Community Tasting Note

• pavel_p Does not like this wine:

  January 16, 2021 - Bordeaux blend's double blind: Double blind. Cloudy and evolved color in the glass. Slightly oxidative nose. Fairly complex but not exactly pleasant on the palate, with some remaining dry fruit mixing with oxidative notes and some stewed vegetables.
  I thought a poorly stored bottle of a 70s or early 80s Bordeaux off vintage. Then somebody said Musar, and it made sense.
  I recall seeing this recently offered by Cru, and was wondering if I should take a case back then. Very glad I did not. NR
  Group's # 7, My #7

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5 Comments

• StefanAkiko commented:

  1/17/21, 11:10 AM - Maybe you could entertain the thought that your btl may have been more of an "F" than a solid, stonking representation of what this wine (usually) is?

• pavel_p commented:

  1/17/21, 3:25 PM - I did, hence I did not assign a rating. But am not sure as these flaws seem quite typical for Musar. Below is a 97 rating on the same wine, noting that the wine is cloudy, and looking at my own (very few) Musar notes, I wrote on the 2007 vintage back in 2015 that it was oxidative already then, and on the 2001 vintage, I had noted "stewed vegetables" the same year.
  The person who brought that bottle to the dinner, got the case from Cru a year ago, and they had offered the wine as a "late ex-Chateau release" (?).

• StefanAkiko commented:

  1/17/21, 10:39 PM - I've found Musar to more often than not be quite normal. In blind tastings, the guesses are usually from "All over the place". But, just like with all wines, you sometimes get dealt a rotten bottle. Always a shame.
  
  I recently purchased two more btls of this, as I think it's stonkingly great juice. I hope I won't suffer as you did, had my fair share of 2021 suffering already with a '79 Montrose.
  
  To each his own :-)

• Goldstone commented:

  1/18/21, 12:05 AM - Hi Pavel, one issue is that Ch. Musar is not a great restaurant wine because it requires a 6-8 hour prior decant (....including the whites). The characteristics you note on the nose and the palate tend to blow off with a long decant. The 1999 is still something of a young adolescent in Ch. Musar terms. That said, Ch. Musar is the opposite of 'pasteurised' so it is not to everyone's taste.

• pavel_p commented:

  1/18/21, 4:59 AM - Thank you for the advice Goldstone! Will try the long decant if I run into a bottle of Musar again!

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