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Red

1955 J. Thorin Chambertin-Clos de Bèze

Pinot Noir

  • France
  • Burgundy
  • Côte de Nuits
  • Chambertin-Clos de Bèze Grand Cru

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Community Tasting Note

  • Keith Levenberg Likes this wine: 96 points

    March 7, 2019 - Somehow this is the third '55 I've had from the now-mostly-forgotten J. Thorin, and no doubt the best. Maybe that's because the others seemed to be under a negociant label while this one indicates it was estate bottled from the Thorin domaines and has a fancy crest on the label too. Bottle is in perfect shape with a fill barely more than a centimeter below the cork and a vibrant Ferrari-red color. Like all the rest from Thorin this needed some air to get into gear and kept getting better, richer, and deeper. It starts out on the light side, enough that I'm thinking, hey, this is the first Thorin I've had that doesn't taste spiked with grenache! - red fruit with an ever-so-slight cool Alpine greenery on the back end, showing its breed from the sheer silkiness of the texture. About an hour in it has put on serious weight. The fruit material is thicker and picks up a palpably sticky grip, along with layers of gravel and tar and aromas that combine a mild leatheriness with remarkably sweet, saucy blackberries and then some cinnamon and licorice with a bit more time. On the palate, too, the fruit becomes ridiculously intense for its age, in a sense you could almost call it primary because it is so vividly fruity, but it's in a more saucy, reduced fashion. It's thick outside the usual parameters of pinot and again I find myself asking the grenache question but it really doesn't taste grenachey and especially not old-grenachey, it just has that extra kick of thickness and fat to the point where you almost feel you could chew it and stretch it like gum. The laciness that characterized it at the outset has segued to a serious solidity, the palate feeling infused with asphalt. But to the very end it is still more fruit-centric than anything. Hope I'll still be this sunny when I'm 64.

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