Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

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Blanquito
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Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by Blanquito »

Jacques,

Is this your Cellar Tracker note on the 2009 GPL? If it is, this is terrible!

2009 Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste (France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac) 1/16/2013 Jal
Vanilla, oak, jammy hot and sweet. Absolutely disgusting. Where are the high ratings coming from? This wine is modern, resembles in no way the great GPLs of old. Awful. 75 pts.

Can you discuss? Did you like the 2000 GPL or the 2005? I recall you weren't a big fan of the 1982 GPL, finding it too roasted.

The 2005 GPL I tried on release was killer... sure, it seemed a bit modern in its cleaniness and fruit-richness, but these features seemed like potential improvements to the excellent GPL model (lovely, classic, but sometimes a bit lean to run with the best) from the 80's and mid-1990's.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by JimHow »

I've been warning you guys about GPL (and Bordeaux in general) post-1996 but nobody listens to me.
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Bacchus
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by Bacchus »

Jacques, aka, John Gilman! :twisted:
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OrlandoRobert
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by OrlandoRobert »

That diatribe yields a 75?!?! :shock:
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AlohaArtakaHoundsong
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by AlohaArtakaHoundsong »

I recall reading a similar complaint on CT in conncetion with a GPL vertical tasting. I liked the '95 (or '96?) I had at Jim's. Dare I say it bested then the "100-pt" '96 Lafite (which was pretty closed-in)? My only other data point is '03, which like a lot of 03s I liked, but am under no illusions it is an exemplar of anything but the vintage.

I guess I would add the question/throw the issue for debate, where does one find a trad Pauillac anymore (for less than $100)? What is a trad Pauillac anyway?
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by JimHow »

Yes, Art, the 1995 GPL is the last of the great GPLs.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by DavidG »

That's certainly an outlier score. Most people on CT seem to like it. Of course, they're not professional wine critics. But the BWE mantra is that the pro critics have nothing on the Everyman who knows his own palate. Or are all those folks on CT just parroting the critics?
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by JimHow »

Dave... Davester... I love you, man... But you are kidding, right? The cellarttackerians are the biggest HWSRN apologists on the Internet.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by AlohaArtakaHoundsong »

^Possibly they are those who like their Bdx like it is in 2009? Possibly they are the same ones scoring the '06s and '02s at 89-90 points?

As an amateur, not so experienced, and certainly not learned in the sense of having taking any instruciton in flavor wheels or been subjected to James Suckling in person, I would be totally embarrassed to taste a wine blind and have to assign points to it (assuming I could come to grips with the whole points thing). But, put the bottle in front of me, with foreknowledge of an array of expert's scores, and I could pretty confidently nail the score for that tasting within two or three points.

We've touched on this before, about how tasters may be conditioned or normed to their favorite critics, and about the possible drawbacks of non-blind tasting. I'm also often left to wonder how people declare a wine to be closed yet assign a projected score to it for sometime down the road. I even wonder when one of the big boys says that two years removed from barrel tasting, a wine has not turned out as well as he thought (for example), given that Bdx in particular is a moving target throughout its life.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by DavidG »

Jim, I wouldn't really know. I don't pay much attention to them, at least not as a collective or to the average scores, though there are a few tasters I know and value. And on occasions like this where I'm prompted to go look. I'd trust Jacques' take on a wine 10x over a community of unknowns, RP apologists or not, but I have to wonder if there was something wrong with the bottle when I see such an outlier. Makes me want to try one to see for myself but I don't own any.

Art, I could never score a barrel sample or just-released Bordeaux. I'm just not that good at predicting where they'll be with any degree of precision. In fact, I don't think I can repeatably produce a score within +/- 5 points on a mature wine. Which is why I don't use points, just categories like very good, excellent, outstanding...
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by JimHow »

See, I don't think there was ANYTHING wrong with Jacques' bottle, THAT'S the problem! I haven't tasted the 2009 GPL but based on the half dozen of so vintages I've tasted since 1996, that is about exactly how I would expect the 2009 GPL to turn out. What Jacques has described is a Parkerized GPL.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by DavidG »

Could be. I would've liked to have tasted it before passing judgment.
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Blanquito
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by Blanquito »

DavidG wrote:That's certainly an outlier score. Most people on CT seem to like it. Of course, they're not professional wine critics. But the BWE mantra is that the pro critics have nothing on the Everyman who knows his own palate. Or are all those folks on CT just parroting the critics?
It is an outlier score and I probably would have dismissed it if the poster wasn't named "jal", just like our good friend and fellow BWE-er, Jacques. That's what got me wondering, if it is our "jal", we know his palate well enough to take a 75-point rating seriously.

What would be suprising and sad about this note, if I agree with it upon tasting a 2009 of this chateau, is GPL has never tasted like a Parkerized wine to me in recent vintages like 2000/3/5, nor have I heard others say that about it. In fact, it is often held up as one of the remaining traditionalists, like Calon Segur and Boyd Cantenac. For example, Neal Martin -- whom I appauled for calling out Parkerized monsters like Clos de Lunelles and Fleur de Cardinale as OTT -- has gone gaga over recent vintages of GPL.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by AlohaArtakaHoundsong »

Here's the notes of the vertical I was referring to. The introduction is pretty interesting - the last paragraph aligns with Jim's JimView. I have no idea who these people are, but they seem to have well-formed opinions.

http://www.cellartracker.com/event.asp?iEvent=16943

Of course, we, being very astute, will no doubt observe that it is not merely the "most recent" vintages that are suspect, but also the "youngest."
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by pomilion »

Blanquito wrote:The 2005 GPL I tried on release was killer... sure, it seemed a bit modern in its cleaniness and fruit-richness, but these features seemed like potential improvements to the excellent GPL model (lovely, classic, but sometimes a bit lean to run with the best) from the 80's and mid-1990's.
Couldn't agree more. Yes, the '05 and '09 are a little "modern" compared with '80s or '90s GPL (cleaner and a little richer, as you say), but I've had both and they're incredible wines which still have that certain austere background note which is even more compelling imo because of the interesting way it's highlighted/offset against the slightly richer fruit (if that makes any sense).
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Blanquito
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by Blanquito »

AlohaArtakaHoundsong wrote:Here's the notes of the vertical I was referring to.
http://www.cellartracker.com/event.asp?iEvent=16943."
Interesting notes, Hound. One comment made -- "The post-'96 wines certainly seemed to be more "international" in style, lacking some of the Bdx character/typicity/distinctiveness that is evident in tasting the earlier wines" -- seems to me true of all Bordeaux, by and large, not just the GPL. I guess I agree with the BD on this.

But here's the rub: the best bottles I've ever had of Bordeaux have all been from 82, 86, 89, and 90, or broadly, the 1980's. I've had some very good bottles of 70's Bordeaux, the few 60's Bordeaux I've had were non-descript or over the hill, and the more recent post-1990 stuff has ranged from young-but-oh-so-promising to spoofed-Parkerisms. Wines like the 96 Pichon Lalande, the 98 Grand Mayne, the 1996 Ducru, and more recently, the 2005 GPL are wonderful wines by any yardstick... except compared to 80's Bordeaux. So, do the 82, 90 and perhaps 95 GPLs exceed the more recent vintages? I'd be surprised if they didn't, those are some of history's finest wines I expect.

But Jacques' note on the 2009 GPL is something entirely different.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by Bacchus »

1982-1995! That's it! 13 years of great wines. Thin crap before that, thick crap since! You realize you're all looking back romantically upon the Reagan era! OMG, you're all a bunch of neo-cons affirming that the Reagan era of wine making is the golden age! :o
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by DavidG »

Here's the rest of the comment from that vertical:

The final flight was '99, '01 and '03. Honestly I would not buy any of these. In keeping with other Bdx verticals I've done, I note a change in the style of the wines after 1996. People at our table mentioned "Parkerization". The post-'96 wines certainly seemed to be more "international" in style, lacking some of the Bdx character/typicity/distinctiveness that is evident in tasting the earlier wines. Most preferred the '03 in this flight, as it may have potential. It is freaky and large, but has some good material underneath. It might age into something worthy. The '99 is disappointing and lacks any punch. The '01 is boring and not a great GPL."

A few wines from a few vintages. Others here disagree with the overarching conclusion about quality, though I see less disagreement about modernity and ripeness. Though the comments in this thread don't seem to be much about '99 or '01.

Like Patrick, many of my best Bdx experiences have also been with '82s, '89s and '90s. But those great experiences almost all came when the wines were at least 20 years old, and most were with wines with known provenance. '82 Mouton and LLC sucked in the '90s. Those smarter than me gushed over their potential but all I got was a mouthful of structure and tannin. I gush over performance, not potential. Add to that the fact that I have had great experiences with wines from the '50s through '70s. Not as many, perhaps because of provenance and perhaps because viticulture and winemaking just weren't as good back then, so there was more luck than skill involved in producing the great wines from '55, '61 or '70. Maybe the dissatisfaction with newer vintages is just that they're still too young, and not that the winemaking pendulum has swung too far.

Jim says the more recent wines are boring compared to the pre-'95 wines at a similar age. I won't disagree with his impression. We all taste what we taste and the differences are what make this interesting. But to me a lot of the older wines that excite me now were relatively boring at age 10-15. A polemic on one note on one bottle of '09 GPL is hardly a winning argument. It got a good discussion going, one that shows there are clearly different opinions.

Jim is a much bigger fan of '02s than the majority, including me. Being in the minority doesn't make him "wrong" any more than it means the majority is brainwashed into believing they're just ok. Maybe it's just a difference in appreciation of ripeness levels. But just maybe the '02s are going to turn into great wines in another 10 years, like many under-rated '81s, '83s and '88s, and it's too early for me to see the beauty in those wines. Maybe it's too early for Jim and Patrick to see the beauty in the '96s, '00s and '05s. As to the '09s, well, if you can correctly match pictures of celebrities to their baby pictures, I'll take your word for it. I bet pretty big on '09s, though mostly on less-costly ones. I just hope I'm around in 15 years to see if that bet pays off.

As much fun as it is to debate this, it's not going to be settled until I put the finishing touches on my time machine.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by JimHow »

For me personally, David, it has not been about one note about one wine that I have not even tasted. I have not had the 2005 GPL but I have had the 97, 98, 99, 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 06, and 08. I thought they've all been boring as a 93 Batailley. Indeed, I even think the 03 is flawed in the winemaking. The 96 is pretty good, but it far outclassed by the 95. In the famous BWE Boston 95 v. 96 tasting it was one of the few wines where the 95 beat the 96. These post-96 GPLs are all round, softish, sweet, oaky, no edge to them, no classic Pauillac structure that was the hallmark of GPL in the past. When you factor in the state of Bordeaux by 2009, I am not at all surprised if it is a train wreck.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by Bacchus »

I can see Jim's point. 21st century Bdx is bigger, fruitier, rounder, sweeter and softer. All the edge has been filed off. I don't know if it's a train wreck, I guess that's a matter of personal taste. A lot of people seem to like the rounder style. As we all know, Bdx is commanding higher prices than ever before, by far, and that's due to demand! So from the wineries' perspective, no train wreck at all! But the question for us, at least for Jim, becomes, what to do if you prefer the style of the Reagan era? One possibility, of course, is to continue buying those wines. They're still out there even if pricier than they were 25 yrs ago. Hell, you can still find 89 Lynch Bages if you've got the green. Another possibility is to try and find the wine that hasn't adopted the new, rounder style. Does it exist? Are there any wines that haven't rounded their corners? Is it Cantemerle, LeovilleB, Sociando? Other than trying to taste every wine that appears on the store shelf, which could get expensive, is there some other way to find out? Some institute or organization representing lesser known Chateaux that we can contact? What about BWEers who live in France -- Ivan Litwar for example? If the answer is no, then what? Buy old or don't buy? Buy 07 and 08 Burgundy?! But it's not Bdx. If all this gets you down, here's some words on recent pricing that might brighten the day:

"Jean Gautreau is certain that ‘this bubble’ will explode. ‘Every year, I buy a case of each first growth,’ he said. ‘But this year I did not. Not because I am scared of losing money, but there are things that we must not do in life. If this pencil (pointing to a pencil) is worth 20 eurocents. And we want to sell it for 50 euros, I will not buy it,’ he said."
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by hm$ »

I did not buy many '09s, and I don't subscibe to HWSRN, but based on many wines he recommended that I bought in 2000-2002 which were (at that time), overripe, hot, flabby, etc., many are now beautiful, or at least very good, wines. So I agree with david in large measure -- I find it very difficult to judge a wine when young, especially if the wine is meant to be held for 10-30 years.

hm$
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by Jay Winton »

JimHow wrote:Dave... Davester... I love you, man... But you are kidding, right? The cellarttackerians are the biggest HWSRN apologists on the Internet.
disagree. Yes, you have to read the reviews but if you, as David notes, star your favorite authors, it is a valuable reference. I'm pretty much off RP especially after buying a few bottles of the Breca which he gave 94 points. I found the wine to be indifferent at best with a flabby mid and blah finish. Fortunately, it was only $17 but he was totally wrong, IMO. Basically, I trust my palate and use CT as well as a couple of retailers but since I'm buying very little these days, not a big deal. Also, my insurance agent told me that CT provides enough information to cover me under my homeowners policy so no need to buy additional coverage.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by AlohaArtakaHoundsong »

I think the key takeaway from that vertical note is:

"In keeping with other Bdx verticals I've done, I note a change in the style of the wines after 1996." [emphasis mine].

So this is noting the overall theme of Jim's about the (alleged or perceived) not so subtle style-shift ocurring overall.

To the extent it is perceived in the extraordinary vintages, this may well be due to the extraordinariness of the vintages, no? How does one not produce a 2009, 2005, 2003, or 2000 that has not characteristics of those vintages? To me that would point to even more manipulation. To the extent these "modern", "international" characteristics (be what they may) appear uniformly across vintages, this would appear to confirm the change.

Of course I have no idea what this means for the 20+ year mark, and defer to others who say all will be well then.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by jal »

It is my note, I stand by it. That wine was all vanilla and oak. I also agree that the last great GPL I had was the 1995. The 1996 was mediocre, the 2000 GPL was good but a little nondescript for me. I never tasted the 2005.

That said, I have never had a worse Grand Puy Lacoste. There was nothing in that wine that resembled a Bordeaux. It reminded me of a Catena Zapata Malbec someone brought to a tasting a few years ago. Curious to know if anyone else had it.
Best

Jacques
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Blanquito
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by Blanquito »

Thanks for confirming, Jacques. I've had enough wines side by side with you to know that our palates are at least pretty well aligned, so I take your note seriously as there is little I dislike more than excessive and candy-vanilla oak.

I have half bottles of the 09 GPL in my cellar, ITNOS I will open one today and report my impressions. I am a bit trepidatious.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by AlohaArtakaHoundsong »

It sounds like it should be delicious at least with creme brulee. Looking forward to more data points on this one.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by Bacchus »

I too will be very interested to hear what you have to say Blanquito. I don't own any of the 09 GPL -- yet. My brother is shipping me a few bottles however. I find the controversy over this wine interesting. Jancis Robinson, not a person known for loving overly alcoholic, candy floss, jam pots was quite strong on this wine. She wrote: "Very firm and taut and Pauillac - less luscious than some 2009s. Very fresh and with real vigour and rigour. Lovely rich velvety stuff. Score: 17.5." So it's "velvety," but it's also "firm and taut," "fresh," has "real vigour," and is "less luscious" than other 09s. Gosh, it's hard to reconcile tasting notes some times.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by DavidG »

I've got no disagreement over the concept that there has been an ongoing style change towards riper, lower acid wines. I'm not sure that there was a dramatic Bordeaux-wide shift from 1995 to 1996. For GPL and a few others, sure. Bordeaux-wide, I can agree that there's been a general ongoing shift in that direction.

But my point is this: even though the more recent wines may taste nondescript, soft, ripe and oaky young, to the point where they are distasteful to lovers of classic Bordeaux at this stage, I believe that a lot of them will still develop into classic Bordeaux. If I'm wrong, I'll have a lot of crappy '00s, '05s and '09s, but I won't know it for another 5-10 years.

But the best part of this thread is that it got Jacques to post. Welcome back, stranger! I havent had the wine, but as I said above, I'd trust a JAL note 10 x farther than any collection of random CT notes.
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by stefan »

Yeah, David; Jacques has a great palate. That he loves Burgundy,too, is no coincidence. :)
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Re: Calling Jacques: the 2009 GPL is "awful"?

Post by OrlandoRobert »

I'm somewhere in between on this debate. I am optimistic like DavidG, but am also mindful of the possibility that the confluence of modern winemaking techniques, Parker and hot/ripe years may lead to unfortunate messes. I put 2003 and possibly 2009 in that camp. My jury is still out on 2000. I have no concerns about 2004, 2005 (left bank) and 2008. I wonder where 2010 maps out, but based on what I read, more like 2005.

Fun experiments, eh? If this were easy, we would be bored and drinking straight vodka.
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