1978 is a great vintage in Bordeaux and this is a consistently stellar wine. Fellow WB’er Clayton Wei-Poi put it perfectly a number of years ago; “1978 & 1983 are beautifully constructed vintages…if you’re into English Claret.” The bottle tonight had a badly damaged cork, but the wine was in great shape. For whatever reason, I think of Leoville Barton as a masculine Bordeaux, but this had a very subtle core of red fruit (roses, cherries, strawberries) airy floral notes, and lingering tones of earth/smoke/soot.
The body of the wine was gorgeous, too. It drank incredibly well and is one of those wines that makes you a bit anti-social (all you want to do is focus on the wine - luckily, my wife can sense this…).
(side note)
Bordeaux is so good. It’s taken such a beating over the past few years, but there’s so much great Bordeaux wine to be had out there.
And you’re totally right. Bordeaux is so unfashionable these days, perhaps because of the modern-day hipster emphasis on small-batch farm-to-table unicorns, but there’s so much good stuff still out there, easy to find.
Love the vintage and Leoville Barton. Bought it on release and while difficult to drink in it’s youth it’s now going from strength to strength. A wine you would love to open a second bottle after finishing the first because it’s not heavy just pureness & elegance and low alcohol. As much as I love Burgundy I believe the real bargains can be found in Bordeaux nowadays. Perhaps not Barton but lots of others. Thanks for the note.
Cheers
Rainer
One of my first experiences with great, aged Bordeaux was sharing a bottle of the 1978 La Mission Haut Brion with a friend, who had stored it since release. That bottle helped me appreciate the subtleties and nuances of a 25+ year old bottle of Bordeaux, and motivated me to want to cellar some. And I agree that there are still many values to be found in Bordeaux once one looks past the ultra expensive labels.
Great note Matt. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of 78 as a great vintage, but I do think it is overlooked and there are a great many wines that are still fun to drink (I just posted on the Haut Batailley). This sounds terrific. Thanks for posting
LOL – ‘anti-social’ wines are my favorite kind, you nailed it.
For complexity, ageability, and distinctiveness of terroir/character it’s hard to beat Bordeaux. All things people say they want. But I guess the combined forces of corporate ownership/history/pricing make it hard to romanticize the region the way you can with some obscure farmer somewhere. The story is as important as what’s in the bottle. Parkerization hasn’t helped either.
I’ve a single bottle left of a case I bought to celebrate my 21st birthday. My first official wine purchase. If I remember correctly it was the princely sum of $100.