Community Tasting Note

• Trickyone wrote:

  July 29, 2012 - Le (limite') Tour de France (Home): I was worried about this bottle even though the color looked fine for a Pinot Noir wine of its age. My main concern was based on the fact that as soon as I pulled the bottle from the rack several days ago, there was some seepage through the capsule. The fill level was excellent, so I left the bottle on its side, planning to use a decanting cradle when the time came to open it. Fearing the worst, I didn't decant it until about 12:15 for a 1 p.m. tasting. This was going to be the second wine of the afternoon, and I figured that would give it about 1 1/2 - 2 hours in the decanter. The cork was very fragile, saturated and threatened to go into the wine with the fork opener I first used. Next was a conventional leveraged corkscrew and the cork disintegrated. Fortunately, the bottom portion remained intact and I was able to hook that last 1/2"; very few cork fragments went into the bottle. As soon as the cork was pulled, the effort was rewarded by the seductive scent of a mature Burgundy. Fruit, earth and very moderate alcohol. The color was quite ruddy going into the decanter, but there were no signs of the wine cracking up (bubbles on the rim, etc.). This must have been a massively concentrated wine in its youth, because there was more sediment in this bottle than any other red I've ever opened outside of a vintage Port. At the first taste, I made the comment that this was like a really good Oregon Pinot on steroids; not that it was so powerful, but the concentration of the fruit and earthiness was so balanced, so clear that it showed what ageworthy wines can build on and achieve if left to develop. It improved in the glass over another hour or two. At age 24, it probably wasn't going to continue to improve, but I do believe that it would have held its peak for some time to come.

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1 Comment

• sdollar2 commented:

  4/9/14, 7:01 PM - i probably could not of pulled that particular days cork issue from memory without reading this. As soon as i did it was as vivid as going back to that day and reliving my first drouhin wine especially that was older than me. I would consider this my first true wine experience.

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