Tonight with a dinner of broiled rack of lamb, we opened a bottle of
1997 Ch. Barde-Haut St. Emilion nose: initially, quite jammy, turning more alcoholic, with pencil lead, stones, plums, cherries showing up palate: medium body, fairly acidic, shy on fruit, cocoa, plums and stonesThis was the last of our '97s and in retrospect we may have opened it too soon or too late. The alcohol was quite noticeable, even though the wine was quite cool (I had just pulled it out of the cellar an hour beforehand) and it's listed as 12.5%. The pencil lead and mineral character were the dominant features of the nose, and on the palate the non-fruit flavors also tended to dominate. There was enough tannin left in the wine to cut the fattiness of the lamb.
One footnote: I pulled out one Riedel Bdx glass and one Spiegelau Bdx glass, which visually bear a strong resemblance to one another (Spiegelau's is a bit more open). I was prepared to find no meaningful difference in the wine between the two glasses, but both Jean and I found that the wine had less a pronounced nose and more noticeable alcohol in the Spiegelau glass. Additionally, the wine in the Riedel glass tasted a bit more intense and round than did the same wine in the Spiegelau. That was a shocker!
Mark Lipton