TN 1996 Clos du Marquis

[Jay Winton]

harsh, unpleasant tannins buried whatever fruit was present. Very close to DNPIM and half of the contents poured out. Drunk over 2 nights. I was quite a fan of this wine previously so this was a surprise; bottle was not damaged or corked with a solid, non stained cork. past its prime??

[Michael Malinoski]

Jay, thanks for the note and insight. I've only had the wine once, so hard to comment on it being OTH, but I certainly agree about the harshness...

1996 Clos du Marquis Saint Julien. This wine feels ungiving on the nose to me, only slowly opening up over time to show glossy black fruit and earth notes, a bit of tar and some ash. In the mouth, it is again tight, and also a bit rough around the edges. The attack is moderately rich, but it has a bitter astringent edge through the middle and finish. Taut, chalky tannins frame the dark fruit and earth flavors and a massive shot of acidity comes in to provide a bit of additional length. Overall, though, this is not the equal of the previous wine by any stretch.

-Michael

[stefan]

This was good 8 years ago. Five years ago it was showing signs of decline. Usually Bdx lives a long time after it enters that downhill slope; this one is apparently different.

[JimHow]

The '05 sucked.

[Houndsong]

This is what, the 2nd of LLC?

I read somewhere in basically an aside that pretty much all of the top so many properties are now bottling another wine, not to be called a second wine, but that it comes from specific, designated parts of the vineyard holdings, young vines maybe, etc. And they are succeeding in obtaining a better price (and some would say a better quality "other" offering). A nice marketing trick. But still you see so often in tasting notes for the Grand Vin, something like "selection was severe; only 40% of the crop made it into the Grand Vin." So is this 40% of the plots/parcels nominally slated for the grand vin, or 40% of the entire acreage under vine, or what? And what about selection by cask, after fermentation, etc.? What happens to the de-selected wine?

[JimHow]

Yes that's right, LLC is not treating this as a "second wine", but rather a "separate wine". The 1996 was stunning in its youth, I remain surprised at reports of its sudden demise. Some have had more favorable results in recent years, others have had results similar to Jay and Michael's. The 2005 was pretty weak.

[Chasse-Spleen]

Clos du Marquis as far as I know is not a rated chateau, even though RP includes notes on it like a second from a 1st growth in his books. That means that although LLC is a 2nd growth, CdM may be quite good or great at any time but not necessarily great all the time or anywhere near the high standards of the first wine which sometimes achieves a 1st growth quality. There's no reason why a 14 year old unclassified wine should necessarily be great, even from a great lefty vintage. The whole theory behind "2nd wines" is that it's the wine/grapes that are not good enough for the grand vin. I was never that impressed with CdM. Give me Gloria or Chasse-Spleen any day. I didn't fully understand Hound's post, as I often don't, but I think what he was getting at was quite on target - CdM is somewhat of a marketing trick. "Ah yes! It's a walled vineyard, owned by LLC! Must be great!" Well, they probably take whatever great grapes that come out of there, and use them in LLC, and then dump the crappy grapes/wines from the LLC vineyards into CdM.

Long rant, huh?

-Chasse

[Blanquito]

Amen.

[Comte Flaneur]

I had this a few times though not recently. That was in a long forgotten Jurassic era when you could buy Carruades Lafite for about GBP15-20 a bottle. In fact I used to buy Carruades in every vintage, because while it was never that great it was good vfm and quite cheap so I considered it to be my 'house red'. But I digress. In the 1996 vintage I had cases of CdL, CdM and Reserve De La Comtesse and the junior Pichon Lalande was clearly the best wine of the three (even if it was the oposite of the grand vin with a high merlot content). The CdM was the weakest of the three, always curmudgeonly before it began to dry out. I ended up resorting to that mean old trick of giving it away to other people at dinner parties, ostensibly very generously 'its the second wine of Leoville Lascases you know and 1996 is one of the greatest vintages.'

Fast forward to today and second wines of great firsts and super seconds are even poorer value for money as their prices get dragged up by their famous siblings. For example in 2009 Petit Mouton is the same price as the allegedly brilliant, 100 points-in-the-making Pontet Canet. There are plenty more examples too.

[Houndsong]

A great counterfeiting opportunity exists here. It would be pretty easy to pass anything off as an indifferent second wine, and at $100 it would seem worth the risk.

[johnz]

I've had this wine several times over the last 5-6 years, read even more TN's, and it seems to have been extremely variable -- scores just all over the map. Different batches? Bad out of balance batches? I just don't know. I've never been thrilled by the wine, but my last taste in 2008 indicated to me that there was no big rush to drink it. Oh, and RP's "drinking window" is 2005-2020, which I've learned to largely ignore . . . did he get a "special batch"?

[JimHow]

A look at the scores on Cellartracker seem to support the conclusion of some variability John:

These scores are all from 2010 going back to 2008:

90
92
90
91
90
93
93
90
87
89
90
92
91
92
90
90
86
82
83
91
87

Some did not give scores.

[JimHow]

Although, on second look at those scores, I would say the Cellartracker people have generally enjoyed the wine in the past two years....

[JCNorthway]

Jay,

I'm sorry you had a disappointing experience with this wine. And it is also clear that yours is not a unique experience. There must be a lot of variability in this wine. Or perhaps there were some bad shipping/storage conditions that affected some bottles. I posted on this wine late last year and found it still had a lot of fruit and structure remaining. I did not get the harshness and dryness of others. Hopefully I have pasted in the link to my note here on the site.

http://www.bordeauxwineenthusiasts.com/ ... quis#p8266

Jon

[Jay Winton]

good comments everyone. This was my last bottle and I don't think I will buy anymore. I can't remember the last time I poured half of a bottle of Bordeaux down the drain. BTW, mrs vino agreed with my assessment.

[JonoB]

I've tried it a few times recently. Very inconsistent.

Of 8 bottles, about 6 have been past their prime/ overly tannic and lacking fruit /corked. 2 good bottles, and they certainly weren't particularly exciting. My advice is to save your cash and buy something else.