a fine wine tasting archive
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Pomerol has no classification, so its hierarchy was written by people. One bottle carried the name of Mme Loubat, who refused to price her wine below the first growths; the other came from a pine tree and a farmhouse. Side by side, the old king poured velvet and the young challenger stood at attention.
In Bordeaux, 1982 is a legend — but that story belongs to the reds. In Sauternes the October rains washed the botrytis away, and almost nobody had picked in time. Forty-three years on, what you notice first is not the sweetness but the acid.
A puy is a rise in the ground, and Grand-Puy-Lacoste sits on a high gravel plateau behind Pauillac, away from the river and the first growths. The 1990 — a hot, generous year on a Cabernet-heavy estate — was thirty-one years old and had settled into the middle of a very long life.
Five hectares of white vines on a fifty-hectare estate, classified for both colours, from a Bordeaux year that cool July and dry September made better for whites than for reds. A gold capsule between a 1990 champagne and a 2008 Aubert.
Hervé Duboscq, a former railway worker, bought seven hectares of neglected vines in 1952 on a life annuity. His son made the estate famous for Merlot and new oak in a commune known for neither. The 1995, at twenty-five, closed a five-bottle evening.
The Saint-Émilion limestone plateau does not stop at the appellation boundary. Gérard Perse of Pavie bought a clos on the far side of that line in 2001 and made it with the same team. The 2006, at fourteen years.
Cantemerle was left off the 1855 classification and got itself added a few months later after its owner confronted the brokers — the only estate besides Mouton to have moved the list. The 2003, from the summer of the heatwave, at seventeen years.
1994 looked like 1961 until September, and then it rained through the harvest. Cos d'Estournel was one of the estates that came through — an unfiltered wine from a year that broke a lot of hearts, opened beside its own 1975.
A vintage that was bitterly tannic in barrel and spent decades being waited on, from the Saint-Estèphe estate whose founder built pagodas in the Médoc. Opened at forty-five years, beside its own 1994.
1986 was the Médoc vintage that made tannin a virtue and patience a requirement. Lynch-Bages, the Pauillac that drinks like a second growth and is classified as a fifth, at thirty-five years.
The oldest name among the first growths, and the only one the city of Bordeaux swallowed whole. The 2001 — forever in the shadow of 2000 — was at twenty years exactly what the vintage's defenders promised: smoke, stone, and silk.
A tertre is a mound. The estate sits on the highest gravel rise in Margaux, in a single unbroken piece facing south — and 2015 was the year the whole appellation, not just its famous names, got it right.
Troplong Mondot sits on the highest ground of Saint-Émilion, clay over limestone beside a water tower visible for miles. The 2004 — a quiet vintage between two loud ones — was drinking at full stride at sixteen years.
August 2002 was a disaster in Bordeaux and the vintage should have been forgettable. Then an Indian summer arrived and stayed until mid-October, and the Cabernet on the left bank ripened after all. Eighteen years later this was a Saturday-night bottle over dinner at home.
Antoni Tàpies drew a nose, a mouth, an eye and two hearts in red for the 1995 label. Twenty-five years on it stood at the end of a long table, a head above the magnum next to it.