Gilman Says '85 Margaux is "Lifeless" and Gives it 70

[David_Glasser]

@Rauno E (NZ)

Gerhard and David - interestingly, on several occasions I have had a tca-tainted as well as clean version of a wine within a similar window and found the tainted one less evolved and the clean one just past the mature apex. I wonder whether tca perversely helps to preserve wine sometimes? Now, if there were only a fool-proof way of getting rid of the taint… Actually, isn’t there some technique involving gladwrap or something?

Certain brands of plastic wrap (Saran is one) have a high affinity for TCA and can reduce or eliminate the overt smell and improve the way the wine shows. I’ve tried it, and it works to an extent, but it doesn’t restore the wine to normal, taint-free levels.

[David_Glasser]

@Mark Golodetz

I was at the tasting, and the wine while showing no sign of any obvious flaws, it was dull. It had none of the mid palate lift and lushness which most of the wines we tasted that night showed.

This is what my experience with minimally corked wines has been.

[Zev_R]

@ybarselah

@M.Kaplan

…The controversial statement in the article is not that '85 Margaux underperformed, but that '85 as a vintage is the best of the 1980s.

to me, this is far more interesting. i haven’t read the article, but can someone please start a thread on that?

+1 That’s what I was thinking when I read that too.

Regarding this thread: I don’t understand why any tasting note should get thrown out. I read them to know what to expect. People are always saying “…only great bottles”, but what about the bad bottles? Don’t they count? I want to know about those too. However they got flawed, if flawed bottles are out there, then they’re out there. And I want to know about it. (In fact for brett blooms and overheated bottles I would even want to know the vendor.)

(I also found funny the random remarks about JG - who spends his days doing what he does - treating him as if he’s a sophomoric dilettante like me. As if he still has to learn what a flawed/corked/bad bottle is and the possibility that the bottle he’s drinking is one. “Wow. I never knew.”)

[David_Glasser]

@Dan Rosenheck

Mark, do you have any hypothesis/prediction as to how representative that bottle is of the overall remaining population of well-stored 1985 Margaux? That seems to be the key question here.

Dan, that is the key question. I can say unequivocally that notes on one or two bottles offer little to no predictive value with respect to the performance of a “typical” bottle of 30-year-old Bordeaux, let alone the performance of an individual bottle in anyone’s cellar. Particularly when others have had different experiences. It is still a useful data point, to be taken into consideration with other notes on the same wine.

[Mark_Golodetz]

@David Glasser

@Mark Golodetz

I was at the tasting, and the wine while showing no sign of any obvious flaws, it was dull. It had none of the mid palate lift and lushness which most of the wines we tasted that night showed.

This is what my experience with minimally corked wines has been.

I have not had the wine in the last fifteen + years. You can only judge the glass in front of you, and the glass was not great. I am pretty sensitive to TCA, and it was not corked.

As for the other discussion, whether 1985 is the best vintage of the 1980s, while I enjoyed many of the wines, I prefer both 1982 and 1989.

[Geir_A]

@Mark Golodetz

@David Glasser

@Mark Golodetz

I was at the tasting, and the wine while showing no sign of any obvious flaws, it was dull. It had none of the mid palate lift and lushness which most of the wines we tasted that night showed.

This is what my experience with minimally corked wines has been.

I have not had the wine in the last fifteen + years. You can only judge the glass in front of you, and the glass was not great. I am pretty sensitive to TCA, and it was not corked.

As for the other discussion, whether 1985 is the best vintage of the 1980s, while I enjoyed many of the wines, I prefer both 1982 and 1989.

Sorry for jumping in Mark, and not to judge your tasting competency or sensitivity to TCA.

But, the most insidious aspect of the whole TCA issue is that TCA can and does taint wine even at very low levels, levels imperceptible to a sensitive taster. The wine has none of the typical TCA taint smell, but rather shows tired, dull, lifeless. It is easy to tell for a discernable taster that the wine is off or showing poorly or even bad, impossible to pinpoint why. An astute pourer with intimate knowledge of the vintage who regularly pours and tastes the wine, like the winemaker or a tasting room worker, can also tell it is off and likely pick up on the fact it is off in the typical way of very low level TCA taint for that particular wine. However, without having certainty. I don’t know if there’s a test sensitive enough to detect such levels, would think so, but likely expensive and impractical. (And, this is different from Gerhard’s example of a lower level taint that appears fine on opening or decant yet shows itself slowly over time.)

This phenomenon, which I thought was more widely known and accepted, means TCA taint is underreported, possibly gravely so. The cork industry seems to have cleaned up its act somewhat in the last half decade or so. The problem still exists, and the risk is greater with older bottles.

EDIT: This should not mean an easy excuse to call any off bottle TCA tainted. But it is definitely a dilemma.

[Dan_Rosenheck]

Geir, the flip side of this point is that “lightly corked” is the polite way to explain away the disappointment of any bottle that doesn’t happen to show well. My wild-ass guess is that instances of mild cork taint are widely over-, rather than underreported, since it’s such a handy excuse.

Ha, your edit addressed this exact point.

[Geir_A]

Dan, you are right. I edited my post before seeing yours.

For how little it’s talked about in a precise manner my opinion is different from yours, but who knows who’s right? It is a serious issue and a dilemma.

[Rauno_E_NZ]

Thanks David re Saran. How do you make it work? Just pour the wine into a jug and stick some Saran in, leave for a couple of hours (minutes?) and pull it out?

[Marshall_Gelb]

I have no doubts as to the veracity of John’s statements regarding this bottle…again I say, THIS, bottle. The provenance, the fill, the cork, etc. However, I would not be able to state that the '85 Margaux, in general, was in a state of decline. I have had a couple of bottles lately that were far from “lifeless.”

In addition, I would agree with other posters that I never found the '85s to be the best vintage of the '80s. All in all, these comments are great to read and simply serve to keep wine drinking and collecting interesting!

Cheers!
Marshall

[Wes_Barton]

@David Glasser

@Mark Golodetz

I was at the tasting, and the wine while showing no sign of any obvious flaws, it was dull. It had none of the mid palate lift and lushness which most of the wines we tasted that night showed.

This is what my experience with minimally corked wines has been.

Individual sensitivity varies greatly, with some people completely unable to detect it. I’m more sensitive than most people, but there are people much more sensitive than me. With my blind tasting group it’s typical for just 2 or 3 people to pick up TCA initially, then it will become apparent to more people over time, while a few may never get it. Of course there are bottles that reek so bad you can smell it across the room. There’s also been a couple times I’ve been the only person to pick it up. Others argue to high heaven it’s fine, despite having voted it last, and despite me having had a good bottle within the last 6 months and knowing a good bottle would have been voted at or near the top.

[David_Glasser]

@Mark Golodetz

@David Glasser

@Mark Golodetz

I was at the tasting, and the wine while showing no sign of any obvious flaws, it was dull. It had none of the mid palate lift and lushness which most of the wines we tasted that night showed.

This is what my experience with minimally corked wines has been.

I have not had the wine in the last fifteen + years. You can only judge the glass in front of you, and the glass was not great. I am pretty sensitive to TCA, and it was not corked.

As for the other discussion, whether 1985 is the best vintage of the 1980s, while I enjoyed many of the wines, I prefer both 1982 and 1989.

Apologies, I misunderstood/misread. I thought that you were referring to Gerhard’s tasting, not John’s. In any case, while sub-threshold TCA can do that, the fact that there were still no hints of it after some time open makes it highly unlikely that it was TCA in your case.

[G_D_y_e_r]

For wines over a decade or two past vintage, any tasting is of that bottle, not of all bottles of that vintage. Really, this is true even for young wines, but the effect of cork variation compounds over time. Since corks are a natural product, they are not identical and allow different rates of air ingress. The best corks are optimal for aging, but the cork next to it in the bottling line might be 10x worse. Until collectors accept that engineered, high quality Stelvin closures are superior, we have to live with cork’s flaws. Part of aging capacity, perhaps, is that a cellar-worthy wine can more often than not successfully navigate the vagaries of cork variation and the various aging environments it may encounter.

The fact that such vitriol is directed at an experienced critic for honestly reporting his experience is somewhat appalling. A perception cannot be true or false, because it is not fact. Moreover, a sample size of n=1 is simply a lone data point. It is fair to question ‘experimental design’ of a study limited to one or at most several bottles of a given vintage. But generally this is accepted in the wine world: singletons, especially of rare wines, are adequate in order to report a tasting note.

It is disturbing that a faction of wine culture fails to grasp these concepts, and thus attacks any non-conforming result from any available angle. Is it really so important that Gilman’s bottle of Margaux matches its reputation that one must grasp in thin air for any means to invalidate his perception? Certainly a critic should not be so political and beholden to the gilded producers that he or she feels required to withhold a negative review.

[StevenB]

To me, the “inexcusable” (to use a word from Gilman’s tasting note on the 85 Margaux) is not that a tasting note gets published on a certain wine that has a note of 70 points, but that John Gilman doesn’t question the representative nature of that particular bottle in one single word. What he points out instead is: “One can only assume that winemaking decisions were taken here that made the wine all upfront appeal and which have completely compromised its ability to age. Given how stunning other First Growths are in 1985, such as Lafite, Mouton and Haut-Brion, this is pretty inexcusable.” I think John Gilman, being the publisher of a wine newsletter, shouldn’t “assume”, but ask at the winery whether they’ve changed anything at the winery in the 1980s. And yes, he should try a second bottle OR post a single sentence like: “Could have been a bad bottle”. Good provenance doesn’t make sure that a wine will show well. Like others said, there’s TCA that can ruin a wine, even TCA that doesn’t get picked up right away as a smell or taste. I think John Gilman’s tasting note is - sadly - slightly representative for certain professional wine critics’ (I’m thinking of John Gilman and Robert M. Parker) behavior: never admit that something could be or could not be, always pretend to be absolutely sure about something and make bold statements, such as that at Ch. Margaux bad winemaking decisions were taken. To me, that’s just really, really sad.

[Gerhard_P]

@Geir A

I don’t know if there’s a test sensitive enough to detect such levels, would think so, but likely expensive and impractical. (And, this is different from Gerhard’s example of a lower level taint that appears fine on opening or decant yet shows itself slowly over time.)

Yes, sure there is a test, made in chemical labors …
My friend who is in our tasting group and is professional food chemist now and then takes a suspicious bottle with him and makes the test … and several days later we get an e-mail: "Yes, TCA on a xx.xxx ppt level …)
Usually expensive I think, but in this case for free…

@Dan Rosenheck

Geir, the flip side of this point is that “lightly corked” is the polite way to explain away the disappointment of any bottle that doesn’t happen to show well. My wild-ass guess is that instances of mild cork taint are widely over-, rather than underreported, since it’s such a handy excuse.

No, I don´t think so. As reported above there is sometimes a well known wine, but the particular bottle doesn´t perform as usual, it´s dull and unexpressive, muted.
In ALL cases when our friend the chemist analyzed such a bottle it had a low TCA level !
It´s easier to tell if you tasted a wine regularily, and one bottles is simply different.

Generally: a typical “Vin de garde” (wine to cellar) will not perform fine over 2 decades … and then break down to be completely lifeless in only a few years … NEVER ! The decline will be as slowly as the rise to maturity !

[Marshall_Gelb]

G. Dyer; I am not really argumentative on wine threads but I really don’t see any “vitriol” directed at Mr.Gilman. He has taken a rather controversial stance on a particular wine and vintage and others have been discussing his thoughts.Personally, I haven’t seen any attacks or nasty comments which would qualify as vitriol.
Cheers!
Marshall

[Geir_A]

@David Glasser

In any case, while sub-threshold TCA can do that, the fact that there were still no hints of it after some time open makes it highly unlikely that it was TCA in your case.

David, I beg to differ. This is the big insidious issue I referred to and which apparently is unknown or not understood by many collectors and drinkers. Some low level taint imperceptible initially will reveal itself slowly with air, at least to a sensitive taster. Even lower level taint is too low to be perceptible to the most sensitive taster even with hours and hours of air. The wine is off, dull, muted etc. A probable hypothesis in these cases is very low level TCA taint. The only way to be certain is a laboratory test like the ones performed by Gerhard’s chemist friend.

Let me be clear, I am speaking in general terms here. I have never tasted a Margaux '85. However, both John Gilman and Mark Golodetz description of the bottle in question is consistent with, if not quite typical for, TCA taint below human perception levels. For the experience they have as tasters and in John’s case as a critic I am surprised they don’t pose themselves the question of possibe TCA taint but rather insist the bottle is not tainted. No typical ‘corked’ smell even after copious air does not equal certainty the wine is not corked. I understand Gilman’s talk about provenance and the context in which he tasted this bottle of Margaux. I find Gerhard’s context of having repeatedly and somewhat regularly tasted the same vintage more meaningful. By all means post notes on wines, even off or disappointing bottles. But when a wine shows this poorly relative to reputation and other’s experiences, be open minded as to why. At least with First Growths and their high production numbers there is a big public record out there. A random mature Grand Cru or Barbaresco might truly be a one-off chance to taste and a single data point from which to draw few conclusions outside of the bottle in question.

PS. I have no ax to grind with John Gilman, rather I’m sympathetic towards him as a critic. Nor am I a fan boy for Margaux or Bordeaux in general.

[StevenB]

@Geir A

However, both John Gilman and Mark Golodetz description of the bottle in question is consistent with, if not quite typical for, TCA taint below human perception levels. For the experience they have as tasters and in John’s case as a critic I am surprised they don’t pose themselves the question of possibe TCA taint but rather insist the bottle is not tainted. No typical ‘corked’ smell even after copious air does not equal certainty the wine is not corked. I understand Gilman’s talk about provenance and the context in which he tasted this bottle of Margaux. I find Gerhard’s context of having repeatedly and somewhat regularly tasted the same vintage more meaningful. By all means post notes on wines, even off or disappointing bottles. But when a wine shows this poorly relative to reputation and other’s experiences, be open minded as to why. At least with First Growths and their high production numbers there is a big public record out there. A random mature Grand Cru or Barbaresco might truly be a one-off chance to taste and a single data point from which to draw few conclusions outside of the bottle in question.

• 1, couldn’t have said it better.

[Gary_York]

Not really a fan of JG, but it appears some cows are sacred. 85 Margaux being one of them.

[Marshall_Gelb]

+2 on that. I believe Geir A. is spot on with his assessment of “insidious TCA. I had dinner a few years ago with a highly respected Oregon winemaker and he used the exact same terminology to explain to me how a wine can be corked (one of his) and show none of the obvious telltale signs. Rather, the wine is " lifeless,” dull, and devoid of fruit. This is what makes low levels if TCA so insidious since most people, myself included, would simply consider the bottle as off but without understanding why.
Cheers!
Marshall