Community Tasting Note

Arinbraghe wrote:

Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - Martine's Wines Portfolio Tasting 2011 (mk Restaurant, Chicago, Illinois): At 23 years old, this is still at the beginning of its approachable years, and nowhere near as good as it will be. But even as I say that I have a hard time believing it, because what's here right now is so profound it will make you stop and support yourself against the table as the world around you perceptibly slows down. Tasting this alongside the 2005 Chateau Les Justices is incredibly edifying, as you are afforded a sort of time-lapse glimpse into the development of great wine, and also a lyrical apologia for the discipline and craft of careful cellaring. If the Justices is a young man, swift, virile, and unstoppable, this is that same man twenty years further on, with a home, a family, and a great deal of his own skin in the game of life. The stride is a fraction slower, but the eyes are as bright as they ever were, and he has laid aside the careless whiles of youth for the serious, melancholic determination of a man who now knows he is mortal and thus loves life even more than before. If this doesn't give you a sense of the wine... look, this has the honey, but it also has the comb; it has the rose water, but it also has the thorns; savory, sweet, and earthy, this is a cello adagio instead of a violin capriccio... and yet still the aromas of orange blossom careen out of the glass and lavish themselves upon your senses from a yard away. As an aside, even if I had spent all evening with this wine, it's beyond scoring; I mean really, what could James Suckling or Robert Parker, or, yes, even Michael Broadbent or Jancis Robinson tell you about this wine that isn't apparent to anyone with a working sniffer and a love of good things and a willingness to be delighted and beguiled by the world around them? Not much, I promise you. Get a bottle of this, share it in the evening with loved ones, and you'll know what I mean.

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