WTN: Paris Revisited

When I saw a couple of older bottles from California to be sold at a Christie's auction, I got the idea to place a bid for the and then eventually arrange a tasting at our wine club AuZone where we would compare them with wines from Bordeaux of similar age and quality. So I sent in a bid and suddenly I was the owner of 1978 ridge Montebello and 1979 Caymus Special Select. In a later auction I bought some bottles of Diamond Creek, Volcanic Hill and was ready to hjold the tasting. In my part of the world (Sweden) It is much easier to find older Bordeaux wines, with some help from my fellow wine tasters, I arranged a tasting of three Californian and three Bordelaise wines. To our great dismay, the tasting became a bit uneven since one of the wines were seriously corked. Anyway, it was a great and interesting tasting, with most of the wines on a very high level.

Here are my short notes. I have included the alcohol levels since they offer an interesting comparison to today's levels, both in California and Boredaux.

1987 Diamond Creek, Volcanic Hill 12.5% ABV. Fresh, rather powerful and still fruity. Nose is dominated by mint and black currant. Noticeable vanilla and cookie dough from the wood. The taste is fresh, powerful and a bit hard and coarse. Lots of dry tannins that take over the aftertaste. A bit too hard, almost like chewing barbed wire. Made me think a bit of Ch. Lèoville Lascases. The looser of the tasting (the corked wine not included)

1985 Ch. Pichon Longueville, Comtesse de Lalande 12.5% Sadly reeking with TCA from cork taint. Very sad, since the wine behind the awful smell of TCA seemed to have been a splendid wine. Really too bad. It might have challenged the other wines to be the best wine of the evening. I wonder if they will send me a replacement bottle from the château if I will write to them about the disaster?

1982 Ch. Lynch Bages No alcohol level given on the label. Classic, stylish developed Bordeaux nose with cedar and stable aromas. A whiff of mint and some coffee notes from the wood. the taste started off a bit raw and lightish but soon grew to a fullbodied wine. Good acidity. Coffee and stable also in the taste. Rounded tannins. Long, slightly bitter after taste. A very fine mature Bordeaux. Maybe with a touch too much wood.

1979 Caymus Special Select 13% Very mature and a bit burned nose with caramel, soy sauce, meat and leather. Fresh taste with an acidity that maybe starts to run away, but still balanced by the full, round taste. Dried fruits too. Soft but still structured tannins, almost furry. round, slighly dry aftertaste. Still a splendid wine.

1978 Ch. Mouton-Rothschild 11.5%(!) Very much Boredaux nose with stable and cedar but also a strong greenish, stalky nose of unripe fruit. Fresh, lean taste without much body. quite a lot of nice, chewable tannins. Long, stylish but lean aftertaste. Quite a disappointment. Lacking both in fruit and body. Evidently an unsuccessful year for Mouton.

1978 Ridge Montebello 13.6% Powerful, dense nose with warmth. Asphalt, lots of liquorice, burned wood. Lots of slightly raw animal characters and also wood. Very deep. Tight, smoky and powerful taste. good acidity. Broad and round taste. Quite a bit of dryish tannins. Great structure. Lonag, burned, tannic aftertaste. A great wine.

So, what did we learn from this tasting? Clearly that the Californian wines from the '70ies age very well. I wonder if today's fruit bombs at 15% ABV also have this potential? With the disappointing Mouton and the tainted Pichon, it is hard to say which district won. With a Pichon in shape, I'm sure the Bordelais would have taken the victory, but now maybe one have to say it was a draw, with California having both the most and the least popular wines of the tasting. It was a very nice tasting and a rare one, for us here in Europe, where old Californian wines are not much seen.

Cheers, Anders

What a great lineup of wines, Anders. Those CalCabs you located are all top-notch examples from an era when CA winemakers were still making vins de garde. (Ridge still is, but they are in an increasingly small minority) Ultimately, I find that these comparative tastings are hard to draw many conclusions from: the two regions have such different character that it's really an apples-and-oranges situation. To me, California Cabernet at its best retains the core of fruit that the region is known for while developing some secondary and tertiary characteristics; the Medoc, meanwhile, can produce wines that become phenomenally perfumed with age and become almost entirely about their (entrancing) secondary and tertiary characteristics. Thanks for the fun notes!

Mark Lipton

Here are my short notes. I have included the alcohol levels since they offer an interesting comparison to today's levels, both in California and Boredaux.

1987 Diamond Creek, Volcanic Hill 12.5% ABV. Fresh, rather powerful and still fruity. Nose is dominated by mint and black currant. Noticeable vanilla and cookie dough from the wood. The taste is fresh, powerful and a bit hard and coarse. Lots of dry tannins that take over the aftertaste. A bit too hard, almost like chewing barbed wire. Made me think a bit of Ch. Lèoville Lascases. The looser of the tasting (the corked wine not included)

1985 Ch. Pichon Longueville, Comtesse de Lalande 12.5% Sadly reeking with TCA from cork taint. Very sad, since the wine behind the awful smell of TCA seemed to have been a splendid wine. Really too bad. It might have challenged the other wines to be the best wine of the evening. I wonder if they will send me a replacement bottle from the château if I will write to them about the disaster?

1982 Ch. Lynch Bages No alcohol level given on the label. Classic, stylish developed Bordeaux nose with cedar and stable aromas. A whiff of mint and some coffee notes from the wood. the taste started off a bit raw and lightish but soon grew to a full bodied wine. Good acidity. Coffee and stable also in the taste. Rounded tannins. Long, slightly bitter after taste. A very fine mature Bordeaux. Maybe with a touch too much wood.

Thanks for the report Anders, About the Diamond Creek wine. IIRC 1987 was a tough year for cabernet from the Napa area, with many of them never getting to a peak that I could enjoy. I was lucky once to find a small stash of the 1979 and 1981 Diamond creek wines and at a price that I could actually buy them. I eventually took those wines to Mo'Cool in about 98-80 somewhere in there anyway. 1979 saw rains interrupt harvest, and not a bottle of the first pick ever left California. Still, at around 20 years of age, the 79's held their own with a lot of other high class wines and amongst wine geeks that knew what was in the glass.