Went to dinner for my friend's birthday and opened some birth year wines to celebrate. We had two different bottles of 1970 Ch. Palmer, one with the white Mahler-Besse neck label and one with the black label under the Palmer label. The 1970 is a legendary Palmer that I've had a few times, but not in a while. At its best, it marries a real lusciousness and deep fruit to power and length, the proverbial iron fist-velvet glove. Upon opening, and decanting, the two bottles were quite different, we nicknamed them "dirt" and "fruit" for obvious reasons. One expects bottle variation with 45 year old wine, so this wasn't a surprise. What was surprising is that instead of diverging, the wines converged towards a shared expression with air. It was a really interesting process. "Dirt" shifted towards showing underlying cherry compote and plums, to go with leather, spice, and yes, dirt. "Fruit" replaced its gloss with more earthy complexity. Both wines seemed fully resolved and on the downslope, though not so much as they weren't really enjoyable, just that there is no reason to hold them any longer and they may have been better 10+ years ago if your tastes demand more vigor. It would be interesting to try a bottle of this from the Chateau or some place where it never moved and was properly cared for.
We also had a much more modest bottle, a 1970 Lafon-Rochet. A have a pet theory about little wines like this and aging. Well this bottle was all I hoped for, in spite of a crumbling cork. The color was much lighter than the Palmer, but was still rose colored, not brown. The nose, once it perked up, was woodsy with mineral notes and crunchy red fruit. The red fruitedness was a nice surprise. I suppose it was more on the dried cranberry side of things and the wine drank very Burgundian, for lack of a better term. There was a lithe freshness to it that I really liked. I don't want to get carried away, this wasn't a Great Wine, but it was exactly what I was hoping it would be and something I wouldn't hesitate to buy or order if the conditions were right.
All in all a great evening.
We also had a much more modest bottle, a 1970 Lafon-Rochet. A have a pet theory about little wines like this and aging. Well this bottle was all I hoped for, in spite of a crumbling cork. The color was much lighter than the Palmer, but was still rose colored, not brown. The nose, once it perked up, was woodsy with mineral notes and crunchy red fruit. The red fruitedness was a nice surprise. I suppose it was more on the dried cranberry side of things and the wine drank very Burgundian, for lack of a better term. There was a lithe freshness to it that I really liked. I don't want to get carried away, this wasn't a Great Wine, but it was exactly what I was hoping it would be and something I wouldn't hesitate to buy or order if the conditions were right.
All in all a great evening.
