I recall hearing from a few people a couple months ago about how the 98 Rene Lalou suddenly seemed to be changing for the better into a much more balanced and enjoyable wine . My past experiences showed the wine to be full of great raw materials, but covered up by strange burned, raisined aromas and flavors. The potential was there, but I wasn’t sure it would ever come out.
Trying to understand the Lalou was one of my goals so I sat down with Didier Mariotti Cellarmaster at Mumm in April to learn more about this wine. We went through tasting it in different glasses which as expected affected the wine quite a bit, but the big eye opener to me was tasting different disgorgements. The liqueur d’expedition that Mumm used in this wine is extremely powerful - more so than I would have ever expected even with it being oak aged. As such it is taking a long time to integrate properly into the wine IMO.
Even with Mumm holding the wine back at least 9 months post disgorgement, the wine is a bit of a mess on release. For my palate, it takes close to 2 years for this wine to start to show harmony and it will take even longer for it to finally settle. The early disgorgements from the second half of 2006 are showing very well while the summer 2007 disgorgements are just now hitting their strides. 2008 disgorgements are best left alone for now. The end result is that this wine is improving rapidly and has turned around quicker than I ever would have guessed. It really is one of the top wines of 98 and a fascinating wine to dissect. I still don’t know what the heck is in the liqueur that makes it so different from everything else out there (I’ve never seen another young wine behave even remotely close to how this wine has acted), but it sure makes this wine interesting.
Didier tried to get the disgorgement date put on the bottle to help out with knowing when to drink, but he lost this battle with marketing.