Eighties Bordeaux Tasting

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When wine geeks think of the Eighties, it’s not only Madonna, Top Gun or Miami Vice coming to their minds, but also the rise of modern winemaking in Bordeaux concurring with such great vintages like ’82 ’85 ’86 or ’89.

Thus, tasting some wines from that decade is always something special and I was thrilled when Oskar invited me to his round of friends when he was once again sacrificing some of his treasuries he had gathered over the years. It hurts him just a little bit, but it is certainly for a great moment of fun. Read the rest of this entry »

Pichon Longueville (Baron), Cos Labory and Batailley: all Châteaux’ and all from 85’

1985 was one of the big big years in Bordeaux. I was only 6 years old at the time, but I’m sure of it! Well, “officially”, opinions are a little diverging: some sources say it is an excellent vintage, other source just say it was finally better than announced in 85’. But what really counts in the end is our opinion ;-).We had 3 Grand Cru’s from the Médoc Area, 2 Pauillac’s and one St-Estephe (but adjacent to Pauillac, Chateau Cos Labory is jut 500 meters away from Lafite-Rothschild). Thus we can say it was a Pauillac-centered tasting of the ’85 vintage.
We started with the Baron Pichon-Longueville 1985 since a source said it would be the least best of the three. The Chateau which has a long lasting rivalry with its neighbour Pichon-Longueville-Comtesse-de-Lalande (the two are 2nd Grand Crus; a good description of Pichon-Baron can be found here) delivered very inconsistent qualities until the AXA insurance group bought it in 1987 and modernized it. Unfortunately our bottle was from the pre-modernization time so we tried to rely on the quality of the vintage to surprise us positively… But fate didn’t want us to unveil anything since our bottle was… corked! Nevertheless we tried to sniff behind the cork and believed the nose Read the rest of this entry »

1985 Château Pichon-Longueville Baron , Pauillac, Médoc

Der Wein hat eine schöne dunkle Farbe mit bräunlichen Reflexen in den Rändern. In der Nase riecht man als erstes einen leichten Firnton, der auf die Reife aufmerksam macht. Doch nach einiger Zeit kommt dann die feine Frucht zum Vorschein mit Anklängen von roter Johannisbeere und Waldbeeren. Am Gaumen fallen als Read the rest of this entry »

Categories: Bordeaux,France
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