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 Continue reading →