Spurred by John Taverner's note today, and by the happy coincidence of our celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary today, we opened a bottle of the '82 Gruaud-Larose with a dinner of broiled rack of lamb with fingerling potatoes. As I mentioned in John's thread, the provenance of this bottle was as iffy as it gets in our household: Jean had given it to me for my 27th birthday in 1986, and it had sat in my apartment on Manhattan for 2 years before traveling West to Berkeley in a rented truck, sitting in our crawlspace in Berkeley for 18 months, before being flown to Indiana, where it has slumbered since.
1982 Ch. Gruaud-Larose color: ruby red with a light hint of brick at the edges nose: initially, the "Cordier funk", later giving way to pencil lead, berry fruit, and herbs palate: medium body, meaty, herbal, minerals, pencil lead, solid core of fruit, good balanced acidity and a rich finishAs John T. mentioned, the tannins in this wine are gone: it is as smooth and supple as one could hope. Also noteworthy, though, in this era of blockbuster claret, is the incredible sense of balance that this wine displays: it is big but graceful. It went splendidly with the simple lamb preparation and didn't change noticeably over the course of a 1 1/2 hour dinner. IMO, no hurry to drink this up, but I also don't see it getting any better. OTOH, if your G-L has been stored at a constant 50 F/10 C since purchase, YMMV.
Mark Lipton