Draining the swamp

[Comte Flaneur]

These wines drunk over the last week or more

Pierre Boisson Bourgogne Blanc 2014

I nominated this for my budget dry white wine of the year because it is brilliant for a BB. Some seriously good Meursault fruit in there, which sings out of the glass when it is nearly drained.

Leoville-Barton 2001 (repeated, please skip if you have read it)

Recently took this case out of storage, this wine is about five years into its drinking window. The first bottle had a nice rich attack of dark fruits gravel and soil, and the tannins are mostly receded, and there are plenty of secondary and tertiary flavours in the mix. I wouldn’t say it is soft or easy but it lacks the tension, nervosity I like in the 99/02/04 (and the bolshy albeit grippy tannins in the earlier wines).

A second bottle was served a degree cooler and showed much more of the irresistible tension and nervosity I like with overtones of lead pencil, but an overlay of mulberry richness too. This bottle is just fabulous and felt right for a Leoville-Barton of this age. However I do feel I missed out not releasing this earlier in its drinking window. I was dissuaded from doing so by the continued stubborn backwardness of the 1996.

Chateau Coutet 2014

This is irresistible and fabulous, with rich lush juicy stone and tropical fruits, honeysuckle flowers and elderflower, it has serious power and concentration and a perfect rigid spine of balancing acidity. I drank a glass a day over a week. On day seven it was still singing. This was a bargain at £240ib.

Pierre Yves Colin Morey Meursault Perrieres 2011

We had this at our Christmas lunch just over a week ago and it was very slow to get into its stride. So I wanted to revisit this and drink it over a few days, because it is still in its infancy and matched against a 1988 Pierre Morey Perrières gave us an idea how this could evolve if it stays intact. This second bottle drunk over three days was thrilling on days two and three. Aromatically intense, powerful authoritative, lean and strict, haunting citrus and minerals and hints of spices.

Penfolds Grange 1986

My excuse for drinking this was that the label was shot to pieces and so was the cork as it turned out, which crumbled straight away. But the bottle otherwise looked ok: it had a good fill and there were no signs of leakage. This still had a deep opaque colour. It had a muted bouquet and came across as very mellow with notes of charcoal and cool menthol, fading bushvineyness but not a lot else. Thick textured and full bodied. A few years ago this had quite staunch tannins, and needed more time. This bottle seemed to be past its best. Very pleasant and mellow but not a lot of complexity here. After a while pruney notes emerged. Older Granges often come across as mellow. But this was mute as well and not obviously flawed. This was very different from the example tasted five years ago, which was still backward. I have a theory that Grange tends to have a short peak drinking window and you have to be lucky to catch it. My last bottles 1981 and 1983 drunk within the last couple of years ago were similarly in decline. A few years before that I caught the 1980 right at its apogee.

Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1981

The last bottle from a case, which still had its purple wrapping paper, with a rack of lamb. I adored this bottle not just for sentimental reasons. It has a classic rich aristocratic red berries Lafite nose with cigar box, piped tobacco, mulberry and red fruit carrying on to the medium-bodied mid-palate. Very elegant, classy and perfectly resolved Lafite, cool fruited, smooth secondary and tertiary nuances. All played out in low key. This is so much like the mirror image of the 2007 we tried at the estate a few weeks ago, which was just approaching its drinking window. The 1981 is approaching the end of its drinking window and began to fade after two hours in the decanter (because the cork didn’t quite make it out in one piece). For an hour it was magical. This case was purchased for £480ib in the early 1990s.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/piUXmgOUKXWWwjqp2

[DavidG]

Now that’s the sort of swamp draining I can get behind! Our Peckerhead-in-Chief could take a lesson.

Sorry to hear the Grange was past peak, but the rest all sounded wonderful. I’ve had most of the Granges from the 81 to the 98, many with 20-30 years of age, and have found they don’t really turn into the wines I was expecting them to. And these were all stored by me since release, with no cork failures to explain it. A young Grange was one of my first epiphany wines, but the aged versions have let me down more often than not. So the rest went off to auction a few months ago, save for the 89 (daughter's birth year, retained for sentimental reasons).