Community Tasting Note

Cailles wrote:

Monday, October 12, 2020 - 13x 1980 Birthday Bash: What to expect from a mediocre 1980 vintage in Bordeaux? We tasted Mouton, Lafite, Haut Brion and Pichon Lalande all blind side by side. The Mouton (92 points) and especially the Lafite (89) display some nice tertiary aromatics but are lacking substance, precision and balance (especially on the palate). Haut Brion (95) and Pichon Lalande (94) are beautifully mature with lots of tertiary flavors and surprisingly still plenty of fruit. Both are quite clean, focused and harmonious. Of course the complexity and finesse are not on par with great vintages but still these were quite enjoyable.

TN: Medium+ intensity on the nose with barnyard, leather and tobacco aromas, dark fruit and cola. Lots of power, more so than the Haut Brion, on the palate but still very soft and harmonious (softest structure of all four wines). A tad less complexity than the Haut Brion but still fairly layered on the palate with sweet dark and dark red berries, lots of superb minty notes, some earthy and fine ageing notes. Good precision and nice fruit driven finish with medium length. At first I scored this beauty in the 96+ point range. As I went back during the evening it showed less impressive with the last glasses rather on a 92/93 point level.

Decanting: Double decanted 2+ hours before service. This seemed ok for this bottle.

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