My first taste of a Château Le Puy, which was a weird experience that I won’t forget in a hurry.
I was inspired to buy this recently by an article in La Revue des Vins de France and a thread started by Lord Alfert on the 2014.
The first oddity is the bottle itself, a 50cl bottle with an irritating wax top (I really don’t like those, the wax shatters and goes all over the place).
On opening, the colour is different: much clearer than normal for a wine of this age and origin, slightly bricking at the edges.
The nose is not standard fare either, with soil, dried flowers and elderberry mixing with much fainter cherry and cranberry.
The first sip is very strange indeed: a curious blend of red berries, but not the usual ones - elderberry, cranberry, redcurrant, with what to me tastes like radish and something a bit stalky, herbs I suppose. A little understated, even watery, but with deceptive persistence. Quite acidic, quite pinched. Totally unlike a “normal” Bordeaux. No cassis, no blackberry, no sugary fruit. As Mr Spock never said - “It’s Bordeaux, Jim, but not as we know it”.
It took me a while and a few more sips, before realizing what it reminded me of: the wines from the 1960s that my father used to serve me as a whippersnapper back in the 70s. There’s the same dryness, the same lack of body: this is what “claret” originally was, of course. It’s like getting in a time machine and re-emerging, like in “Life on Mars”, in a brown corduroy jacket back in 1974.
Another reference point is Musar, without the spice: the body and consistency are quite similar. I wouldn’t say Chinon - the tastes are different, but I get the point.
After a few hours, the wine became a lot more concentrated and the cranberry took over.
I had a bottle of standard fare open form the night before, a Lamothe-Bergeron 2010, a fair-to-middling CB, so I compared the two.
I have to say that for me, there was no contest: much as the Le Puy intrigued me, going to and fro between the glasses clearly favoured the Lamothe. I’m not a spoofmeister, but there really has been a lot of progress made in the last 20 years! The Le Puy tasted tart, thin and acidic next to the more familiar cassis and blackberry that the Lamothe offered.
So a really interesting experience which was a lot of fun, but not one I shall be repeating!