Batailley and Langoa 2009 from half bottles this evening. Both were enjoyable but the Langoa was better with a little more acidity and fragrance.
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great idea … look forward to participating. Drinking California tonight but will do Bordeaux tomorrow
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Brane-Cantenac and Troplong Mondot are IMO two of the finest values in Bordeaux, though admittedly not cheap.
Two nights ago I opened a bottle of 2023 Le Prelude, a tiny bottling from Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux (500 bottles only): Le Prélude 2023. You’d expect this to be way too young to drink, but it was as magnificent as I had recalled from tasting it out of Coravin last summer. Obviously made to be drunk now, but nonetheless very complex with a looooong finish. Glad I have 5 more bottles remaining.
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1982 Sociando Mallet
Kinda charmless and dried out, like other recent bottles of this. The bottles were well stored, this is just (well) past its prime. Still, there’s some reasonably pleasant cassis and graphite and some telltale grip the chateau is known for. 87-88 pts.
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The Farr Vintners Southwold report is now available. It seems that Brane-Cantenac and Tronquoy have played a blinder.
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Very good reading, thanks for posting!
Tronquoy is an interesting case, curious whether they try to push the price point up in coming years as the performance is so consistently high year over year in these blind tastings, or whether the unclassified status keeps working to consumer advantage.
I guess one point in favor of the latter option is that it seems like it has been performing near that level for a decade plus at this point. (If I recall, one of the critics, maybe LPB, fessed up to scoring the 2014 only a point behind Montrose at the 2014 10 years on… only to adjust downward on “confirmatory non blind tastings.”)
In any event happy to have picked up 6 of the 22 Tronquoy on sale for $30/btl!
I guess it depends who the competition is? Meyney and Phélan Ségur both out perform their cru bourgeois origins. If they are the competition then another £10 per bottle would reach the envelope. If Montrose is the competition then…
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I am trying and failing to think of unclassified left bank wines that go for more than ~$50, which suggests to me that the Lagrange/Branaire tier of lower priced classed growths serve as a de facto price ceiling. (Though of course I may be missing some so the premise is wrong.) I guess I could see it creeping up to that point over a few years if it keeps performing but 1855 still looms large in the consumer imagination.
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I thought it a fascinating report, and interesting how much the Brits seem to value ‘19 vintage, more so than here.
The other note was an acceptance of climate change, and how well the Bordelais dealt with it in 2022, making wines though relatively high in alcohol are still fresh.
I am not seeing too much downward pressure on pricing, which despite the quality, means that it will take time to trickle through the system. If I were still buying, I think I would wait; I suspect that prices at worst will stabilize; at worst, you will be able to buy the same wines in ten years for the same money, but more likely for less.
The pricing of the relatively unloved 2021s are dropping to a fraction of the original release. They were so ludicrously overpriced that is fair. Costco probably took a bath; the downside of having to buy every vintage thrown at them.
I am sorry to say my beloved Bordeaux is a bit of a mess. Some of it self inflicted, but mostly it comes down to the huge amount of great wines coming out to a market that has failed to absorb them.
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1996 Calon Segur (its Vallentine’s Day right).
This is quite nice (decanted ~3 hours). Not too heavy, nice fruit with tobacco, forest floor and a bit of maybe green pepper. Not a big wow, but nice to drink and enjoy
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I, too, found it interesting. Within the stated context (last 10 vintages), I think they called 2019 correctly. My only serious point of disagreement is 2014, which I feel they underrated. I haven’t tasted enough '18 and '22 to confirm my suspicion that I might rank those two vintages lower than we see in the article, too. But '19 absolutely deserves this praise.
2001 Sociando Mallet
Pristine bottle with a cork that is barely stained. Decanted off of moderate sediment and consumed starting 45 minutes thereafter.
On the nose the wine offers up textbook aromas of cigar tobacco, leather, licorice, loamy dirt, a touch of leafy green, and raspberry inflected red fruit.
On the palate the wine shows deep berry fruit, with other flavors largely following the nose. This is all about texture and balance with the wine gliding across the palate in perfect medium bodied form, with cleansing medium acid and residual fine textured tannic grip. The finish is not particularly long but it is respectable.
I bought this on the strength of the recommendations on this forum, with folks like @Robert.A.Jr and @Julian_Marshall singing its praises, and they were dead right. This is everything I want in a bottle of Bordeaux, the balance between sweet fruit and savory tertiary notes, the elegant medium body, the food friendliness. (We drank this with the NYT vegetarian shepherd’s pie, perfect pairing and made for an excellent Valentine’s Day dinner.)
Bottles like this are what make me love Bordeaux, and what make me love wine more generally.
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Oh momma that looks so pristine!
I have envy!
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I do think the format makes a pretty significant difference. Not that I have much depth here but every time I taste one 2014 I think it is pd good. But tasting 25 of them at the 10 years on event I went to was pretty rough work. They’re not all in a super friendly spot right now for no-food drinking. But they do pretty well with dinner.
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Too … tannic? Acidic?
“Yes.” The tannins, enhanced by the higher acidities, made it tough to get a read on many of the wines (particularly in seriatim). Plus some were still much more backward than the 15s, like Lynch Bages for instance. I wasn’t scoring the wines but if I had been Lynch Bages would have been a “?? NR” for me. Totally impenetrable, zero fruit, zero anything other than a wall of tannin.
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Great notes, Justin, and so glad you enjoyed it! Sociando-Mallet is not for everyone - I wasn’t a fan for a very long time, but then I got hooked about ten years ago. The 2001 is one of my favourite vintages and I’ve had an indecent number of bottles of it! Some have good things to say about 2000, and I did have one good bottle after thirteen average ones, but for me the 01 is so much better. In a similar vein the 04 is drinking very well today.
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Another interesting article to read while we wait for the results of the Southwold 10 years on tasting.
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Cracked a 2008 Haut-Bailly but due to various circumstances only got it open and into a decanter about 45 min before dinner. It was wound up tight when time to eat rolled around so pivoted to a different wine for dinner and took tastes through the evening. After a few hours showing lots of cigar tobacco and cedar, with a salty mineral driven palate, but the plum and cherry fruit is really quite reticent. Going to see how this bottle has developed tomorrow as I’m hoping for a better showing than I got tonight.
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Cross-posted from the “What bottle of wine did you open today” thread:
At my request, the theme for today’s tasting was Bordeaux and it was outstanding. The Cordier wines were standouts but the 2000 Clerc Milon was punching above its weight, my guess was 2000 Pichon Baron. The 2005 Clerc was more approachable than I would have expected. The 2003 Montrose again showed itself to be one of the wines of the vintage. The 2009 Leoville Barton is youthful but drinking very well now. The Brane Cantenac seemed slightly damaged but could still be enjoyed. Finally, I knew nothing about Anseillan, which I later learned is a Lafite property, but it is showing well young.
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