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

1955 to 2000, but recall most of my friends were unimpressed with most of the maybe mid60s through mid80s wines in context of vintages. But late 80s they seem to have turned around, and I've really enjoyed the '90 twice. The '96 as noted is nice (this is several times for me), as is the '98. Lately there has been a switch in style, and the 2001 & 2002 are definitely somewhat (insert your favorite descriptor here for modern style: international, spoofulated, Parkerized, hedonistic, sexybeastified, whatever). That should bring some red out for you. :)