Disgorgement unknown. Relatively fresh with a very pleasant chalky character throughout. More lean and taut than the Charlie blue label magnum alongside with a somewhat creamy texture and chalky finish. I preferred this a hair more today.

From magnum. Laid in chalk cellars 2016; disgorged 2020. Not quite showing as expressively as I remember, with a bit more yellow fruit than white and a relatively rounded composure. I slightly preferred the Pierre Peters for its chalky brightness to this tonight. But maybe on another day...

Shows a fair bit more oak than the four wines in the single blind 2012 flight. Quite dense and powerful, but the fruit isn't as precise as I would have liked. In some sense there's a little muddiness to this wine. But the weight and stature is certainly impressive, and I do like the sweet fruit notes here. There is no doubt in my mind of the longevity of this wine.

Served single blind. Of the flight, I found this the lightest in style, with a relatively lightweight palate and maybe just a smidgen of the red fruit and pepper on the nose. Not too much tannin on the back end either. I was pretty convinced that this was the Gonon.

Served single blind. A distinctive poblano pepper note here that had me thinking that this was the Allemand (with the 2011 Chaillot on the mind). This shows a modest floral note as well, and the aromatics are incredibly expressive here. Maybe the lighter tannic structure could have clued me in that this wasn't in fact the Reynard.

Served single blind. Very savoury and another wine that was relatively lighter in texture. Modest, but mostly resolved tannins, with much less emphasis on the backend weight (unlike the final wine). Red-fruited and delicate; for my palate quite approachable and drinkable now. Thinking back to the 2012 Jamet I had a year and a half ago, I guessed this was the Jamet.

Served single blind. I think I must have gotten the tannic structure here confused for oak (and somehow thought that the Gangloff would have shown more modern in that sense). So I guessed that this was the Gangloff, when instead it was just a really big wine with plenty of tannin. Dark and somewhat heavy, this was my least favourite wine of the four single-blinded 2012 wines. Go figure.

Been a while since I've had this; this bottle was very intense, showing lots and lots of black fruit. But the overall fruit was a little candied and imprecise, unlike more modern ripe vintages of Allemand. The tannins are a bit leathery and don't quite have the textbook silkiness I expect. Chalk it up to the vintage, I think -- a wine that clearly needs plenty more time to really get to a good spot.

I think this bottle suffered from a mild case of TCA, and in any case, while the TCA didn't get worse with air, the wine just felt somewhat stripped.

Pretty large-scaled syrah, especially for Jamet. There's a good feral tone to this wine, but also plenty of salinity, meat, and smoke -- many of the things that I truly like about syrah. It's pretty ripe and shows plenty of fruit now, but this is more about the structure than straight-up enjoyment right now. Probably more interesting to let this age.

Explosive nose that seriously smells like blood -- there is so much iron here. Very, very intense with lots of fruit on the palate. That said, this isn't as tightly put-together as the 2009 or 2015. An impressive wine for its stature, but I think the handling of hot vintages at the Domaine is done better now than back in 2005. It feels weird to say, but this edition might be a little over-the-top. I'm curious to see where this goes, but that's probably a 20+ year trip.

An excellent bottle, and I think it certainly held its own in pretty tough company. More rustic than the Chave, but with lovely aromatics. More driven by acid and structure than Chave, yet fully approachable now. Overall this doesn't feel like it'll have as long a life, but for drinking now, this is amply good.

Hard to say if this bottle was actually correct. It felt kind of brown and muddy, and maybe suffering from a slight bit of heat damage? The fruit was also a slight bit stewy. A huge whiff next to the brilliant 1997.

An absolutely stunning bottle of this tonight. Such an aromatically intense note of meat, red fruit, and other syrah things. More of a rustic style than modern Chave, but still very much a clean wine. On the palate, mature fruit and savoury syrah elements. Silky, resolved tannins and sufficient acidity to balance the fruit. Stunning; absolutely stunning. This is the best vintage of drinking Chave still reasonably available in the market right now.

Corked.

Lithe and elegant, with a very olive-brine inflected nose here. High acidity with a smoky quality on the palate as well. Mature fruit, but not browning -- the acidity keeps this fresh. Probably best now -- it doesn't really have much more weight for further, extended aging.

Not sure that this bottle was entirely sound -- it was a little stewy and showing fruit that wasn't clean and pristine (like in the Turque). Feels like it's tiring and even potentially slightly heat-damaged. Very much a dark complexion, despite the highest percentage of viognier.

Corked; clearly a darker-complexioned wine with black fruit.

La Turque has always been my favourite of the trilogy (soon to be tetralogy), and though we had the set of 1998s tonight, this was the only bottle that was showing properly. Impressive red fruit and elegance; open and easygoing, but with lots of intensity too. Not quite as perfumed and saline as syrah can be, but the weight and delicacy here I really enjoy.

From the same case as my other notes (all great bottles), but this one was clearly heat-damaged. How does that happen?

I really liked this -- there was an intense strawberry note that was somewhat unexpected. Very fruit-forward and almost lacking a bit of the usual elegance of La Turque. Black pepper, but not much brine or smoke. Silky tannins, but a big, powerful palate that actually feels pretty resolved, even if the overall flavour profile could benefit from another decade.

I've loved the few 1987 Guigals I've had -- I think they really overperfomed for the vintage. This was a fully mature example of syrah, with expressive floral and herbal perfume on the nose. Mature secondary notes with modest autumnal notes here. Very much ready for enjoyment now, with limited further upside in my opinion.

A little less impressive having this next to the 1987. This was showing even more mature, but still had lots of the same aromatic perfume. However, it's definitely even more autumnal, and while there is still some dried fruit here, it's not as bright and precise as its younger sibling. Drink up.

Intensely red-fruited, with an aromatic profile that reminds me a bit of Jean-Michel Stephan. Very slightly mulchy right at the beginning, but that note doesn't hang around for very long. Good acidity with relatively light palate weight; this seems like it's just getting into its drinking window.

Served double blind. Clearly syrah with its black pepper aromatics, but the fruit is too forward and jammy, and I thought it was some sort of Californian thing with the juiciness so prominent. On the reveal of a $13 bottle, I have to say I'm really impressed at the quality of this.

Intense Prüm sponti nose with that classic petrol note (which I suspect is actually from the yeast in the cellars). In any case, the 2012 vintage may well have mellowed out from when I first tasted it at Rieslingfeier so many years ago. This doesn't have quite the same weight as the Wehlener Sonnenuhr or Graacher Himmelreich, but all the right elements are there, so even then this is a very drinkable and delicious way to end the dinner. All that acidity really helps refresh.