Community Tasting Note

• JimHow Likes this wine: 92 points

  September 9, 2016 - The 1998 Pape Clement is understated. Especially, it seems to me, for a 1998. I saw some notes on cellar tracker talking about black fruit. To me I get that nice cherry-and-oak profile that can be so sensuous. I wouldn't call it "restrained" but it is certainly not "fruit-forward." It is gentlemanly… or, perhaps more appropriate, "lady-like." Either way, it is classy. It reminds me of my old tall-and-thin Franco-American dentist who went to McGill and my old tall-and-thin Franco-American uncle who got his PhD at Johns Hopkins and went on to teach chemistry at Deerfield. Classy. Their clothes weren't expensive but they were well-dressed, understated, unassuming, just did their job. This is the second time I have had it in the past three months, the first being earlier this summer with Michael-P in Manhattan. It beat out a disappointing '96 Ducru and a '67 Barolo that night. I would not call this wine profound. Otherwise, it has the usual Graves notes of gravel, smoke, a little tar, some tobacco. I wonder where this fell in the transition from old style to modern Pape Clement. This is nothing like the bruising, oak-bomb 2000 (which I loved). This is more like the older styled Papes (which I also loved). It is like to Graves what Duhart Milon is to Pauillac.
  
  Ok, let's go through Ian's checklist, I'll rate each category on a scale of 1 to 10:
  
  - easy: 8
  - Profound: 3
  - Structured: 3
  - Parkerised: 2
  - Full-bodied or medium-bodied?: Medium bodied. 5
  - Ageworthy?: Drink now and over the next ten years.
  
  I'll give it the same 92 score that I gave it when I drank it with Michael-P.
  A lovely, classy wine.
  
  JimHow
  www.bordeauxwineethusiasts.com

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