in my humble opinion.
Especially the English.

Yes, they’re a treat at 30, 40 years of age, but at half that age, they have fruit to make up for the relative lack of tertiary complexity.

So, more power to you!!!

All the best,
Alex R.

#10

Yes but it was so pure and balanced that it will definitely improve.

#11

Good on ya mate. Sounds like a great (if solitary) time.

#12

Alex,
I can see you are now almost French… mid age wines are also highly palatable.

#13

Mozart?
Never would I get the feeling of Mozart from LLC 96 nor any Australian wine … !
If Bordeaux then Margaux 1985 … but better Musigny … 78 Vogüe maybe …

LLC 96 and Beethoven? Maybe … but better Brahms:

(BTW: this was my dear conducting teacher (RIP) … and most probably I was also in the hall in Graz this day)

#14

That Brahms sounds like Beethoven 7.

#15

I’m just trying to figure out if the Holocaust reference is officially part of the tasting note or just rambling. If it is part of a tasting note, that is a new one for me.

#16

You´re definitely right (thanks a lot), I pasted the wrong link - here is the correct one:

#17

Wow, I am so confused. To each his own. Glad you enjoyed your wine and brisket.

#18

Glad to hear the wine is turning the corner. So many Leoville Las Cases seem to take forever. I wouldn’t have guessed that the '96 would already be in its drinking window, but you did say “young-ready.” I got lost on the musical references but I take it that means enjoyable but not yet really Bordeaux-complex?

#19

I tasted the 1995 a few weeks ago and was surprised that is was so undeveloped. It will be a great wine in time, but I never thought it would take this long to reach the start of its drinking window.