1961 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande

Community Tasting Notes (42) Avg Score: 93.1 points

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  12/28/2023 - johnh1001 wrote: 96 Points

  Another magnum recorked in 2000. Even more sweetness and a longer rounder finish than the last bottle. What a graceful wine.

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  12/25/2023 - johnh1001 wrote: 95 Points

  From magnum recently recorked at the chateau. Soft, sublime and beautifully mature Pichon. Earthy, touch of green, smokey, mesquite, red fruit and a bit of iodine on the nose and palate. Plush, silky and round. The finish falls off just a bit but is still super smooth. I love Pichon and this is a great example.

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  3/11/2023 - dfcrutcher Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Had it at a Bordeaux tasting several months ago and delayed my review here. So, I'll keep it short. Still quite drinkable with all of the expected age notes. Soft and glyceriny with lots of old saddle. Developed over several hours, at first closed, then turning more astringent that balanced out the glycerine. Quite fascinating.

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  2/22/2023 - misterstarre Likes this wine: 95 Points

  From a low-shoulder fill 750. Omri Ram of Chateau Lafleur picked this out as a bonus wine to go with a tasting of Lafleurs and their family of wines. He said that he and the team at Lafleur are big fans of La Comtesse. So we drank it alongside pours of Pomerol and courses of Japanese Wagyu.
  
  It was lovely and lively. This is definitely more polished than the '59, and clearly a better wine. Although at this age, the wine does lack power. So what? It's elegant and delicate--fully resolved. The color was the faded red to pinkish-orange of a fully developed Bordeaux, and the wine was mostly clear. This had banana leaf, wet wood, and dried tobacco with mint on the nose and palate. It has a sweet, light fruitiness and reminded me a lot of a '67 Louis Martini Mountain Fruit Cab I enjoyed recently.

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  11/1/2022 - csimm wrote:

  Bordeaux tasting - with a few pirates: Having this 1961 next to its great, great grandson the 2018 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande was like watching Twins with hieroglyphic subtitles, or more accurately, looking at side-by-side then-and-now photos of Mickey Rourke. Having a not-fortified wine that clocks in at 61 years old is pretty darn cool, especially given the fact that it was not flawed (aside from obvious age-related progressions) and was otherwise stable and sound throughout the entire tasting. The only thing that required some algebraic acrobatics was the cork. Thankfully the Ah-So in conjunction with some yoga wrist whittling and elbow genuflecting made for a clean pull (eventually) and a tidy pour.
  
  I mean, it’s kinda not wine at this point, but it kinda is. It reminded me a bit of Christmas as a kid at my grandparents’ house. Sherry and warm apple cider flavors abound, with cinnamon stick, toasted hazelnuts, dusty blanket, and cedar notes making for a rather expected flavor profile, but with surprising energy given its stage of development, or devolvement. Hey, if you love old wines, then this is still a performer in many senses. If you like fruit, you might be about 35 years too late. But if you love listening to Roy Orbison “Crying” while thumbing through Aunt Edith’s photo albums with the smell of Lipton’s Onion Soup mix wafting through the room, then the ’61 Lalande will bring you nostalgia the likes of which you never imagined. It’s a warm apple pie kind of experience.
  
  And to be quite frank, my mind went from, “Hey this actually isn’t undrinkable,” to “Hey, this is actually good.” Now, I admittedly don’t long for this sort of flavor profile, and this wine didn’t necessarily change that stance for me. However, if this was the only wine at the table, I wouldn’t be mad at it. Bust out a roasted honey ham and Cuban Cohiba and you’re all set. A special experience to try this wine. Geek-central alert!

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