Ch. Belair St-Emilion, 1985

[Comte Flaneur]

Last night Chris kindly cooked for us down in Soho, always a fun evening getting into the groove drinking Pol Roger, eating some outrageous blue cheese and finnish herrings whilst Freddy King pelted out the blues. We started with Sylain Dussort bourgogne blanc 2007 which was a nice junior meursault and then we had a JC Bachelet Chassagne Montrachet Rouge, 2007, which had plenty of delicious wild strawberry pinot fruit.

Then we had the Ch Belair 1985 and this bottle was perfect old fashioned St-Emilion with subtle woodsy and shoe polish aromas, and perfect equilibrium and balance that some modern st-emilions can only dream about. And to think a certain critic rated this 78 points...the next wine was equally good in a very different way, a delicious precocious Francois Lamarche Echezeaux 1997. We did drink the Produttori del Barbaresco 2006 next but it tasted a bit flumoxed and flat after these two. For me the star was the Belair. I only paid $40 for it two months ago. Sometimes low Parker scores throw out incredible bargains.

[Rick]

nice pick

[Chasse-Spleen]

Thanks for bring such fantastic wines, Ian. It was a fun night or should I say, a terrific blow-out. The night was such that today I was able to come up with a new nickname for one of my friends: Keith. And she's a woman but we won't go into the inspiration for this. Let's just say that she knows and she approves. But the wines...

The Dussort is a wine that I had several of the '06 and loved it, this was tighter and brighter with more acidity and less unctiousness, less of the baby Meursault qualities that I was hoping for (Dussort's address is in the commune).

The Bachelet was fab but a tad modern, I thought. Almost a hint of Cali Pinot but better than any I've ever had, so there you go. A big fat style of Chassagne-Montrachet rouge.

The '85 Belair was memorable and great. I did do some research before hand and knew that Belair is an 'anti-Parker' estate or at least style of wine. It was a classic style of Bordeaux on this evening, drinking beautifully, totally classy and with this flavor that I wish I could pinpoint - a woodsy combination of fruit and wood somehow, I've smelled and tasted it numerous times before in mature Bordeaux. Not terribly complex, but with this delicious cigarbox/fruit thing that is just captivating. I wish I knew what the name of this descriptor was. It was there in spades!

The Echezeaux was fantastic. Still young with plenty of fine tannins but drinking beautifully and very balanced with great fruit in evidence.

After the above two wines, the Produttori was somewhat strange. Much more modern in a sense with that sort of candied fruit flavor that I associate with new world wines form California and Australia. I'm going to revisit some that was left over in a moment with some of the leftover beef stew. It was just that the style was somewhat unexpected given my experience (Hah!) with the producer. We shall see.
As 'Keith' would say, More later,
-Chasse

[Chasse-Spleen]

I have revisited the Bachelet and Produttori on the second day and interestingly found the Bachelet to be a bit more austere and Burgundian, and the Produttori to be a bit less candied and more balanced. Both are a real pleasure to drink. I also did some more research and found that our friend RP was at one time sharply critical of Lamarche, counting the domaine among the 'most overrated' in his 1990 Burgundy tome, a book that I greatly enjoy reading with just a little filtering, shall we say. So it was a double bonus evening of anti-Parker wines! Thanks again Ian!

[Claudius]

Comte
I bought a case of the 85 Belair many years ago, and the weakness of the wine was variability.
Some bottles wer very nice, medium bodied, subtle red fruits, spice, earth.
others were rather bretty and stinky, from the case OWC.
So all I can surmise it that the RPJnr tried a bottle or sample that wasn't in great condition.

Incidentally, I've had the 97 Larmarche Ech on 3 or 4 occasions and always liked it.