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NobleRottersSydney - Penfolds at 10 20 30 years
360 Bar & Dining, Sydney
Tasted February 5, 2018 by graemeg with 283 views
Introduction
Another Penfolds night for the Rotters; ostensibly a 10/20/30 year retrospective, attempting to restrict to 2008, 1998, 1988 vintages. I knew there’d be some double-ups, but I didn’t expect a triple. We decided to drink the treble of Bin 707s against some random extra wines that showed up, but some cork victims changed the plans. Still, where the wines weren’t ruined by their packaging, they were pretty damn impressive.
Flight 1 (11 notes)
White - Sparkling
N.V. House of Arras Brut Elite
{cork,12.5%} [Glenn] Bottling 1301, so based largely around the 2013 vintage. Crisp and appley. Medium weight. Dry. Medium sized, quite aggressive bubbles. The palate is about citrus-type fruit, with little yeast or autolysis influence. Seems very much chardonnay dominant. Medium-length dry finish. Lacks for complexity only; some time might help a little.
Red
1998 Penfolds Bin 389
{cork, 14%} [Kim]
Brickish colour, brown tinges. Big vanilla and chocolate nose, aged, but with a rotting, earthy aspect. Dry, with medium/high gritty tannins and medium acid showing a hint of volatility. Not fresh on the palate; it’s about roasted, aging fruit; ripe but too astringently tannic. Baked. Weak back palate. On the downslope on this occasion; but experience with this label is now very inconsistent, and that from bottles decently stored. Not showing its best, but that’s typical!
Brickish colour, brown tinges. Big vanilla and chocolate nose, aged, but with a rotting, earthy aspect. Dry, with medium/high gritty tannins and medium acid showing a hint of volatility. Not fresh on the palate; it’s about roasted, aging fruit; ripe but too astringently tannic. Baked. Weak back palate. On the downslope on this occasion; but experience with this label is now very inconsistent, and that from bottles decently stored. Not showing its best, but that’s typical!
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Red
2008 Penfolds Bin 389
{screwcap, 14.5% [Stephen] Plush, rich nose of plums, currants, blackberry and chocolate. The palate is smooth, ripe, even and warm. Slightly anonymous red/black flavours – I suppose they follow the nose but it seems a bit bland somehow. Verging on jammy rather than oaky. Medium dusty tannins, little acid. Pleasant to drink, if simple. Probably needs time, but it’s oddly unconvincing for a decade old. Wait with crossed fingers.
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Red
1998 Penfolds Cabernet Sauvignon Bin 707
flawed
{cork, 13.5%} [Gordon] Bottle 211094, double-decanted 3 hours earlier. Volatile, bacterial and thoroughly not right. Not obvious TCA, but as the following two bottles showed, clearly a cork or hygiene-related fault somehow.
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Red
1998 Wynns Coonawarra Estate Cabernet Sauvignon John Riddoch
{cork, 13.5%} [Aaron] Had a 40-minute decant. Big, chocolate and cedar nose. Liquorice too. Very ripe, powerful. Plenty of oak on the palate, too, with sweet chocolate and currant flavours. Medium chalky tannins, medium-bodied with lowish acid. Makes a bit initial impression in the mouth, then flattens out a bit, and only finishes medium length. Weaker back-palate, despite the pleasant flavours it’s just a bit hollow and simple for a Coonawarra flagship red. The more I taste JR from the late 90s the more I understand why they ripped out so many vines and re-thought the oak treatment.
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Comments (2)
Red
1998 Penfolds Cabernet Sauvignon Bin 707
{cork, 13.5%} [David] What a contrast to the other bottle. This offers a developing, fragrant nose of currants and coionut. Not overstated, but evolving nicely. The palate is cedary and spicy, with rich liquorice flavours. The palate is even, and although it’s towards the full-bodied spectrum, it’s not the monolith you might fear. No, it’s very drinkable. I thought this pleasingly consistent with the following (3rd!) bottle, although I gather others at the table found a bigger difference between the two non-faulty bottles we had tonight.
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Red
1998 Penfolds Cabernet Sauvignon Bin 707
{cork, 13.5%} [Greg] For me, this was a near-carbon copy of the previous example, with its vanilla, coconut, chocolate flavours in the Penfolds style; fullish-bodied, with medium powdery tannins, medium acid, good palate balance, medium-long finish, and some considerable time left still to evolve, maybe with marginal improvement. Good thing I decided against bringing one of these, or we might have had four bottles!
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Red
1998 Wirra Wirra Cabernet Sauvignon The Angelus
flawed
{cork, 14%} [Gordon] Another victim of cork bark. This was overtly cardboard-like and mouldy; a textbook example of TCA for only the cork-lovers to enjoy.
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Red
1988 Penfolds Grange
{cork, 13.5%} [Graeme] Double-decanted four hours earlier. Aged spice and leather. Very seductive, intense but gentle, with sweetly rotting fruit overtones. The palate has a touch of malt, coffee, along with classically rich and spicy south Australian shiraz fruit squarely in the Grange mould; violets, flowers, strawberries. This has a hint of dry brittleness on the palate, true, but it still has medium powdery tannins and medium-full weight, with a medium-long finish. Beautifully mature and probably not worth keeping too much longer.
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Red
1997 Penfolds Grange
{cork, 14%} [Geoffrey] Decanted at the start of the dinner (2 hours). Bears a remarkable stylistic similarity to the 88; it’s not often you get to try decade-apart Granges side-by-side. This too has lots of liquorice and leather, but is tighter than the 88, with bitter dark chocolate flavours and dark grape fruit. It’s partly-developed, medium/full in weight, with medium-high powdery tannins, and a beautifully even palate, which really promises another decade’s aging. Will take another decade’s aging easily on this showing; but the prices for these nowadays outstrip their inherent vale I rather think. Who’s buying them these days?
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White - Sweet/Dessert
2008 De Bortoli Noble One Botrytis Sémillon
{375ml, screwcap 10%} [Glenn] Deep orange/gold. Lovely rusty nose, smelling of complex botrytis and apricot aromas. The palate has a syrupy texture, with overwhelmingly sweet marmalade flavours, molten botrytis everywhere, rotten apricots; as decadent as the pre-revolutionary Romanovs. What holds this together is the acidity, just giving it enough structure to work despite the medium-sweet flavours and bestowing a medium-long finish, which, although it’s not crisp by any means, somehow just hangs together. A wine greater than the sum of its parts; not always the case with Noble One this century, although I still wouldn’t be keeping this much longer.
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Closing
Great selection of wines. Would that we had a Penfolds night which wasn’t overly tilted towards either St Henri (absent tonight) or 707, but which showed the whole range. Oh well, keep on practising I guess. And, as we drag ourselves into the modern era, perhaps we’ll have fewer victims of antique packaging in the form of tree-bark…