Community Tasting Note

Cailles wrote:

Sunday, December 18, 2022 - 16x Right Bank Bordeaux 1998: Almost 25 years later, it’s a great time to check in on the wines of the much lauded right bank vintage. All wines tasted single blind. A few observations: A) most wines showed quite open with a melted tannin structure, but still good tension across the board. B) The highlight was rather on the structural side (elegance and finesse in most wines), than on the aromatic depth side, which was limited, also due to… C) …the fact that there is limited tertiary expression yet. Most wines will need at least another 5 to rather 10 years to reach their peak. D) An average rating of 91.9pts in my book and 92.0pts for the group shows that despite a few highlights, the reception was mixed overall. E) Best wines today were Angelus (group average 94.9pts), Valandraud (94.4) and Cheval Blanc (94.0). I would put L’Evangile (rated 95pts) in the top category too but the group (average 92.6) was less enthusiastic.

TN: Shy, greenish, even slightly corky nose at frist. Fortunately, with time these faulty notes disappeared and some dark fruit and coffee notes came forward. Right from the start the palate shows beautiful, fine red fruit, some red berries and then more and more coffee notes. Medium+ length. Impeccable structural frame. This showed promising although not overly deep and open. Maybe the long decant took away a bit of the expression, maybe the wine is still in a dormant phase.

Decanting: Decanted for probably 6+ hours. Not sure if it was too long. I would go for max 2 hours.

Group score: 93.9
Group rank: 4th out of 16 reds

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