1996 Château Sociando-Mallet

Community Tasting Notes (323) Avg Score: 91.0 points

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  12/22/2023 - melvinyeowq wrote: 92 Points

  French but no Burgundy/Bordeaux theme: Guessed early '90s left-bank like Gruaud Larose. Old-school claret with good ripeness of fruit despite a little pyrazine on the nose. Feels like it's at its plateau now.

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  11/25/2023 - Meerlust wrote: 92 Points

  12.5% alcohol. Medium garnet center with some orange bricking at the rim. This has a stunningly complex “old school” nose of green tobacco, mint, barnyard, earth, and red fruits such as cherry and raspberry. The palate is equally complex with tart cranberry, tobacco, mint, cedar, and rosemary throughout the long finish. Unsurprisingly, medium-bodied on the palate with supportive acidity and fully integrated tannins that provide a rounded mouthfeel to this perfectly aged wine. Consumed with medium rare steak, asparagus, mashed potatoes, and dinner rolls for Thanksgiving. It paired well with everything, including the asparagus, because the herbal backbone matched the rosemary in the steak as well as the greenness of the asparagus. Overall, this is why I age Bordeaux. It was great with food and on its own, and while I do not love underripe wines, I can appreciate a touch of green for complexity. My son said it was one of the best wines I have opened for him, and it was unanimously preferred over the 2008 Bevan Cellars David’s Cuvée Showket Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, not an easy feat.

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  11/23/2023 - CarpeDiem! Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Part of a 2020-1995 Verticale. Difficult to get this vintage wrong, considering the perfect Cabernet S. growing conditions on the left bank in 1996. Yet I already had better 1996s and had expected more umpf. Flattering maturity in the nose, lush ripe cassis, cocoa, plum, tobacco, roast aromas, with some herbal and earthy tones in a the finish. Possibly my palate getting tired towards the end of the verticale, but also some bottle variation over the years.

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  8/24/2023 - blanquito wrote:

  I understand this wine has received some plaudits on the BWE forum, so I was eager to try a bottle this evening (a sultry night in Denver, a new-normal, fossil-fuels-induced, GOP-enabled hellscape that feels like the bayou in July). I don't know precisely what false-starts and mis-turns this wine may have taken along the way, but as of the summer of 2023, I can declare without equivocation, this is a beauty. Showing at peak maturity for my palate, there are tertiary facets galore in the serious, complex bouquet -- worn leather, leafy cabernet scents, hatch chilies, smoked poblanos, dried currants, freshly-turned soil, and some sweet spicy notes (cinnamon?) only mature Bordeaux seems to get -- combined with the vigor, grip, dry extract, and length on the body of a wine in its prime. Definitely on the drier end of the spectrum on the finish, where it still displays some rustic hardiness, but with hearty food these "agricultural" flashes are a feature, not a bug.
  
  I am really digging this and I imagine it would thrill equally lovers of traditional claret and cab franc grown in the Loire. Bravo. 93 pts.

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  7/28/2023 - TexasBob Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Cloudy crimson color. Light raspberries and cream on the nose. Crisp raspberries dominate with cranberries underneath. Crisp and pleasant.

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