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78 Batailley, 70 Ducru

Went out for our anniversary last night to celebrate many years of delirious bliss (come to think of it, the delirium may have set in about the time I became interested in wine.....)

Went to a local restaurant to get my maintenance dosage of foie gras (I'm in training for the Foie Fools part deux in a couple of weeks and need to keep up my levels of vitamin F).

After a glass of pleasant but forgettable white we settled down to the main event:

1978 Ch. Batailley - this has always been a pleasant little wine, and we have sort of made it an anniversary tradition, as we started drinking it on that occasion almost 20 years ago. Our last bottle, it showed quite nicely in the nose, which had cedar and ample fruit to be very pleasant. In the mouth, I felt the wine was a bit dry and showing obvious signs of age, but maybe 10 minutes later it magically opened up and all of a sudden there was pretty decent fruit there. Awhile later, it had relapsed into mediocrity, but for the brief time we were drinking most of it, it was elegant and enjoyable.

1970 Ch. Ducru Beaucaillou - I have always had good luck with this wine. When I did a 1970 horizontal tasting, it showed better than any of the other St. Juliens, and when we opened it from magnum against a 1961 Ducru and a 1971 DRC Grands Echezeaux (also from magnum) it was beaten out only narrowly by the DRC. This time around the wine was probably as good as I've ever seen it. The bouquet was just a treat, with cedar, vanilla, and dark fruit. In the mouth it never put a foot wrong - great concentration of fruit, wonderful depthj of flavour and complex with many nuances on palate. Very good sweet finish, with the intensity of flavour persisting right through to the end. This isn't my absolute favourite 1970 (the Montrose and Latour take precedence), but it is certainly in the top half dozen. If you have them, I would drink them - it won't get any better and it would be a shame to allow prolonged cellaring to detract even one iota from this lovely wine.

Reply to
Bill Spohn
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Thanks for the tasting notes for Ducru-Beaucaillou 1970. I still have 5 bottles, and at last tasting the wine appeared to be at the peak. I am guessing that it will hold several more years, but it would be a shame to wait too long. I probably will drink a bottle a year until it is gone, perhaps keeping the last bottle longer if decline has not started. In 1970, Ducru is better than some of the first growths. Of course I wish that I had bought more 70 Latour rather than some of the other first growths. However, on release, there was not much to suggest that the 70 Latour was going to be far superior to some of the other first growths and super seconds. There were not nearly as many wine writers then that tasted the new releases and rated them. Many people still bought wine using a vintage chart and the classification of the wine as a guide. It takes years of experience to taste a tannic, dumb young Latour or Mouton and predict how long it will improve and how good it will be, and even the experts sometimes miss.

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Reply to
Cwdjrx _

Indeed the Latour is at the top of the ladder for me, the Lafite and underachiever that year, the Mouton was OK but not outstanding (I'll be tasting it again next month, so we'll see), the Margaux pathetic, the Haut Brion better than Parker gave it credit for, but not first class.

If I was offered the choice of wines from that vintage, I'd choose (other than Petrus, which I'd probably sell to load up on the others) Latour, Montrose, Ducru, Trotanoy, and if it was cellared properly, the lovely Palmer.

Reply to
Bill Spohn

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