TN: 1996 Bordeaux at Gavroche

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Nice group tasted a bunch of '96s last night. In payment/voting/taxi flurry I left my notes; but thought I'd at least post impressions before I get influenced by other posters. Some very good wines, my grading is tougher than usual due to competition:

St Emilion Flight

La Gomerie-clear winner of flight, ripe red fruit and coffee, B

Troplong Mondot- tannic, tannic, and tannic. Some mocha and red plum, but tannins dominated. B-

Monbousquet-wierd nose. At first I though corked, but no- more chemical. Some nice fruit underneath, too bad C+

Pessac-Leognan

Smith Haut Lafite- Arv says coconut, Frank says green pepper, I say no thanks (with other . B-

Pape Clement-ah,more like it. Rich fruit, good earthy aromas. B+

Haut Brion-Good but tight. I vote for winner of flight, as do most, but for me it was close. Some says fell apart with time, but I didn't save enough to find out. B+/A-

St Julien #1

Ducru-Beaucaillou- Gorgeous. Crushed berry fruit nose, clear and clean. Unanimous winner of flight I think. A-

Talbot- really barnyardy nose (more than any of the numerous bottles- well, most were half-bottles) I've tried before. But nice round fruit on palate. B

St Julien #2

Leoville Poyferre- I know this bottle is flawed- I've had several times,and never this intense saddle sweat nose. Shouldn't be graded.

Leoville Barton - this seems off too, but not as extreme. Slightly corked? B-

Leoville Las Cases- this rocks. A little VA at first (though it had been decanted), but blows off and leaves a massive but gorgeous wine. Wine of the flight, and my WOTN. A

Pauillac#1

Pichon Baron- beautiful, fresh, ripe. Probably QPR winner of the night. A-

Pichon Lalande- good but with a little green funkiness underneath at first, but morphs into a rich pretty wine. This flight is a tossup (I vote for Baron for value), majority prefers Lalande. A-

Pauillac #2

Grand Puy Lacoste- Deep, big, ripe tannins. A-

Pontet Canet- very good , just outclassed in this flight. B/B+

Lynch Bages- big, ripe. B+

St Estephe

Montrose -very good, but backward. B+

Cos D'estournel - Rich, coffee and red fruit, big tannins. My second favorite of night, but I'm only one with this in top 3. A-/A

Lafon Rochet - Thin compared to flight mates, probably not bad overall. But in this competition B-

John B. served a blind Sauternes. Guesses were all over the place. It was the 2001 de Fargues - double-decanted on 4/24! B+

Though table was tight, I enjoyed food at Gavroche. Convivial crowd, thanks to organizers (primarily Matt). Overall I was very pleased with showing of the Medocs (except the Poyferre & Barton, I think both were off especially the Poyferre).

Grade disclaimer: I'm a very easy grader, basically A is an excellent wine, B a good wine, C mediocre. Anything below C means I wouldn't drink at a party where it was only choice. Furthermore, I offer no promises of objectivity, accuracy, and certainly not of consistency. Disclaimer of disclaimer- last night I was a tougher scorer.

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DaleW
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Matt the chief organizer just posted a few comments including the group scoring on another forum. Note that we voted for favorite of flight, and then at end we voted for our three favorites (we each voted 3 pts for our WOTN, 2 for #2, 1 for #3)-lthough with 62 total votes someone voted twice!:

"My overall impression was very positive. It was quite hard to pick top wines, there were so many. I was thrilled with Ducru, LLC, Lalande, HB, Cos, GPL, and Baron.

Many wines were more ready to drink than I expected, although that may have been colored because we started out the night with some quite tannic right bankers. For the most part they struck me as long lived wines.

There was a lot of agreement around the group about these wines, in fact the first four flight's top wine votes were unanimous and the others went 8-2, 7-3-0, 9-1-0.

WOTN votes: LLC 26 Pichon Lalande 10 Ducru 9 GPL 6 Haut Brion 5 Pichon Baron 4 Cos 2"

Reply to
DaleW

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