Community Tasting Note

• csimm wrote: 97 points

  November 1, 2022 - Bordeaux tasting - with a few pirates: At first pass, this was super fruity and almost too accessible. The edges were round and it was displaying a predominantly red-fruited cherry-berry profile (not always my favorite). However, as I kept coming back to this wine over the course of a few hours, it started to both deepen and attain better focus. The fruit became darker and more expansive, while even-better holding the line in frame and direction. It also started to present an elegance on the finish that initially went from a bit globular and even over-opulent to chic and cultured. On the day of this tasting, I would have put it in a conservative 93-94-ish point range.
  
  Yet, I was fortunate enough to retain this bottle on Day 2, and it was an absolute kick in the pants. It was still very expressive but got a bit serious and gothic on me. Dark purple and inky in color, with blackberry, coffee, bitter chocolate, and spice notes firing out of the glass. Was this the same wine?! Of course, BDX in its most typical fickle and frustrating manner, decided to fully show up to the party a day late, when now ya’ll will only have my word to go by to attest for its wonder. It was certainly good on the first day (but I wasn’t looking to load up on it in the future or anything at that point), but I was captivated by it on day two. 97++ points on the second day.
  
  As with all things BDX, best advice is to hold. I’ll leave it to the palm readers to speculate on how long and when it will sleep and wake up and go back to sleep and rub its eyes and shut down and become horrible and then become awesome and then tank and then blossom and then it’ll be 2063 and I’ll be in a cryogenic chamber and then………..

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11 Comments

• Mark1npt commented:

  11/2/22, 4:14 PM - As with all things BDX, best advice is to hold. I’ll leave it to the palm readers to speculate on how long and when it will sleep and wake up and go back to sleep and rub its eyes and shut down and become horrible and then become awesome and then tank and then blossom and then it’ll be 2063 and I’ll be in a cryogenic chamber and then………..
  
  This may be, just may be....your best writing ever.

• Matjet commented:

  11/10/22, 8:02 AM - Great note!
  Thanks!

• csimm commented:

  11/10/22, 10:33 AM - Thanks Matjet. Your comparative notes on the 2016 and 2018 are excellent. Very helpful!

• Decanting Queen commented:

  11/14/22, 3:22 AM - Last paragraph nails it! Thanks for your insightful AND entertaining notes, as always

• csimm commented:

  11/14/22, 8:20 AM - Hey DQ! Obviously many of these wines are far too young. However, that said, some of them performed better than many of these with some age on them. I've given up trying to call it. Everyone has their formula I guess :)

• FabesMTL commented:

  12/1/22, 6:52 PM - I think this was the funniest and yet most accurate review of a BDX wine that I’ve ever read. Well done !

• csimm commented:

  12/3/22, 1:30 PM - Hi there Fabesmontreal! I’m certainly not one who claims to fire off with any degree of accuracy when it comes to wine… especially when it comes to timing the ever-enigmatic Bordeaux. Good today, bad tomorrow, ok the next day, great the fourth, terrible in Spring, amazing in Summer…. Etc etc etc. I know there are many Francophiles who have their wizard calendar they swear by and insist you do too when opening certain bottles, but I’m less convinced on the reliability of it all. Equally fun and frustrating :) Cheers!!

• sfwinelover1 commented:

  1/17/23, 7:54 AM - I hadn’t read your note on this post-tasting, but just catching up on this as I ordered a bottle (yeah, I got a deal). Encouraging that this came around on day #2; sounds a lot like the Montrose. And I look forward to you elbowing me out of the way in the cryogenic chamber, hopefully set at a comfortable 54F and replete with Ovids, Flacs, Abreus, QCs, etc.!

• csimm commented:

  1/17/23, 9:15 AM - sf - I always hate being the person who says, "...but it was great on Day 2," after essentially sucking on Day 1 when everyone else was around. I always raise an eyebrow to someone who says that, especially when I know he/she is partial to the wine and he/she brought it. Ha! It's kinda like have that girlfriend...in Canada...who's a model...and rich... aaaaaand, doesn't exist.
  
  That said, this really did come around on Day 2. But what is that really an indication of? What will it do in 5/10/15 years? Do I care enough to wait? I dunno sometimes.

• sfwinelover1 commented:

  1/17/23, 1:25 PM - Cs: I know what you mean; that’s why, in my TN on the Montrose, I likened it to the Bugs Bunny Singing Frog cartoon (if you don’t know it, I’m sure it’s somewhere on the web). It was an interesting and fun BDX tasting, but I, a generally big advocate of bottle age and air, didn’t have the sense we were catching most of the wines at their peak, as opposed to our tasting the year before, where the Morlet CdC, the Clarendon Astralis, the Dal Forno and the Don Albala all seemed to be at or near or their respective apogees. It would have been a fun experiment if we’d all gotten Air B&Bs in Novato and reconvened the next day—God knows, we had enough food and wine—with the wines kept open in the interim and seen how our results varied. Or, Judgment of Paris style, do it again in 25 years (well, I’m likely to be in that chamber, but never mind). Well, I’ll probably have to content myself with other great tastings, but I’ll have the Comtesse to keep me company in the interim.

• csimm commented:

  1/17/23, 4:19 PM - There have certainly been plenty of times when there are multi-day events (in Napa with friends or otherwise), when unfinished wines from the previous night make their ways back to the table 24 hours later to be showing much better on day 2.

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