1976 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande

Community Tasting Notes (38) Avg Score: 91.2 points

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  5/1/2021 - Paul852 Likes this wine: 89 Points

  Some more old(-ish) Bordeaux from Alan's collection: The fill was high shoulder; there was a lot of gunkiness on the cork which couldn't readily be wiped off. On opening, even with a Durand and great care the last 4-5mm of the cork detached itself but I managed to extract it cleanly without dropping it into the bottle. The cork was soaked through.
  
  10 minutes after opening this was good to go. There was a nice perfumed nose of red fruits with some sort of floral/herbal note added, perhaps violets? The colour was slight brick red but still with some depth. On the palate a delicate, almost ethereal flavour of light red fruit and no off notes. The finish was very short.
  
  As with the previous bottle, after a couple of hours open the fruit was fading and the wine became rather thin.
  
  For me this second bottle in the space of a few weeks confirmed that this vintage is well over the hill, but is descending gracefully down the other side.

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  2/20/2021 - Paul852 Likes this wine: 89 Points

  Some old(-ish) Bordeaux from Alan's collection: We decided to open this first in a mini-tasting of fairly random aged Bordeaux as potentially the best bottle. The fill was top of shoulder, but on removing the capsule we found a cork covered in flaky black stuff (mould perhaps). Fortunately I had a Durand which removed the cork very cleanly. The mold only extended a few millimetres from the top, and the last few millimetres were soaked with wine, but in between, whilst a bit old and crumbly, was clean.
  
  
  
  Immediately there was nice red fruit and notes of tobacco on the nose, which felt fresh still. This was borne out on the palate where there was an initial acidic nip, but otherwise a very smooth, delicate feel, which followed the nose and with negligible tannins. Some complexity of flavour could be teased out, but overall I couldn't escape a feeling of thinness. The finish was short and clean, again with a little bite and cigar box.
  
  (We were tasting this alongside some straightforward bruschetta)
  
  We left the last third of the bottle and came back to it about 2.5 hours later with cheese after dinner. Now a significant amount of tannin had come to the fore, to the extent that it dominated the now fading fruit. The message from this was that it should be drunk soon after opening to be at its best.

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  9/23/2020 - forceberry wrote: flawed

  From a 73 cl bottle that was opened the day before. No mention of alc% in the label.
  
  Translucent dark orange-mahogany color with a dull yellow rim. Old, tertiary nose with aromas of sweet pruney fruit and plum compote, roasted meat, some pencil shavings, a little bit of earth, light cooked bell pepper tones, a hint of onion and a touch of soy sauce. The wine is silky and medium-bodied on the palate with old and very tertiary flavors of meaty umami, plum compote, pruney dark fruit, some rotting onion, a little bit of raisin and a pungent, salty hint of soy sauce. The structure relies more on the rather tough tannins than on the medium acidity. The finish is dry, old and very tertiary with flavors of meat, soy sauce, some rotting onion and a hint of raisin. The tannins make the wine end on a quite grippy note.
  
  It's hard to say whether the wine was alive when the bottle was opened, but now, a day later, the wine certainly wasn't. Too tertiary to be enjoyable with lots of old-wine off-flavors. Past its peak.

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  2/8/2020 - paulst Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Tar; earth; light and mature; balance; sweet finish.

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  10/4/2019 - asgerG wrote: 94 Points

  Elegant and wonderful bouquet. Tannins resolved.

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