Golden Gate Yacht Club, San Francisco
Tasted Sunday, March 2, 2014 by aagrawal with 633 views
This was a wonderfully generous tasting to which I was invited. It's a rare occasion that I get to taste first growths, much less three of them in the same evening. It was very educational.
My first taste of a Comtes de Champagne, and I'm impressed. This is certainly a top tier champagne with excellent full bodied flavor, very reminiscent of a top tier grand cru Burgundy (Coche-Dury?). The only thing it lacked was just a tad more acidity on the palate to make it truly superlative, but this wine would go well with a meal or with just oysters.
The main event! The Lafite and Margaux easily showed the most advanced. This may be that they were traded more often, or perhaps stored improperly and sold in an estate sale due to their value, but these were easily the oldest-tasting wines of the night. Both showed a bit tired, but the Margaux also showed serious funk, maybe brett? My favorite wine of the night was easily the Pichon Baron, followed by the Leoville Las Cases. The others were intriguing and interesting, but these two were wines that I could actually drink all night.
A very generous contribution from one of the attendees. It's not often that I get to try a first growth from a fabulous year. Unfortunately, as a pop and pour, this just needed a lot more time to show its best. I tried to let it evolve in my glass for about an hour and it did budge a bit in a good direction, but it needs either a 4-5 hour decant or 5-10 years in bottle (ideally more time in bottle). It has remarkable density, silkiness, and elegance, but needs time to develop more aromatic complexity which is currently largely bottled up.
Both were good. The port likely needed air time. The New Zealand Ice Wine wasn't my thing... not quite enough length of flavor for an ice wine to be enjoyable.
This was a wonderful learning experience. I think that the 1970s showed remarkably well for a less than stellar vintage in Bordeaux. If anything, the first growths were notably inferior to the non-first growths, if only because they seemed like they were better stored. I think the sweet spot for drinking these is probably younger than 44 years but older than I'm drinking them now (10-15 years)... so maybe I'll aim for 25-30 years in general for top bordeaux. The Mouton was a real treat and may be a wine that I have to track down in 10 years when it is drinking closer to maturity.
1998 Taittinger Champagne Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut 94 Points
France, Champagne
Wonderful, wonderful nose with hazelnut, nutty, very slightly oxidative; palate is fresh, refreshing citrus but not sharp, great minerality; finish is long but gets just a tad soft towards the end (could use just a tad more acidity). This is a superb champagne. 93-95
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