8 Bordeaux 96 + 1 Yquem 90 at the TGJP :-(

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pab

pierre-alain benoit
Hello,
We made a dinner at the tgjp in Paris last friday with eight Bordeaux 1996 (Haut-Bailly, Branaire, Léovile Poyferré & Barton, Pontet-Canet, Duhart-Milon, Sociando-Mallet & Lagrange) and a Yquem 1990.
See
www.tgjp.com
Ask any questions on the forum and I will try to answer.
Best regards
pierre-alain benoit
 
My French is very limited but would it be right to assume you didn't like the wines too much?

Would you share you're thoughts here on the Pontet-Canet and Leoville Barton specifically?
 
My english is also very limited...
The Pontet-Canet wasn't corked but unclean. A bad bottle. The Barton was perhaps the "most" singing bottle in a very difficult flight. But imho, it was still woody and uncharmed.
Best regards
pierre-alain benoit
 
La conclusion est alors sans appel. Ces vins aussi coûteux que mythiques, nés de terroirs sensément prestigieux, “gés déjà de près de 15 ans mais n’affichant curieusement aucune marque d’évolution, n’ont au mieux strictement aucun charme, au pire présentent des défauts impardonnables.

Des résultats aussi affligeants peuvent être portés au passif du millésime mais aussi et très certainement d’un wine-making qui refuse toute authenticité (vignes « chimiques », rendements pléthoriques, usages de levures exogènes, osmoseur) et s’en glorifie.
Click to expand...
The conclusion is now final. These wines, as expensive as they are mythic, born of prestigious terroirs, already nearly 15 years old but strangely unevolved, are charmless at best and unacceptably flawed at worst.

These distressing results can be said to be the fault of the vintage but they are also certainly the fault of the wine-maker who refuses authenticity (chemical treatments, over-cropping, industrial yeasts, osmosis...) and its glories.
 
Huh.

Being a weirdo, I have kind of liked the brut force and chisel of some left bank 96s. Certainly there was the unevolved characteristic for the vintage the last time I really looked in. I just look at it as a Cabernet year and go into the wines that way. I tend to come out thinking, yes, that tastes like Cabernet.

But I liked some 95s too, and they are like opposite vintages, so who knows.
 
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