Tasty wine, to be sure, if lacking now in elegance/refinement. I wouldn’t buy it, but I wouldn’t mind drinking the stuff. I’ve had it thrice if I recall, the last time being on 08/08/08 at a “lucky” Chinese dinner:
1999 Château Pavie (St-Emilion) > - The Stockbroker’s. A no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners hedonistic style. Loads of eager, lush, well-extracted ripe cherry, raspberry, plum with dark fruit and mocha undertones laced with sweetish nuances of clove and vanilla bean - pretty much consistent with > my old notes from 9 March 2005 > - but this time with a slight separation of flavors. It displayed a much higher level of ripeness and extraction than any other '99 from Bordeaux I can remember.
When subsequently asked about my ranking of the night, I opined that although this wine was openly pleasing, it lacked elegance (an opinion the Vigneron shared). The Stockbroker suggested that, judging from the results of past Challenges (i.e., the triumphs of the Doc’s '98 Pavie and my '98 La Couspaude), taste in wine may have changed. I recalled that I didn’t vote for either of those wines at the respective Challenges, and that I’d had (and liked) the '99 Pavie before, and so, looked up my old notes the next evening.
My old notes reveal that we drank this bottle alongside the Doc’s 1999 Château La Clusiere (the vineyards of which have since been folded into those of Pavie). Said notes also show that, at the time, I noted the Pavie in question as putting out “[an] elegant performance”. I didn’t, however, then note any separation in flavors or that it was so exuberant or eager to please.
After much thought, while I cannot, honestly, completely rule out the possibility that my taste in wine has changed, I doubt it in this case. Most likely, it was a combination of the wine’s evolution (after all, the gap is almost 3-½ years) and the wines it was being compared to.
Still and all, on the subject Friday evening, that bottle of '99 Pavie was a wantonly luscious and wide-open sexpot - a “pok-pok” (i.e., a Filipino street term for “harlot” or “cheap woman”) of a wine - a bombastically sexy “pok-pok” to be sure - but a “pok-pok” nonetheless. Not particularly elegant, intellectual, contemplative or intriguingly mysterious, but, then, again, not all wines have to be. As a matter of fact, I think that if all wines were so, drinking wine would all too easily become boring. Everything has its place.
