I found that I had 2 bottles of Montrose 76, so I opened one today. It had been stored properly since release. Montrose can be rather slow to develop and sometimes has too much tannin and too little fruit when aged. But when everything is right, it can be a very high quality wine.
This wine still has deep scaret color with only a little evidence of age around the rim. It has plenty of cassis with some complex herbal character. There is enough acid. Medium tannins remain, but they are under control. For some reason I had not tasted this 76 before. It turns out to be one of the best,if not the best, 76 I have tasted. I exclude the first growths which I did not buy in 76.
This wine was a big surprise to me, based on other 76s I have tasted. I thus went to Broadbent's most recent book to see if he had tasted it. He had, in 1996, rated it 4 out of 5 stars, and suggested that it would continue. In part, he said: "Good fruit, good grip, silk-clad tannins." The 1976 Montrose should be in any 76 Bordeaux tasting or a Montrose vertical. Of course at nearly 28 years old, proper storage is quite critical.
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