Has somebody tasted Château Figeac 1990 recently?

I'm sorry to hear of such a disappointment - I have tasted it relatively recently - last September at the Chateau - and found it as good as you would expect from such a Chateau in such a year. 1990 was an excellent year and I woudl be very surpries if this was ageneral problem with the rest of your case. (I very recently drank some '87 and even that is good - by the standards of the year, very good.)

This sounds as though it was a dead bottle - not corked but just dead and lifeless: one of those inexplicable mysteries of wine. I remember a bottle of Ch. Soutard 1985 which I opened when we had a Saint-Emilion evening with the then Chancellor of the Jurade in the North (not knowing he was bringing some Ausone and Cheval Blanc). The first bottle I opened was just like you describe the Figeac being but, oddly enough, seemed to have come back to life by the end of the evening - though it was not of the same order as the second bottle which I opened and which was wholly different from the first on opening. I've had similar experiences with "dead" bottles from a variety of places but they do not often come back to life nor, I'm pleased to say, does it by any means mean imply that others in the case will be similarly affected. I'm sure we'd be interested to hear how you get on with the next bottle. Good luck.

Tim Hartley

Nothing inexplicable here. The culprit is the cork, period. Typical case of fruit scalping either by low-level TCA or the other half dozen of substances that can come with bark cork and taint the wine.

M.

I know there are those who blame natural cork for all bottle to bottle differences. I remain to be convinced: when given wine from bottles with artifical corks, normally at the house's of friends who do not share our passion, I have seen quite marked differences between bottles which can hardly be blamed on a cork oak tree.

Tim Hartley

Thanks Tim + Michael,

your contributions were very helpful. At least I am reassured now that the '90 Figeac is not a failure! As soon as I have the courage (and possibly a festive occasion...like Sunday) I will open another bottle and I will let you know if this one is OK. At least I won't have the risk of sacrificing another bottle just to find out that the wine is in a muted stage...

By the way, Tim, when you were at Château Figeac last September: Is Thierry Manoncourt still around? We visited the estate back in 1992 and he and his wife took quite some time to show us around...before uncorking a half bottle of 1982!

Regards

Yves

....

They are indeed still around. Eric d‘Aramon, their son-in law, is now much more in evidence than once but Thierry de Manoncourt is still in good health and was about to celebrate a birthday when we went. Their hospitality is in the best traditions of Saint-Emilion and, although they donot need to do so to sell their wine. They open their doors with amazing generosity as they have done for years. I too remember drinking the 1982 there five or six years back.

Synthetic stoppers definitely are *not* the solution, although people producing them claim a vast improvement over the last few years. I am talking about screw or crown caps (the latter by far the best solution for sparklers) where I have yet to encounter bottle variation - after a solid four digit figure of encounters.

M.

I know ftom your postings that you are a passionate advocate of them but I have not seen enough evidence to prove the case for them for good wine which requires or will benefit from aging.

I therefore ask, in a spirit of enquiry not argument, what is the oldest and best wine you or others have tasted from such bottles? What evidence is there that the wine can age as well long term as under cork? I note that you suggest crown caps for sparkling wine but am bound to say that I find far fewere cork problems with such wines than with still ones and would need a lot of persuading that they are so necessary as to overcome their comparative aesthetic deficiencies.

Tim

I have tried to answer to your questions in a new thread "Screw caps vs. corks".

M.