CWD: Disorderly Adjacent 2016 Bordeaux

Lacking a decent search string for Domaine de Chevalier that doesn't return a bunch of useless hits on Chevalier-Montrachet is the canary in the coal mine for AI taking over the world

2020 DDC rocks, by the way%
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Lacking a decent search string for Domaine de Chevalier that doesn't return a bunch of useless hits on Chevalier-Montrachet is the canary in the coal mine for AI taking over the world

2020 DDC rocks, by the way%
Click to expand...

Well reasoned counselor
 
Lafon-Rochet is solid, worth drinking. Hard and instant no on DDC. I would also pass, at current prices, on the other left bank estates in your list, but maybe you like setting money on fire.

I don't follow right bank estates as closely (i.e. I don't taste through them systematically), sticking mostly to VCC (very good and the 2nd wine Gravette de Certan is almost always worth buying but my goodness prices have really gone up after I looked on winesearcher) and Cheval Blanc (spendy, yes, but it's for your kid, and the 2016 is very, very, very good) in their respective communes.
 
originally posted by Yixin:
...and the 2nd wine Gravette de Certan is almost always worth buying but my goodness prices have really gone up after I looked on winesearcher)...
Click to expand...
Glad to hear that Gravette is a good wine. Somehow, I acquired a bottle of it and had no idea whether to raise or lower my expectations.
 
Gravette doesn't capture any of the personality or quality of VCC for me, and isn't an exception to the usual rule that it's better buying someone else's grand vin than a fancy estate's second wine. I share in the pain of VCC price hikes, but I don't know if there's a good argument to be made that it deserves to be cheaper than Trotanoy or even Lafleur, so there is probably room for it to go up even more.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Gravette doesn't capture any of the personality or quality of VCC for me, and isn't an exception to the usual rule that it's better buying someone else's grand vin than a fancy estate's second wine. I share in the pain of VCC price hikes, but I don't know if there's a good argument to be made that it deserves to be cheaper than Trotanoy or even Lafleur, so there is probably room for it to go up even more.
Click to expand...

Depends. Not sure what they go for now, but Gravette from mid-to-late 90s was acquired at auction in the $20-30 range per bottle just a couple of years ago by yours truly, and while I agree that the wine does not even pretend to compete in the power/concentration/depth categories of the grand vin, it had remarkable class in the price range.
 
I paid just a hair over that so now I can drink it with the resplendent ease of a man not too taken. (Thank you to all the therapists who contributed to this moment.)
 
originally posted by Yixin:
Lafon-Rochet is solid, worth drinking. Hard and instant no on DDC. I would also pass, at current prices, on the other left bank estates in your list, but maybe you like setting money on fire.
Click to expand...

I'd like to highlight a wine that seemed instructive.

Due to prices and winemaking trends among the wines discussed here, the region has taken on a binary mode for me: either guilty until proven innocent, or innocent until proven guilty. The single example of a bottle from the former group, discussed by Jayson and me in this very thread, did nothing to persuade altering my approach.

Someone brought 2000 Ducru to dinner a few weeks ago. I am not a fan of the vintage. It's not monstrous like a few more recent years, but the balance between size and concentration/purity is just tipped over the line where the character of a given Chateau that I enjoy vintage to vintage isn't transparent. Some perennial favorites - Corbin, Cantemerle, Jaugueyron - are quite nice in 2000 but kind of confirm my self-imposed stereotype. Spherical on approach, and a little square in mid-palate, abstracted from its dirt. Ducru however was exceptional, and clearly embraced rather than fought the vintage. Relative to other great vintages I know, it's got extra power that comes from concentration that matches the generosity granted by the vintage. The fruit tastes larger-berried than what I normally associate with the Chateau's almost Pauillac-like profile, but that's compensated for by a floral mid-palate quality that adds charm to dry extract, requisite on account of texture and sense of structure. As I've generally heard nothing but good things about Ducru in 21C, I would add them to the recommended list, price notwithstanding.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Gravette doesn't capture any of the personality or quality of VCC for me, and isn't an exception to the usual rule that it's better buying someone else's grand vin than a fancy estate's second wine. I share in the pain of VCC price hikes, but I don't know if there's a good argument to be made that it deserves to be cheaper than Trotanoy or even Lafleur, so there is probably room for it to go up even more.
Click to expand...

wine is full of grifters. hence the constant reoccurrence of gurus pronouncing on how wines tasted before they were born. child prodigy makes a sort of sense on piano; on shit where knowledge over time matters, not so much.

the worst thing about this is how the grift infects everything else. if vagueness and happenstance is what passes as commentary -- and fuck, if thirty somethings are to be cited as authorities on the past 80 odd years of a graves estate -- how else can it be?

so i ask: what does this kind of comment mean? which gravettes? when? why? where? did you actually do anything to establish this opinion aside from decide to cock wave?

to add some context -- and give an example of the opposite way i once thought -- i think cos was generally a pile of shite in the early 80s... (only at the time?)... but a nearly pure merlot 2nd wine made there in 83 rebukes me every time i want to generalize.

i can share bottles of the wine i just mentioned. it confounds me every time. and cos is still not a wine i seek, ever. but you get my point?

this stuff about teh gravettes is just wankpuffery, isn't it? isn't that best left for other boreds? or is that all there is now? and what does it mean for teh bluster in the rest of this thread?

fb
 
funny thing about cos is that 30% of the vineyards are a bit of an anomaly on the left bank (at least as far as the major appellations go) in a way that latour's are. so how's this for a conspiracy theory timeline: granpda and dad always planted merlot there (duh), but by 83 junior figures that combo just doesn't generate enough gobs for censored points, and relegates the section for the ultimate pleasure of his corpulence.

as to when, why, and where (tm) i've been drinking both 89 poujeaux and 89 salle de poujeaux, and have so far preferred the latter every time. it's lighter but hits the spot.

as an aside, we should be careful calling all such things second labels; some are actually terroir bottlings. don't know how many, but they are out there.
 
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
how's this for a conspiracy theory timeline: granpda and dad always planted merlot there (duh), but by 83 junior figures that combo just doesn't generate enough gobs for censored points
Click to expand...
Nope, general trend at the time was MORE merlot to produce the gobs, not less. But at Cos specifically, here's what a quick search turns up
1994 - 40% merlot
1996 - 35%
2003 - 30%
2009 - 33%
2010 - 19%
2014 - 33%
In terms of gobbage, the 2003 and the 2009 are notoriously the worst offenders. 1996 and 2014 should both please classic palates. So, no real merlot correlation.

Now 1994 happened to be the first vintage for their second wine, Les Pagodes. Before that the "second wine" was Chateau de Marbuzet, which got the rejected fruit from Cos but was also its own estate. I remember enjoying a vintage or two way back, can't remember which ones. But no way to say whether the appeal comes from Marbuzet fruit or from the Cos rejects. Maybe his fatness can add more context when he sobers up and puts his junk back in his pants.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:

Maybe his fatness can add more context when he sobers up and puts his junk back in his pants.
Click to expand...

oh fuck. now i look again, the wine in question was made at pichon baron, not cos. ahem. given my dislike of both at the time (um, most of the time), i'd like to say it's an easy mistake to have made.

and it's still a case of a nth wine being far more interesting than teh grand vin.

mea culpa tho.

fb.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Nope, general trend at the time was MORE merlot to produce the gobs, not less.
Click to expand...

yes of course, but you misread mon ami -
merlot from packed clay in that hood is surprisingly civilized, way too civilized for the gobs of the 80s, which is what the conspiracy theory conjectures his corpulence was drinking

i've heard they started replanting to more merlot elsewhere (on the gravel) in the 80s but I don't have any data to back this up. Certainly it would have been too early to take effect in 1983.

there is also a chance this was a one-off, given how successful merlot was in 1983, although beats me if i remember how far north this extended beyond margaux and environs where it was stellar
 
I've enjoyed reading this thread over the past couple of months as I've been exploring recent releases of Bordeaux. I've never dug in very deeply before, but several of my wine friends in SF are fans and I'm trying to develop a better understanding.

I've been placing the Bordeaux I've tried in buckets, organized below by "most disorderly" to "least disorderly." I'm interested in hearing other peoples takes, especially if you disagree. I'm curious if people feel if any of these wines/producers are currently "disorderly-adjacent."

With respect to wines I liked that I think would be considered relatively "old-school" (though even these seem a little bit more amped up than the 70s and 80s Bordeaux I've had in the past):

'21 Leoville-Barton
'16 and '21 Cantemerle
'21 Gruaud Larose
Possibly '19 Talbot (memories a little fuzzy on that one)

Those that were riper, but still earthy and minerally enough to be "disorderly" (or at least non-boring to me) would be:

'15 Ducru-Beaucaillou
'15 and '21 Haut Bailly
'11 and '18 Certan de May
'20 Pichon-Baron
'19 Lynch-Bages (though this wine was pushing the ripeness a bit)
'14 and '17 Cos d'Estournel (though I remembered not loving these for some reason)

Those that were sleeker, slightly more polished, but having an appealing weightless intensity and elegance on the palate would be:

'21 Clinet
'21 Carmes Haut Brion
'15 Mouton-Rothschild
'10 Pichon-Lalande

I'm putting '20 and '21 Canon in its own category. I enjoyed the wines' texture and relative weightlessness on the palate, and the spicy, peppery finish (which may or may not be the product of, or amplified by, new oak), but this producer seems very atypical from the other St. Emilions I've had. Full disclosure: I did like these wines a lot.

I haven't really come across too many wines that I find offensively oaky or "spoofed," but I did find that a lot of the wines fell in that lush, velvety fruit category that Nathan talked about when describing DDC in an earlier post.

Those that were dominated by plush, rich fruit (without too much else), which I would call the "correct, acceptable, maybe un-spoofed, but boring side of the contemporary Bordeaux spectrum" would be:

'14 '18 '21 DDC
'19 '20 '21 Rauzan Segla (surprising to me, because I know its made by the same winemaker as Canon)
'21 Beychevelle
'21 Leoville-Poyferre
'10 Pontet-Canet
'19 '21 Canon-le-Gaffeliere
'18 Le Gaffeliere
'21 Pavie-Macquin
'21 Le Gay
And most other Bordeaux I have had from recent vintages.
 
Thanks, Yule. Your post is very interesting to me because I own so little premium Bordeaux. Honestly, I mostly buy it as cooking wine: cheap Bordeaux is usually better quality than cheap other things. (I don't have much use for cab sauv at the table, I guess.)
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Thanks, Yule. Your post is very interesting to me because I own so little premium Bordeaux. Honestly, I mostly buy it as cooking wine: cheap Bordeaux is usually better quality than cheap other things. (I don't have much use for cab sauv at the table, I guess.)
Click to expand...

I actually own very little Bordeaux as well. Since I started my wine journey with Loire Cab Franc, I am basically doing the reverse of most folks, I imagine, and the richness of Bordeaux has been a little jarring.

But, it has been deeply educational and I'm glad I have a better grasp of the genre. Moreover, Bordeaux is relatively accessible, and there are tons of Bordeaux events in SF (UGC and an event hosted by MMD last year plus monthly Bordeaux tastings at my offsite). So, it's easy to get a crash course for not too much money.

I don't imagine Bordeaux ever being my favorite type of wine, but I've been surprised by how much I've liked certain producers. Though it's hard to pony-up $150+ for a bottle of Haut Bailly or Canon when I can get Croix Boissee for $50.
 
Bordeaux is pretty good value these days so you don't have to compare the $50 Croix Boissee to $150 Haut-Bailly or Canon - lots of good ones around $50. Try Ferriere!
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Bordeaux is pretty good value these days so you don't have to compare the $50 Croix Boissee to $150 Haut-Bailly or Canon - lots of good ones around $50. Try Ferriere!
Click to expand...

Thanks Keith for the recommendation. I'm definitely putting Ferriere on the list and hope to try it sometime soon.
 
originally posted by Yule Kim:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Bordeaux is pretty good value these days so you don't have to compare the $50 Croix Boissee to $150 Haut-Bailly or Canon - lots of good ones around $50. Try Ferriere!
Click to expand...

Thanks Keith for the recommendation. I'm definitely putting Ferriere on the list and hope to try it sometime soon.
Click to expand...

2016 Ferriere was hard as nails when I had it about a year ago. I found it kind of confusing and impenetrable. So maybe try another vintage.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top