1986 Ch. Montrose – I stayed away from my 86s for a long time, given that many of them were excessively tannic when young, which wouldn’t allow what fruit there is to show well. I’ve found that at least some of them have been drinking well for the last 5 years or so – definitely an old style vintage when you don’t even look at them for 25 years!
Colour is still quite deep and uniform on this wine and the nose was changeable – on opening (served to me blind) I sniffed and asked if it might be an Italian wine, given the pronounced blackberry/black cherry nose, but that changed over time and became much more claret centric.
We drank it over a couple of hours and it developed some nice spice on the blackberry, and some cherry, and on palate, although the tannins had softened, they were certainly still evident. It had what I would call a slightly narrow profile on palate and finished a little bit shorter than I would have liked but showed no signs of fading.
I’d classify this as a decent Montrose but not a great Montrose. I still cellar some 1970 that was excellent but has declined a bit in the last 20 years, some 1990 which can be stunning (although when tasted against the 1970 back in the late 90s lost out to the older wine), and the 1995 which I haven’t touched yet.
