Wall Street Journal article

"Lawrence Leichtman" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@news.east.cox.net...

Why should it be 'better'? That's a different sort of wine... The non-cru Beaujolais should be drunk now, the Latour is possibly shut down now and not ready to drink before 2010-2020 or something like that. But, of course, Latour is overpriced - relative to the many very good wines available today at a tenth, or less, of the price. I've said it before - 80 years ago, before the first-growth craze, Latour asking price was 4 or 5 times that of common plonk! Anders

I think it is also true that the wine might be shut down, as someone else noted. I had the 2000 Latour last fall and I didn't really care for it. I suspect it will be a lot better in another 5-10 years. The same is probably true of the 2001.

Dimitri

Looks like there is a copy of the WSJ article at

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Michael Pronay wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@pronay.com:

Michael,

I purchased two bottles of La Tour Carnet 2001 at Lavinia when I read you comments and have not regretted it at all. The first bottle, drunk two months ago was marvelous, specially for the price (about 20 euros retail).

I managed to convince a local retailer to purchase it and now it is available in my city. A few bottles more to lay down and see how it develops.

However, I do not think that it is the best 2001 that I have tasted. Leoville Barton 2001 (I suppose this fits into the "premiers" category you mention) has more structure and substance and, while a bit tight now, I think it is going to be a better wine, which is not surprising considering it costs 50 euros retail in Spain.

Another however, and, probably, my only doubt about La Tour Carnet 2001. I felt that somehow it lacked Bordeaux character. It tasted a bit like an internationalized wine (Bernard Magrez touch?). What do you think about this?

Best,

Santiago

Yeah, but I have my wine in my cellar right from the start. I really love to know the provenance ;-)

It probably is. I remember having tasted L-B much better from cask the other years. Since I taste blind (where possible), there is seldom a chance to have another bottle (in case there is a bottle problem). If the cask samples themselves are sub-par (which happens from time to time), then it's really difficult to give an appropriate judgment.

Ask me something different, please!

No, seriously, this is one of the most difficult questions which almost entirely depends on how you like your wines, rhather young or rather mature.

From our yearly Bordeaux tastings "10 years after" I'd suggest to have wines like LTC somewhere in the 10 to 15 years range, provided you have good (cool) storage. But, once again, it's all up to your personal taste.

M.

Compared to Michael I am a slow taster, but I have taken notes on 20+ wines tasted over several hours. The keys are to spit, to write as you taste and to employ mental shorthand to reduce the amount of writing. When you know in advance what wines you are tasting, you can write down the identification (name, year, etc.) in advance and simply supply your impressions as you taste. It is definitely a different activity from even a visit to a winery: more analytical, less time to savor what you're tasting, little conversation and a minimal amount of eating. It's not recreation, but a great way to quickly gain an impression of a large number of wines.

Mark Lipton

But how do you compare them between each other? Or is that not the point? Even when taking notes, 45 is a whole lot. I can taste 45 wines in a day, but I cannot compare more than 8-10 wines to each other at any one time.

Dimitri