After popping a 2019 Alter Ego last week, I couldn’t help but get curious about the 2019 Palmers I have stashed away, and so justifying the early exuberance as an “early look learning experiment” I popped a 2019 Palmer last night as well.
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2019 Château Palmer - France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Margaux (7/29/2023)
Similar in many ways to my note on Alter Ego last week. This was popped out of curiosity, after how much I enjoyed the AE.
In many ways this wine reflects its baby brother, beautiful perfumed aroma of violet, flowers, and raspberries / blueberries. The wine is a stunning garnet / crimson colour, with plenty of black fruit, tobacco, and mint on the palette, with a smidge of green underbrush and almost graphite in the tannins. As the evening went on the black fruit gave way to more red fruit as the tannins subsided. It has a wonderful silky mouthfeel, and a long 45+ second finish.
Overall relative to the Alter Ego, this wine has more structure, power and stuffing for the long haul. It went through a few stages of being open and closed over the 5 hour drinking window in which it was consumed (post 1 hour double decant).
Overall this wine has a bright future ahead of it, and if you have 4+ tucked away, it might be worth opening one just out of curiosity before this shuts down completely. Unsurprisingly I'll be cracking Alter Ego's before I come back to this again in 6-8 years time. 96+ (96 points)
Posted from CellarTracker
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2019 Alter Ego - France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Margaux (7/23/2023)
This really was very good stuff. The nose is a dream of violet, a bouquet of flowers, pencil shaving and mineral. The taste was blueberry, red fruit, flowers, with a bit of green-ness and eucalyptus / leaf. Very lightly oaked, a perfect amount of oak in my view. Well integrated and velvet tannins. Finish was long and ~30 secs.
Double decanted and left to stand for one hour. Went a little back into its shell after 3-4 hrs of air, but was singing again the following day.
I went back to Costco and picked up another 4 bottles today. This has a bright future ahead of it. If I can resist, I'll pop the next one in 2-3 years. 93 / 94 pts.
I'm very excited to have 7 of the Grand Vin, and might pop #7 just out of pure curiosity. (93 points)
Posted from CellarTracker
