The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

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Comte Flaneur
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The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by Comte Flaneur »

You can guarantee that it will get a fair hearing. Good start: the cork on this 21-year old is in great nick.


URL=http://s1116.photobucket.com/user/iamst ... 2.jpg.html]Image[/URL]
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Comte Flaneur
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by Comte Flaneur »

Dark maroon colour...a bit mouton-y on the nose with the soy and cedar...then chocolate, mocha and spice notes. The entry gives the impression of an expensive and luxurious wine.

On the palate it is surprisingly harsh, and drying, with an unripe aftertaste. It is quite puckering in fact. It seems to have a reasonable length on the palate however.

Let's see how it settles down, develops and matches up to a rack of lamb.
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AKR
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by AKR »

Angelus label is always so wonderful.

If one is dropping big dosh on a bottle, at least there they give the visual value!
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by JimHow »

I predict it will improve significantly with air.
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Comte Flaneur
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by Comte Flaneur »

How come we didn't visit Angelus?

Tim? Alex?

Who cares about the flag poles? If we visited Angelus we would have had the respective national anthems...blasted out over the Tannoys...someone should have a word with Alfred T.
Last edited by Comte Flaneur on Sun Jun 28, 2015 9:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by Comte Flaneur »

The nose becomes ever more expressive and exuberant with air and the wine matches very well with the rack of lamb and roast potatoes. And yes Jim it does improve with air and the wine smoothes out in the mid-palate.

Even after the food the palate has smoothed out a lot. The wine remains dominated by its exuberant full frontal attack, and the palate is mediocre by comparison. But the initial harshness has definitely smoothed out.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by Comte Flaneur »

The bottle says 13% ABV but there is quite a bit of back palate burn to suggest this is too conservative. Beyond the exuberant entry the wine is one dimensional and has ZERO complexity. The back end is harsh and rough. This is becoming an ordeal rather than a pleasure (post rack of lamb).
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by Comte Flaneur »

1994 was a difficult vintage on the left bank and the right. This wine is superficially attractive but flatters to deceive. As does the 1995, and every other vintage of Angelus I have tried post 1990. I think the 1994 is better than the 1995 relative to the norm of that oRticular vintage.

But to contend that this wine is on an equal footing with Cheval Blanc... quality wise ... strikes me as a fraudulent deception.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by DavidG »

Thanks for the notes and commentary Ian. I drank my last 1994 Angelus a few years ago. I liked it a bit more than you but I agree on the harshness on the back palate and finish. Although Angelus is a perennial favorite, I too don't thin it measures up to Cheval Blanc. It would be fun to do a side by side tasting of Angelus and Cheval Blanc from a good year, maybe 2000.
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AKR
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by AKR »

Comte Flaneur wrote:1994 was a difficult vintage on the left bank and the right. This wine is superficially attractive but flatters to deceive. As does the 1995, and every other vintage of Angelus I have tried post 1990. I think the 1994 is better than the 1995 relative to the norm of that oRticular vintage.

But to contend that this wine is on an equal footing with Cheval Blanc... quality wise ... strikes me as a fraudulent deception.
I liked some of the 94 merlot driven wines...but most of them were consumed younger. I think the last few 94's we had were LLC and P-Lalande, which were probably peaking or so. I think for some of these years, letting them get older isn't helping.

It has been a long long time, but the 95 Angelus I thought was pretty awesome. I don't know how its looking today.

Nice photos you included.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by Roel »

1994 LLC still was alive and kicking three months ago. 91-92 points at least in my book.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by RDD »

Some right bank Pomerols did well and were quite a bargain. Clinet is still very nice.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by Comte Flaneur »

We had a 1994 tasting a few weeks after I returned to London in late 2011, and we were all routing for the wines to succeed but as one of our company, a respected critic, observed they didn't have enough fruit once the tannins receded leaving them in no man's land. The dinner revealed successes and failures in the vintage. Failures included Angelus, Leoville-Barton and Ducru Beaucaillou. Successes included LLC, Latour and Ch. Margaux.

But overall a very difficult vintage I think.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by AKR »

Comte Flaneur wrote:We had a 1994 tasting a few weeks after I returned to London in late 2011, and we were all routing for the wines to succeed but as one of our company, a respected critic, observed they didn't have enough fruit once the tannins receded leaving them in no man's land. The dinner revealed successes and failures in the vintage. Failures included Angelus, Leoville-Barton and Ducru Beaucaillou. Successes included LLC, Latour and Ch. Margaux.

But overall a very difficult vintage I think.
Yes the problem has been that the fruit has slowly faded, but those tannins never melted.

So its been a case, to me, where they wines don't improve with aging.

This is speaking broadly. There are certainly exceptions like l'Evangile among others.

They were wines that went well with a rib eye steak.
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JimHow
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by JimHow »

I have the world's biggest fan of Angelus coming to my house this summer, I'll have to uncork a bottle from a renowned vintage and match it up against some fine northern Medocs to see how it compares.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by DavidG »

Hubert de Bouard will be joining us?

Yes I have been Angelus' staunchest defender here on BWE. But I have to admit that as time has passed and the wines (and I) have aged, I have found that even on the right bank there are other wines that have surpassed it. I don't know if it's my palate changing or the Chateau just not living up to the glorious 1989 and 1990, which were the years that started my love affair with the estate. I suspect that it's both.

As to 1994, I agree with both Arv and Rob. They were, in general, not well balanced, with an excess of fruit over tannin. They didn't shake off the tannins the way a lot of 1986s finally did. But there were exceptions that did well, like Clinet and L'Evangile, and while not world-beaters they were good wines that rewarded cellaring, and they were decent value.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by RDD »

It was a difficult vintage.
But after 1992 and 1993 it was godsend.
Parker initially gave left bank wines pretty high early marks and drastically lowered them later.
Then when the 1995's came out the market dumped them.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by stefan »

I always preferred '93 to '94. The bouquet on some '93s was ethereal, and the hardness of the '94s bothered me (but I agree that Clinet and L'Evangile are exceptions).
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by Blanquito »

I had some really lovely 92s as well. The 92 Talbot was fantastic for years, but it was dead by 2005/6.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by DavidG »

Nice summary Rob. I bought a moderate amount of '94s. The 1991, 1992 and 1993 Bdx were all more or less panned and I was tired of buying California Cabs while waiting for the next decent vintage in Bdx. Alex, I await your reprimand on being such a vintage-whore. I'll take my lumps gracefully. It is what it is.
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Re: The 1994 Chateau Angelus has been unplugged...

Post by stefan »

I did not drink a single good 1991, nor did any I tried have good QPR. There were some nice '92s at reasonable prices. 93s were hard to sell, but, as I said, I like quite a few. 94s were pushed hard, but, fortunately, after trying some I bought few. 95 brought the public back, but it took a while as buyers were wary. There was price escalation for 96 and again for 97, but consumers were too smart to pay the initial prices for 97. 98 & 99 suffered because of this as consumers were still wary. Since then Bdx has produced good quality wines and prices reflect that because the Asians jumped in and the traditional markets rebounded.
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