1965 Penfolds Grange
Community Tasting Note
exdrinker wrote:
Thursday, January 8, 2015 - This wine was re-corked by Penfolds in 2008, so there was a reasonable chance regarding provenance.
It was, simply, a stunning experience initially tempered, no doubt, by the expectation level when opening a 50 year old Grange. I was expecting disappointment.
Contrary to the previous writer, the most incredible aspect of opening this wine was it's colour. In the decanter it was dark cherry, dare, I say it, almost veering towards black. We could not believe it. So much so that one of the tasters joked about how much the bottle must have been topped up in the re-corking process.
In the glass, the lighter crimson around the rim gave some age away, but not 50 years, more like 15.
The nose was a complex alchemy of dried fruit, christmas cake and cigar box and the wine itself displayed these characters in abundance.
To put this in context, this wine followed an 03 Haut Brion, 04 Lafite, 01 Cheval Blanc… and preceded Amarone from Quintarelli and Dal Forno. It was a quantum leap forward from the Bordeaux and held it's own, albeit in a different weight division, with the Amarones. Whilst the Bordeaux were that like that mysterious girl that everyone raves about, giving you very little and forcing you to go looking for the reasons why she is so spectacular, this wine just jumped out of the bottle, hugged you and told you how much she loved you.
Again, a 50 year old wine, drinking with the best of them. Fantastic.
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