A pair of 2014 Pessac-Leognan over the weekend. Not had side by side but one day after the other.
Smith Haut Lafite was a nice wine, dark berry and stone fruits, more ripeness than I was expecting given the vintage, but not overripe. Still balanced. Some earthiness, autumn or tobacco leaves. There is a characteristic on the finish that is a bit off putting, think astringent but not significant enough to ruin the experience. A nice wine but for me not exciting enough to seek more.
Domaine de Chevalier was a wonderful wine. Still dark fruits, but more black cherry, currants, but with a sense of balance and brightness that the SHL lacked. Also more harmonious by comparison with the way the fruit dances over and fills the palate. Despite that, manages to maintain some elegance and is quite balanced with lovely acidity and a long finish. Still youthful at this stage as secondary characteristics were not observable. Overall a wonderful wine, easy buy if found at reasonable market prices.
After scoring another case of this '22 Brane Cantenac at a great price I decided to check in and opened a previously coravined bottle. Decanted and checked in over 4 hours – poured half into a .375 to check in on later tonight. Perhaps not a wine for @Ramon_C or @Robert.A.Jr but I think this is great now and will be even better later. Still not closed. Utterly smooth and polished with real depth and power. The nose classic Margaux. Silky warm stones and perfectly calibrated fruit (not a fruit bomb by any means) and just delicious. Hard not to gulp but also contemplative in the best way. IDK the recent left bank wines have brought me back to Bordeaux. This is one of them. A deal at $84 dollars.
this is very interesting to me. When I first started buying wine back then, I thought of a lot of Margaux estates like Brane Cantenac as underachievers. In more recent years, I have found and really liked wines from a number of Margaux estates. Have they improved or, based on things like your note on the 1979, were they never underachievers?
Apologies for the mugshot-quality photo (Tell me where you hid the drugs, Pierre!), but I am compelled to post the tasting notes for this wine for which I paid 12.90 EUR at the Fronsac Maison du Vin.
Clear deep ruby in the glass. Plus intensity on the nose. Flavors and aromas of red fruits (strawberry, raspberry, red cherry), stone fruit (apricot and yellow peach), violets, roses, menthol, red apple and appleskin, tar, black pepper and cedar. Tannin pronounced, plus acidity, body pronounced, intensity pronounced, finish long. Drink now, but this wine also feels like it has a long life ahead.
It sounds strange at this price, I’m certain, but I would rate this wine 95 points. An exceptional vintage, and this winemaker made the most of it. Maybe a little like that one game when Trey Sermon rushed for 331 yards as a Buckeye, but this is one mother…ing great bottle.
This was a vintage of PC that Parker really liked:
Wine Advocate, 4/30/2011
Wine Advocate # 190
Apr 2011 Robert Parker (96) Drink: 2019 - 2060
96 Points. A candidate for the “wine of the vintage,” Pontet Canet’s 2008 boasts an opaque purple color as well as copious aromas of sweet blueberries, blackberries and black currant fruit intertwined with lead pencil shavings, subtle bar-b-q smoke and a hint of forest floor. Full-bodied, with fabulous richness, texture and tremendous freshness, this first-growth-like effort is more developed than the uber-powerful 2010. Give it 5-8 years of cellaring and drink it over the following three decades. Bravo!
Cool, I have a bottle of this pending soon. '79 margaux have been good in recent years, specifically Palmer, Du Tertre.
I have never thought of Brane Cantenac as an underachiever. It’s rustic/classic. Certainly not on the level of Palmer/Marguax but I’ve liked everything from '00 on.
Agreed
I had a wonderful visit at the Chateaux in 2012. Henri Lurton spent a lot of time with us and was very gracious. Have to thank the late Dewey Markham for setting up the visit.
I was digging around the cellar and came up with this 1970 Leoville Las Cases. The external condition looked OK. The cork was saturated but removed easily with the Durand and seemed to be in good shape. The color was very good, dense rose with just a bit of bricking (looks cloudy in the pic, that pour was near the end of the bottle).
A questionable first sniff, an odd funk, not very pleasant, but there was some nice lush fruit underneath. The first taste was really fine, the wine was completely sound, and the funk blew off slowly.
Really a very enjoyable wine, tannins that have mostly faded but there’s enough support left to call this well-balanced. There was some smokiness, the fruit was primarily dark berries, a little earth, and some green pepper notes. Not too complex overall.
This held up for several hours, no improvement but very nice to try. If I were rating this, I would probably start at 90 just because it’s a 50+ year old wine that’s still alive and sound, plus a point or two for going a bit further.
I checked on the provenance: I bought this bottle in 2015 from Bonhams, but there’s a stamp on the back that says “from a private cellar, Sherri-Lehman with Sothebys.” So it’s been around a bit, as most bottles of that age are likely to have been.
No rush to dig it out of storage unless you’re seeking youthful exuberance. Seems like it has a long road ahead of it. But I still quite enjoyed it now.
Sherri-Lehman and Sothebys. 2 names that I tend to associate with solid wine products. I’ve purchased quite a bit from S-L and have mostly been a happy camper.
Thanks Larry - I did vaguely remember Parker liking it, but I’m no longer a subscriber so I couldn’t check.
You wouldn’t really be able to tell from the tasting note apart from the “tremendous freshness”, but as I wrote, for me this wine has more in common with the Loire reds he usually disparaged than the high octane wines normally associated with him. But then, his taste was much more eclectic than most people believe. He was one of the first to champion Clos du Jaugueyron, a similarly Loire-like Bordeaux and the polar opposite of what he normally backed.
I never met RMP, and sometimes muse about what I would serve him if he came for dinner (!) - undoubtedly, a Loire red! He retired before the current run of great vintages began but I’m pretty sure he would have enjoyed Chinons from 05 or 09 if he’d been exposed to them.
I bought a case of the 08 Pontet and 6 magnums on release but have not opened one yet. Sounds like it might be time to try one. I also stopped subscribing to the Wine Advocate, but did cut and paste the original reviews into Cellar Tracker for wines that were in my cellar so that I have them available. It was always such a bummer that Parker chose not to integrate into CT, as the cutting and pasting was cumbersome. If CT ever goes away I will be in a world of hurt, practically my whole wine history from the last 20+ years is documented there!
big +1 to all of this. I had to take mine to offsite because they are soooo good now I was finding myself unable to keep my hands off so long as they were sitting at home.
I liked the '08 Pontet Canet when I had it three years ago, but felt it needed more time:
2008 Château Pontet-Canet - France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac (5/11/2023)
– decanted approx. 15 min. prior to initial taste –
– tasted non-blind over 2 hrs. –
NOSE: tight/reserved; red Twizzlers; strong wet stones mineral note; unfurling at the 30 min. mark; nice mineral-fruit balance; faint hint of cumin seed; had moments of awesome, but was mostly very good and a bit reserved.
BODY: garnet color of great depth; medium bodied.
TASTE: medium-fine tannin; flat out of the gates; light vanilla oak; medium+ acidity; suddenly awesome at the 45 min mark (could be that this is when I started pairing it with food (steak and wild rice)); with a little bit of air, this is in a beautiful-but-youthful spot right now; alc. not noticeable; elegant for a Pauillac; Drink or Hold but best to Hold.
The 1988 Lynch Bages transported me back to that magical era of ‘80s Bordeaux. Auction purchase 2020. Fill into neck, intact cork. Dark red core, lighter at rim. Shows nicely complex nose of cassis, leather, earth, cedar, hint of pyrazines. Blossoms over an hour. Medium body, excellent balance, nice complex mix of fruit and aged complexity, flavors follow the nose. Medium finish. Classic ‘80s Bordeaux. Should stay on this plateau for years. Excellent-outstanding.
