TN: SOBER tasting- Bdx, Rhone, Piedmont

vintages of Pape-Clement, this wine has greatly improved from what it was in the 1970s. My notes from that era were not very flattering. They also had a white in the 70s that was decent, but not outstanding, in the one vintage that I tasted. If I were buying Bordeaux today, it might be worth checking Pape-Clement again. In the 70s I soon concluded that money spent for Pape-Clement would buy a wine much more to my taste elsewhere.

OT Note:

I just downloaded the very new Firefox 2.0 browser, which is a major upgrade in many ways. Now many words that I write or read in this group have a red underline. I found out that the red underline is for words for which Firefox questions the English spelling. In my response, Pape is red underlined since the spelling checker does not understand the French, at least on the English version of the browser. The same applies for Pessac-Leognan on your post. Alt.food.wine now has become rather colorful with red underlines, because so many non-English words are used.

I liked the '61, but think Pape-Clement's rep wasn't too shiny in most of 70s & 80s. I missed a vertical my group did of most major PCs from

The improvement - stunning and fast - dates from vintage 1986 upwords. Pape Clément was acquired in 1937 by Paul Montagne. 1939 saw the entire property more or less fully destructed by a severe hailstorm. Paul's son Léo took over, but apparently never really cared. Léo's son-in-law Bernard Magrez was put in charge sometime in the mid-1980ies.

So you can buy "blind" almost anything from 1986 or younger, as you should avoid just about anything from 1985 or older.

I have been on a press trip to Pape Clément in October 1989. Denis Dubourdieu, then consultant oenologist, let us taste 1986/7/8 sinde by side, plus a tank sample of one of the merlots from 1989. The wines were quite impressive, with 1987 a much lighter style, of course.

Funnily, the tasting in the chai was done from Riedel glasses, while the wines for lunch at the chateau - all from the pre-Magrez era - were served in crappy glasses the caterer had brought with him. (To be honsest, Bordeaux caterers today do care for better stemware, but at that time ...).

But I remember that everyone had standing, besides the small glasses for the wines, a water bowl that happened to be the large Riedel Sommelier Bordeaux Grand Cru stem (4400/00). With the last red, Pape Clément 1961, I had it poured into this glass, much to the distress of the server - and to an almost collapsing maitre d' in the background.

We were four tables. From every table one non-French journalist was asked about his opinion about the '61. As fate would have it, from my table they asked me. Since the wine was rather tired and slightly oxidized - nowhere, where a decent 1961 claret should be

- I tried to be polite and deliberated about how really great reds converge when getting older, so that the characters of an almost

I guess what I said was not what they wanted to hear ... ;-(

M.