1983 Vieux Château Certan

Community Tasting Notes (27) Avg Score: 93.3 points

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  2/8/2024 - Dogshaus Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Lovely old Bordeaux. Declining gracefully.

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  11/25/2023 - sirpat00 wrote: 92 Points

  1983 vintage horizontal with >20 wines, mostly from Bordeaux. Key observations: 1/ Acceptable vintage for Champagne with DP over-delivering, 2/ Laville Haut Brion is a masterpiece among the whites, 3/ Bordeaux is going strong at 40 years of age with stand-outs Latour and Margaux. 4/ No need to chase any Napa’s from the vintage, 5/ off-piste Italians kept up impressively with Soldera an undisputed medalist.
  
  Tasting note:
  Double-decanted. Dried leaves, wet earth, fresh red berry. Weightless palate, maintains harmony. This is good but couldn’t keep up with the heavy hitters of the vintage.

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  1/6/2023 - billbounds Likes this wine:

  Not having experience with this wine/vintage, I opened the bottle an hour before dinner. 5-10 minutes in the decanter while I rinsed the bottle, and then poured straight back in, corked, and placed into the wine carrier.
  
  On first glass the somm graciously described the wine as having "some damp barnyard". My wife cut to the point and called it "wet diaper". Hard to say she was wrong. BUT, given a healthy swirl or ten in the glass, this wine shrugged off the musty-ness and was delightful. It's possible the immediate recorking didn't allow enough time to breathe. I'm reminded of an experience with an '82 Beychevelle that went much the same way but after a few hours cleared out all of the funk and was delicious. Maybe this is a similar kind of bottle variation.
  
  Integrated, soft palate a mile wide with plenty of nuance to explore. Elegant and varied fruit. A bit thin on the finish given the expectations the mid set up. Just an absolutely delicious wine. Consumed over 2 hours and it kept getting better. I was happy to end the dinner with half a glass left of this, and we stayed late so I could take my time with it. When I revisit I will be allowing for plenty more air, as this wine was still going strong after 3 hours open.

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  12/11/2022 - brooklynguy Likes this wine:

  Next to the 83 Canon alongside it, this was less pungent on the nose, more refined, with some red and dark berry aromas interwoven with soil tones and cedary oak tones. Well balanced, very good wine.

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  10/26/2022 - acyso wrote: 90 Points

  A good bottle; not as good as my prior ones. The nose shows some earth and mulch with the fruit relegated to more of the background. The palate, too, isn't as elegant as the other wines and shows a little bit of an iron character behind the leather and barnyard. This still has some of the merlot plumminess, but it's feeling aged and browning.

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View all 27 Community Tasting Notes

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