1989 Château Chasse-Spleen

Community Tasting Notes (221) Avg Score: 90.7 points

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  3/18/2024 - Ruminator Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Medium garnet brown. Bricking a little bit, but not much for a 35 year-old wine.
  
  Cedar, graphite, forest floor, and violet. Vibrant fruit of black cherry and black currant has surprisingly rich chocolaty depth. High acidity and leather brett leads to a very savory finish with salami, olive, and tobacco leaf notes.
  
  Medium body, high acidity, tannin still has a little grip.
  
  12.5% ABV. An old school Medoc where its high acidity lets all flavor elements dance in the mouth. Very enjoyable with nice tertiary characters. A great food wine, too.

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  3/2/2024 - MicklethePickle Likes this wine:

  Opened with Bruce E. in Tucson and drunk there and in Bisbee. Still doing very well. Bruce was impressed.

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  2/22/2024 - Paul D wrote: 92 Points

  Deep ruby/garnet core, narow pale garnet rim. This has a classic claret nose - blackcurrant, tobacco, gravel notes - good depth of fruit, fresh acidity and grippy tannins on the good length finish. Excellent, probably one to drinkg sooner rather than later.

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  2/22/2024 - Vinumming & Ahhing Likes this wine: 90 Points

  1989 Bordeaux Horizontal - London (Piccolino, Exchange Square): One of two sourced at auction about 15 years ago. Very similar to one consumed around then. Charming nose with plenty of tobacco, some cedar and a little marron glacé sweetness. With air there's some beef pho to the nose as well. Palate is drying a little but there's still lots to like here with beautifully resolved tannins and lovely structure.

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  1/25/2024 - Jake Barnes Likes this wine: 95 Points

  Second of three bought during a cellar sale, with a like-new fill, very shiny capsule, and a perfect, very tight cork that was only soaked a quarter of an inch. Didn’t need the Durand at all but used it just to be safe.
  
  Very dark, only showing some garnet while pouring. I decanted for sediment and it was off to the races with a glorious nose of black cherry pipe tobacco and a very silky, highly concentrated palate filled with notes of undergrowth, aged black cherry, tobacco, some soft red fruits, and a core of roasted black plums. The finish was very long.
  
  This bottle was probably at the apex of its mature development phase. Everything was not only still there but more importantly still there in the right proportions so that the wine was in excellent balance—there were plenty of aged fruits to go with the perfect acidity and dusty tannins. A tour de force. There was a port-like note that came and went, suggesting, perhaps, that decline was imminent, but this did not detract very much. The only thing that could have elevated the score for me would have been a bit more nuanced complexity.
  
  This really must have been a big, fruity, tannic monster in its youth, to still have such a high concentration of fruit and tannin. My first bottle from this lot (all the bottles had the same slip label), was thin and dried out. Just serves to remind what a gamble old bottles are. Just like a slot machine that you keep pumping coins into, hope springs anew with every pull of the cork…. I guess you’ve got to take your jackpots where you find them. This was a jackpot. 12.5% ABV (great; superior/****/18/95)

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