Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande Pauillac 2000
I am glad I convinced Oliver of refusing the bottle of Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande 2000, which did not smell of TCA at all, but was muted on the nose, and short and slightly bitter on the palate, and ordering the Guigal instead, even though it was a little costlier - actually, I virtually coerced him to do so, but he ended up being very happy with the Rhône wine, too. Earlier bottles of the PLL 2000 had at the same restaurant were great, but the owner would take this one back only if we ordered something different instead. My guess is that sometime later tonight, when he gets to sit down in peace and retaste this, as he said he would, he will recognize it is really an off bottle, probably cork-tainted despite the absence of that wet cardboard like aroma. Rating: N/R
Château Léoville Las Cases St. Julien 1995
Deep ruby-black, watery-ruby at the rim. Sweet marzipan and softer vanilla oak. Classic and already harmonious cedar, blackcurrant and blackberry, noble tobacco, lovely vinosity, well-balanced, smooth yet racy, and very long. Not nearly as closed as I had feared it might be, on the contrary. Nowhere near the concentration, power, complexity and intensity of the greatest LLCs (e.g. the 1982 and 1986), nor even a heavyweight in the context of the 1995 vintage (neither weightier nor even “better” than the Ducru-Beaucaillou), but a pretty, delicious medium-plus weight that my companions felt went better with the Châteaubriand than the 2001 Ex Voto (which in turn they said was the more fascinating to have on its own). I find LLC interesting insofar as it seems to represent the perfect compromise between depth and modernistic superficiality – almost everybody likes it, experts keep extolling its reliability year in, year out, and yet, I know of no one whose favourite Château it is. Even so, in terms of stylistic modernism alone, it really has been superseded somewhere along the line – it somehow escaped my notice when exactly that happened.
Rating: 93+/94?Guigal Ermitage Ex Voto 2001
Ordered to make up for the corked bottle of Pichon-Lalande 2000. Produced from vines in l’Ermite, Les Murets, Les Greffieux, and Les Bessards. Full plummy ruby colour. Huge bacon fat, lightly jammy yet subtle and deep red and dark berry mix, amazingly well-integrated oak (aged in new oak for 42 months, no less!), nice but equally as integrated metal notes and minerality, very long on the finish. With airing a little smoked salmon, perfectly interwoven with the marzipan sweetness from the barrique (still did not smell nor taste oaky), cranberry and strawberry with perhaps a hint of milk chocolate, some pipe tobacco, touches of olive and smoky dried herbs. Quite big, rich and thick, but not at all over the top. Round tannin and acidity. Stylistically different from (not so much as we had expected), but as good as (or close to) the Chave in this vintage, and rather more approachable (this only started closing down after a couple of hours, with the solid tannic backbone becoming fractionally more noticeable). Rating: 94+/~95?
Greetings from Switzerland, David.
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„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti