Christmas arrived a little early with a mature Musar and a new addition to my Casio collection.
Musar 1997 is lovely. It must be about a decade since I’ve last tried this vintage. I do remember pretty large bottle variation even for Musar and this is one of the tamer ones. It has all the Musar goodies of proper funk and VA lift but neither in the extreme amounts that some bottles of this have had. Rich and sweet fruit, very warm year in style but with magnificent acidity and just the right touch of VA to keep it light and moreish. Lovely wine. I wish I could afford mature(ish) Musar more often.
Thanks for the note. I just had this earlier in the month and my notes were very similar.
December 6, 2020 - Not an in your face Musar, dare I say more elegant? Nay. Dried red fruits, leather and some herbs. Has bright acidity but lean elsewhere on the palate. I don’t think this will be the longest lived Musar either. Ild say no sense in holding these any longer.
Blood/brick red. Mature and clean nose with blood, meat, red fruits, umami, soy sauce, black pepper and savory herbs. Palate is mature but with decent acidity, driven by red fruits, cranberries, crushed peppers, slightly pruney plum, and some citrusy notes like orange peel. Finish has fully resolved tannins and absurdly long finish with multiple waves of flavors. I could likely write a 2 page dissertation about the finish, it’s pretty epic.
Decanted and tasted over 48 hours, it falls off the cliff after 24 hours. Tastes best after a brief decant. Cork and bottle in pristine condition. This is drinking at or perhaps just slightly past its peak, so time to pop those corks and drink up.
Nice note Mikko. I had one at a tasting last night and it didn’t fare nearly as well. A but stewed, no lift. Not nearly enough going on with it to make me want to bang out a note like yours!
First off bottle of Musar for me though across about a case worth (mostly 98, 00 and 01), so still great success overall.
1997 is probably the most variable vintage of Musar I’ve tasted. I’ve had it now six times and it has been anything from remarkably youthful and almost backward to somewhat old and tertiary. And most of these bottles have come from the cellars from the two most hardcore Finnish Musarists I know (fellow board lurker @AskoKassinen being one).
The worst thing about this vintage is you don’t know how the bottle is going to be if you’re having it in a tasting setting. If the wine is quite old, you don’t want to give it much oxygen, because it might only make things worse. However, if the wine is youthful and closed, it can easily require two hours in a carafe before it really starts to unfurl. Not the easiest thing to manage when you have limited time and a limited amount of decanters before a tasting!
Had a few of these over the years, and I tend too agree - time to drink up. The 98 is in a similar mode, but the 99 (if you can still get any) was phenomenal not so long ago and I suspect still has several years ahead of it. Sadly the price of the few 99s hitting the market is a bit prohibitive nowadays, and I’ve drunk all mine.
I might be spoiling things, but us Finnish Musarists have been planning for some time a tasting of one single vintage. Consisting of, I don’t know, maybe six bottles?
We’re still not sure what to call this kind of tasting. It’s not a vertical nor a horizontal. Isocal? Homocal?
I’ve been fortunate to have only a couple off bottles of Musar over the years. A 98 that had some band aid and a 95 375 which was completely oxidized. Otherwise, great bottles, and none seemingly advanced.
I guess it balances out my bad luck with corked Italian wines.
I managed to do a mini-tasting of 3 1998s and another of 2 1998s that I gave different amounts of air to as experiments a little while ago.
1998 Chateau Musar - Lebanon, Bekaa Valley (23/11/2019)
Today I opened three bottles for a dinner where I was curating the wines. I deliberately gave them different amounts of air to see the effect. All the wines had been upright in my wine fridge for 4 days to let the sediment settle.
The first bottle I opened I chose because it was showing a lower fill level and I was worried that it would be badly oxidised. The cork was a mess, but a Chateau Musar two-prong opener dealt with that. I decanted it (removing quite a lot of sediment) about 8 hours before we began to drink it, and put it back in the bottle about 2 hours later. The colour was a bit more brick/brown than the rich red of younger Musars, indicting some aging/oxidation, but the nose and a small sip on opening suggested that it wasn't badly flawed.
The second bottle I decanted 5 hours prior to drinking and put it back in the bottle 90 minutes later. The third bottle I decanted 2.5 hours prior to drinking and back in the bottle almost immediately. Both of these also had significant sediment (I threw out about 1.5cm of wine/sediment from each bottle).
All of the bottles had the classic Musar nose, although the first (low-fill) bottle showed less fruit. And so it continued on the palate: the low-fill bottle was clearly showing some age/oxidation, but not in a bad way - it was different: a bit less fruit, but other more complex flavours to the fore. I wonder if this is how much older Musars are, and this one had got there prematurely via a dodgy cork? I served it first and everyone liked it, albeit in a more contemplative way, teasing out the more subtle developed flavours. There was a definite oxidative note, but it added to the flavours rather than being a show-stopper.
The second and third bottles clearly were less aged without the leaky cork, showing lots of the intense Musar fruit which is so distinctive, on the nose and the palate. These were much more "classic Musar" - a bit of wow factor, very distinctive fruit, slightly barnyard, just a touch of acidity, all lingering on the palate. And the unanimous opinion was that 5 hours air was better than 3 in terms of the overall integration & smoothness.
So all in all, everyone was happy with all 3 bottles in their different ways. But it is clear that for bottles with a solid cork at least 5 hours air is a good thing.
1998 Chateau Musar - Lebanon, Bekaa Valley (08/01/2022)
Drank two bottles with lunch today (restaurants are closed here from 6pm, because obviously having dinner at lunchtime keeps us safe from Covid).
So, as an experiment, one bottle was double decanted last night about 14 hours before drinking, and the other at 8am, so about 5 hours before. Both had quite high acidity initially as I tasted the dregs from the decants.
They were both excellent bottles, but the one with 5 hours open retained much more acetone on the nose and a sweeter slightly richer feel overall; the 13 hour decant was more refined, a little more acidic bite. Frankly the difference between them could have been bottle variation and the table were split 50/50 on which they preferred.
So, all in all, these are still very much in their drinking window.
