TN: 09 Domaine Chevalier Rouge

Tonight with steaks. Dark, almost opaque purple color. Mineral & fresh dark fuit nose. Seems like classic Graves with lead pencil, cedar, rare meat and mineral driven flavors combines with dark cherry. Medium bodied. Focused, tight, balanced and fresh but very very youthfully primary and tanic. Didn’t move a whole lot over the evening and could be closing down. Paid $80 and would have prefered to be buying this for around $50 -$60. OTOH, could be worth every penny of the $80 spent after 10 -15yrs of btl age. Call it a solid 90pt wine as it drinks, right now.

anyone?

Amazed you have it already. Don’t have any on hand but I’d be interested

I tried this at UGC and the reps were just popping and pouring the bottles. IMO, it showed great under these conditions. If you aren’t going to have a lot of time with the wine, you could always give it an hour or two in the decanter prior to serving.

When tasting a very young wine I really don’t like to decant unless there is a lot of sediment. I want to follow the wine’s evolution as much as possible. Generally I will open it and taste it to verify its not corked. Then pour a small amount in a glass to play with. I’ll leave the bottle to slow ox. I’ll plan to come back to it again in a half hour, again in another half hour, and again in another hour. After that if it is ready to drink I will drink it over the course of a few hours, perhaps trying to reserve a few ounces for the next day.

Of course if you don’t want to be too clinical about it then honestly the best method is really to just pop and pour and make your decision then. More often then not slow ox works the best.

Thanks guys, I’ve opened about 75 mins ago and start drinking it in about an hour from now. No decant. Smelled great on opening.