TN: 1979 Château Sociando-Mallet (France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Haut-Médoc)

[Racer Chris]

• 1979 Château Sociando-Mallet - France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Haut-Médoc (1/15/2020)
  Stained label, high shoulder fill. Under the capsule the bottle was sticky and there was a little residue on the edges of the cork. The cork was wet to the top but brittle, and broke off a half inch from the bottom. That piece ended up pushing into the bottle. A Durand may have extracted it in one piece.
  I decanted the entire bottle thru a Rabbit filter funnel. The color was brownish red, with great clarity and near colorless at the edges.
  The first aroma I noticed reminded me of sherry.
  In the glass the oxidative aroma persisted but was not strong and the wine was ok.
  Sweet/dry fruit and almost nonexistent tannins made the wine pleasurable even though this bottle was obviously on its last legs.
  No noticeable change thru dinner, lasting about 1 1/2 hours.
  I saved the last glass for a couple extra hours. There was no improvement, and perhaps it had started to falter.
  A few years ago this may have been a 90-91 point wine but it would be unfair to add a score based on the condition of this bottle.

Posted from CellarTracker

[Comte Flaneur]

What a shame Chris. As they say at that age there are good and not so good bottles. Is that your last one? I still have a couple of the 1970s.

[Racer Chris]

What a shame Chris. As they say at that age there are good and not so good bottles. Is that your last one? I still have a couple of the 1970s.

I've had worse. At least it was not unpleasant. I decided it wasn't worth saving for a second night, but I didn't mind drinking nearly the entire bottle.
I got one each of '79, 82, and '85. But I also have other '79s - Palmer and La Lagune - one each.

[AKR]

Sociando's from the 70's are disproportionately rare/expensive stateside.

They didn't really get brought over much in a big way back then.

Nice that you got to sample one.

Their scarcity is sort of like Ch. Musar.

[Racer Chris]

My dad drank quite a bit of Bordeaux in the 70s and 80s and he was unfamiliar with the chateau.

[Tom In DC]

You had to be a Wine Advocate subscriber to get introduced to Sociando in the early 80's. It's easy to knock Bob and his influence now, but he was great for his clientele in the early days.

[Blanquito]

You had to be a Wine Advocate subscriber to get introduced to Sociando in the early 80's. It's easy to knock Bob and his influence now, but he was great for his clientele in the early days.

Yes, and this was true even in the early to mid 90’s.

[AKR]

That was an era back when I had to transact with MacArthurs/Bassins if I wanted many of the estates named in WA. No one else really would carry them, especially early on.

Happily though they would run a truck up to NYC every month or so, making dropoffs for $25/cs.