During my cellar reinventory, I ran across a bottle of this wine and two bottles of the '98 Pesquera that had somehow snuck their way unnoticed into our cellar. In the spirit of inquiry, I opened the title wine last night with a dinner of duck and black bean tamales:
nose: initially, quite funky, in a distinctly Bordelais way: mushroom, tea leaves and earthy notes; later on, the funkiness subsided a bit and let through more pencil lead character
palate: medium weight, bright acidity, pencil lead and some sort of fruit
Had I been served this wine blind, I would have sworn that I was tasting a 5-10 year old classed growth wine from the Médoc. It really had that much Bordeaux character to it. All in all, a surprisingly good bottle of wine.
Mark Lipton