Greetings all. I recently had a bottle of middle-of-the-road '05 Bordeaux. Decanted for 1 hour or so. The nose was fully open with great fruit and secondary notes. However, the palate, begining to end, was very hollow, tannic, thin and charmless.
So… my question is how can one tell if a bottle is in a closed phase as opposed to just no good? Are there certain characteristics that indicate closed? Thanking you in advance for any info.
That’s a tough one.
Sometimes you can only tell because you have past experience with a certain wine when it was more approachable, however, I call a wine closed when flavors and aromas are somewhat muted and yet it has a tough wall of tannins and good acidity that need to resolve. The trick here is low levels of TCA can do the same thing to a wine and yet be tough to detect.
Vintage knowledge can also help. For example, 2003 in Napa produced some pretty lightweight Cabs that had pretty aromas but it took a couple of years for the wines to flesh out. Many have added heft and in fact, are drinking really well now. So, taking in to account the high quality of 2005 in Bordeaux, that sounds more like a crummy wine to me.