Hi Folks,
I would be happy to send anyone who is not a subscriber a copy of the '85 claret article, so that they can read my comments about the vintage and the '85 Margaux in particular, rather than speculating. Just email me and I will send a copy, then everyone can hypothesize based on what I said, rather than what I might have been thinking, drinking or hoping to accomplish with the article. In any case, in the article I also discuss the rather middling bottles of 1983, 1989 and 1990 Margaux that I have had in the last year or two (forgetting to mention another indifferent bottle of the 1986 Margaux that was served double blind alongside of the 1986 Rauzan-Segla and crushed by the R-S). So, either I have had a bit of consistent bad luck with Margaux from the 1980s over this time frame, my palate is slipping, or the Margaux vintages of the 1980s are not aging quite up to the standards of the property’s historical legacy and the hype that has surrounded these vintages from the property. If the poor showing of the 1985 Margaux and 1985 Pavillon Rouge had been isolated examples, I might have certainly entertained the possibility that these were just bad bottles, but as I have had other disappointing vintages of Margaux in recent times, it put the poor showing of those two 1985s in a different context.
First about the bottle of '85 Margaux. It came from a friend’s 55 degree cellar, as did several other of the 1985s that I reported upon in the article, with the other wines showing pristinely. The bottle was originally sold by me to him in my merchant days, back in the early 1990s, from a cellar of 400 cases of claret I bought from a restaurant with a massive cellar and excellent storage. The restaurant bought huge quantities of claret upon release in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s and were famous in the day for their provenance and selection. The quality of the examples of claret that I tasted and cellared from that particular purchase have always been impeccable (and I continue to have plenty of wines in my cellar to this day that are in flawless condition from that particular collection). The vintages that I purchased from this collection of claret spanned from 1975 to 1986, and everything was always in top condition. I drank several bottles of '85 Margaux out of this same cellar in the first half of the 1990s and they always were spot on and excellent (which I comment on in the article, as '85 Margaux was indeed an absolutely beautiful wine in its youth and I drank most of my own 1985s on the early side- again this is covered in the feature). After checking with my friend who brought the bottle to our tasting already double-decanted, he confirmed that the fill level was excellent (nearly still to the cork), the capsule turned, the embossing on the top was still raised, there was no signs of seepage anywhere and the cork, when he arrived looked to be excellent in quality. He also commented that the wine smelled promising when he decanted it and pouirted it back in the bottle, probably about half an hour before we convened for the tasting at a mutual friend’s apartment. All other bottles at this particularl '85 tasting were treated similarly to the Margaux, with the exception of the gentleman whose apartment we were tasting at, as his wines obviously did not have to travel. The bottle of '85 Margaux was emphatically not corked or cooked.
As I wrote in the article, I had loved the '85 Margaux in its youth, which is why my six bottles were long consumed by the time I started working on this article on the vintage, and I was not expecting the wine to show as it did at our tasting. It is of course perfectly conceivable that the bottle was still “off” in some manner, despite not being corked or cooked. However, the wine showed virtually identical to the '85 Pavillon Rouge, which came from someone else’s cellar and had a completely different provenance, with the same flaccid, faded glossiness of fruit, lack of structure, complexity and focus and short, flat finishes. Lifeless is how both wines showed at our tasting two weeks ago, and we had sixteen 1985s that particular evening and there were an awful lot of vinous fireworks on display from other wines in the lineup. Wines were served single blind, as we had put together flights of two wines ahead of time, with an eye on pairing up similarly styled wines for each flight, but then each attendee took turns going into the other room and choosing which flight would be served, so that only one person per flight knew which two wines they were tasting. Once the pair had been selected, they were decanted and served immediatly. Consequently, I tasted the '85 Margaux under blind conditions, as I did not select this flight to be served.
As I mentioned above, it is certainly possible that this bottle of '85 Margaux was in some way “off”, despite its impeccable appearance and the history of its provenance that we could track all the way back to its release, with only three transit stops along the way from 1987 to this past October. As I reiterate, it was most emphatically not corked or cooked, whatever else it might have been. However, it was my opinion that viewed within the context of other bottles of Margaux that I have had recently from the 1980s, as well as the near identical, tired and fading showing of the Pavillon Rouge '85 (from a completely different source), that this bottle of 1985 Margaux was indeed representative of the wine at its current stage of evolution. It was not particularly different in evolution from a couple of poor bottles of the 1990 Margaux I also tasted fairly recently.
While it would have been extremely nice to crack a case of the '85 Margaux to see if there was a consistency of disappointment with this wine, it was not a possibility for this article. Nor do I see that it was necessary, when one considers the context in which this wine was tasted. The wine was tasted blind, a great many of the wines at this particular tasting showed beauitfully (including a couple of others from the same cellar as the '85 Margaux), the Pavillon Rouge was in a virtually identical point of decrepitude to the Grand Vin, the bottle in question was not one of those auction bottles that had its passport stamped dozens of times as it scampered around the market from investor to investor (as we knew its history intimately), and this was not the first vintage of 1980s era Margaux that has disappointed in recent times. While the possibility still exists that the bottle in question was somehow “off”, the probability was that it was quite representative of the wine today.
We have to remember that tasting wines is always based on our own particular history, contextual setting and experience, in addition to the provenance of the bottle. This is every bit as true for a wine that shows brilliantly as one that disappoints. If I had scored the Margaux 95 points, who would be saying that this cannot be the wine and that it should not be judged based on a single bottle? It is the disconnect between the wine’s showing and the historical expectations of the vintage’s reputation, Margaux’s reputation, how the wine showed in its youth, and its scores elsewhere, that grates. I tasted nearly fifty examples of the vintage to prepare this report, with the high incidence of corked bottles reducing tasting notes on individual wines down to forty-one. Amongst the wines that I tasted that showed extremely well, and which one would expect '85 Margaux to be grouped with qualitatively, included Lafite, Mouton, Haut-Brion, La Mission, Lafleur, Ausone and Cheval Blanc. None of this group showed dulled fruit, compromised structure and focus, lack of complexity or short on the finish. If there had been less homogoneity of excellence amongst this group, then one might consider the Margaux a bit less disappointing, but the fact was that in a grouping in which the Margaux should have been right up with the top wines, it was instead, one of the poorest wines of the particular tasting. For the record, this tasting included the Haut-Brion and La Mission, but not the others of this top tier, though the evening in question also included outstanding showings of La Tour Haut-Brion, Haut-Billy, Pape Clement, l’Arrosee, l’Evangile and Certan de May, so there were certainly sufficient fine bottles to make a comparison with the Margaux.
While others notes above indicate that they have been very happy with their recently tasted bottles of 1985 Margaux, unless I did not read carefully, no one submitted that they had tasted a bottle recently blind. Not that it matters that much, but there is a certain enjoyment to be found in knowing that one is drinking a First Growth (at least for me), and of course, it is human nature to have one’s expectations shaped by the historical buzz behind a particular famous wine, such as 1985 Margaux, much as one can feel the anticipation if one is lucky enough to have one of the top 1961s on their immediate vinous horizon. Such wines come with a certain historical gravitas, based on reputation of property and vintage, and this all the more magnified for the First Growths, which can look far back into the past to a track record of great wines. I am not saying that others, who have liked their bottles of '85 Margaux were simply drinking their expectations, I am simply saying that there is a certain inertia behind top vintages of First Growths that can add to the pleasure found in the glass. If I had been drinking the '85 Margaux at home, on its own, with its label front and center, I might have enjoyed it more than I did (though not up to the expectations I would have had based on all the previous bottles of this wine I drank in its younger salad days). But, the wine was served blind and it was what it was. Maybe there are better bottles out there- I do not know- but, if there are superior examples and they cross my path in the future, I would certainly not hesitate to score the wine highly and remark upon how well it showed in comparison to this recent 1985 (not to mention the spate of other disappointing bottles of Margaux from the 1980s that I have also tasted in recent times). I have no problem at all in changing a score, chastising myself for past errors or giving subsequent justice to a wine in question if I prove to be wrong.
Someone above commented that it was “unprofessional” to have scored the 1985 Margaux as I have done in this recent article, if it were based on a single bottle. As I have tried to demonstrate by the lengthy background on the bottle in question and other recent Margaux examples from this decade that I have tasted, this single bottle of 1985 should not be construed as a “single data point.” There is a significant context of recent Margaux examples that have crossed my path of late in which this bottle’s showing was placed. I would rather argue that it would have been “unprofessional” to have not published the note on the disappointing and tiring '85 Margaux, simply because the wine enjoys a strong reputation elsewhere. It certainly would have been easier, more politically correct and commercially more logical to simply not score the wine or not print the note at all. However, I felt that I had a duty to my subscribers to write about the wine as it showed, and to speculate as to why it was not realizing the very fine promise it held in its youth. My conclusion was that the wine had been crafted to show at its best in those very early and seductively beautiful early days, and this decision in the cellar had compromised the wine’s ability to age along the lines of the other successful First Growths in 1985. For what it is worth, I am of the same opinion regarding the 1990 Margaux, as well as a myriad of other more recent examples of claret. I certainly did not set out to blast Margaux from this vintage, nor have any secret agenda, but simply sought to inform my readers of how disappointing the 1985 Margaux was in my preparation of the article and to propose a plausible reason why this might be so. Of course, I am perfectly open to folks sending me examples of 1985 Margaux that they have found to be excellent, and re-issuing a more proper note in the future 
All the Best,
John
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