4/14/2024 - WR701 Likes this wine:

Fabulous wine. Decanted for 2-1/2 hours and it kept getting better as we drank it over the next 1-1'2 hours with steak. Total package, complex fruit opening that developed further making for a great mid-palate followed by a long dry finish. Completely balanced, dense but not over extracted. Much better than the previous bottle we drank with friends (again with steak) a few months ago but only decanted for a little over an hour. Koodoos to the winemaker.

5/26/2023 - JRockEsq wrote:

Method: 1 hour, 20 minute decant; 62 degrees; Grassl Cru

Look: pale plum/garnet

Nose: cranberry, sandalwood, allspice, spruce, cedar

Palate: cranberry, orange peel, pine; long+ finish of bitter dried herbs, minterality, black pepper, orange peel; dry medium body; high acidity; medium- superfine tannin

Overall thoughts: Bitter, acidic, and not tons of fruit; also not very complex. Definitely a huge let down and the worst Marcassin I've had (but I've only had a few). I'm really hoping this was an off bottle since I have 11 more, but on its own, it didn't seem noticeably flawed. Mediocre wine.

8/6/2023 - Marshmarsh wrote:

one-hour decant.

had it back-to-back with Darioush Darius II.

Much more elegant, smooth, balanced wine. Medium-long finish. Very flagrant, floral, with dark-red fruit.

Compared to the other cali cab we had, just a nice wine.

Everyone loved this nice wine.

5/8/2022 - Jeff Leve wrote:

The past 5-6 years have added a lot here. 2000 is bottled elegance. Everything is in place here. The wine has a beautiful sense of refinement, balance, silky tannins and layers of sweet, soft, red fruits that do not want to quit. This is one of the few vintages of Lafite that is better on the palate than it is on the nose. This is an incredible tasting experience that is only getting started. Unless you have a case and you cannot wait to dig in, give it a few more years in the cellar. With time, perhaps a decade or so, this will probably hit triple digits. Drink from 2025-2075.

1/15/2023 - csimm wrote:

As a standalone, this wine was initially a tad confusing to me. likely more due to my general stupidity (as usual) than the wine being some sort of enigma. Here's why - The texture was exceptionally glossy and polished, with a creamy mouthfeel that bordered on confection (again, texture-wise; not sweet-wise). The fruit was somewhat muted, with the varnish taking center stage throughout the execution. The flavors that did emerge were quite twiggy, with a forest floor component prominent on the nose and the palate. Did I catch this wine in transition? Is it trying to push out some tertiary flavors but hasn't quite reached the mushroom and cedar threshold yet? Or has the fruit and flavor faded by now that it will become meh in a few years? ...I'm sure some Rod Serling-type has the answers to traveling through this wine's other dimensions of sight, sound, and mind.

I had a hard time "grading" a paper that I didn't understand, but kept thinking the author who wrote it was much smarter than me. What was I missing...?

Well, what was missing was...food! Throw in a perfectly cooked pork tenderloin (thanks sous vide!) with a brilliant Asian peppercorn sauce and you have a pairing that made the orchestra of the Marcassin's delivery align in perfect harmony with the fare.

How to score? I dunno. It's a style thing. It's a pairing thing. It's a relative cult-to-price-comparison-and-access thing. It's a is-it-worth-the-hype thing. It's all the things that wine geeks can pontificate about and decide what's objectively right and wrong about a subjective experience with a particular bottle of wine. Psychology over science I suppose.

I know there will be some admiral of the Marcassin Militia here who, because I'm an outlier and not on the Eyes Wide Shut Marcassin allocation mailer, will find my drivel, well, drivel-some?,... but I always find certain wines fascinating in terms of where they seem to land in the cult marketing category in relation to the wine itself. Like, how would I call out this wine if I had it blind? It's polarizing in some ways. I guess I'll have to discuss this further with my wine therapist at our Tuesday session.

A very generous contribution to the evening that I was fortunate to examine and pick apart. Long...long...story short(ish), I liked it very much with food and thought it was a unique expression of the varietal on the domestic front, especially at a decade in age. Best advice from someone who might be seen as a Marcassin infidel: Drink with food. THAT is where this wine becomes exceptional.