TN: 1999 Château Monbousquet (France, Bordeaux, Libournais, St. Émilion Grand Cru)

[Rick]

very enjoyable almost broading nose saying there is something special in this glass, monbo smoke, dark crushed berries, I found very well balanced and very nice with a grilled steak. It did not seem to be the monster wine I recall when it first came out - but maybe that is because there are many more monster wines made these days.........I suspect that this would have benefited from some additional time in the decanter 91 pts


So am I dreaming or is this not as big and bold as it use to be - or have wines like Numanthia just overwhelmed previous Big bordeaux wine?
rick

[dstgolf]

I think your palate has been cursed by the power of grenache. I've never thought Monbousquet as a huge wine When everyone was crapping on this wine for being too modernistic my wife and I were enjoying many bottles with family and friends. I always felt this was fairly elegant and crowd pleasing with sexy nose,great balance and lighter fruit. Since 1997 vintage this has been a perrenial favourite.

Danny

[JCNorthway]

Rick,

I bought six of these and have already drunk through them - all in the past 3 years. I found they were hard to resist when you gave them a couple of hours of air to open up. I thought they had pretty decent structure and concentration for that particular vintage. But I did not ever think of it as a monster - actually pretty nicely balanced in my experience. I wish I had bought more. I think it was one of the better wines of that vintage, absent maybe the first growths.

Jon

[Comte Flaneur]

Seen some mixed reviews on this in recent months and this is by far the most positive one.

I had a case of Monbosquet 99 in storage and it got lost...but judging by its showing a couple of months ago, am not shedding any tears...against some other 99s - Palmer, La Mission and LLC - it was totally outclassed, and even on its own tasted like a hollow wine that had lost its mojo...bad bottle? Possibly, but the 96 is similar, only worse.

[Rick]

i wonder if I got the 99 mixed up with my memory of 98
rick