1998 Chateau Barde-Haut St.-Émilion 12.5%
Opened an hour before serving. Perfect cork, with no lateral stains. Slight "rotten egg" smell from bottleneck (H2O?) dissipates by the time it is poured. Lovely aromas of ripe black currant and cherry. Marcia also smelled a strong note of damp forest floor (we usually confirm each other's impressions, but not here). I expected the acidity to be lacking, but it was quite present, a good match for the sweetness. Additional, but faint, flavors of coffee, leather and cedar emerge with air. The tannins are soft and the alcohol well integrated, though clearly higher than the 12.5% announced on the label (the importer's label says 11%-14%). Definitely awake for drinking and should last several years more. In short, a very good experience, but I can't say that age has invested this with the kind of class and complexity that I would expect from a fine and mature Bordeaux.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see the latter half of the 90s as the period when the first significant wave of so-called Parkerized wines started to emerge. That would mean that only now are we entering a phase when, for the first time, we can begin to evaluate how such wines mature, a test that has implications, to some extent, for all wines made in the international style. The question (for me, at least) is whether they were a kind of Faustian pact, sacrificing complexity and longevity for the sake of short-term impact in mass, blind-tasting situations. This wine is, I think, a relatively early (and by no means egregious) example of this trend, but my intuition is that something was sacrificed.