Last night. my wife and I shared a meal with English wine merchant Richard Loadman and his wife.
We had 2004 Caillou Blanc de Château Talbot for the aperitif. I've enjoyed this wine in past vintages, but it was unfortunately a disappointment this time. I found it thin and mostly uninteresting, without much of a bouquet and too much oak for its intrinsic body. A ho-hum wine.
We moved on to 2001 Larrivet Haut Brion blanc, which did much better at upholding the reputation of white Bordeaux! This has a lovely beeswax and lemon aroma and was delicous on the palate as well. A delicate, subtle, interesting wine that would even please lovers of white Burgundy, I think! It was fine for drinking now, although it will age well too.
The next two wines were classified growths that have ceased to exist. A taste of history!
1999 Curé Bon was much better than I expected. The color was quite deep and the aroma tremendously earthy with deep prune aromas very typical of that sector of Saint Emilion! The taste was caressingly smooth and velvety and the wine is just entering into its ideal drinking window. Curé Bon has since been swallowed up by Château Canon. How that happened, and to what extent it was purely and simply annexed by an estate one notch up the classification scale is beyond me. I'll have to find out one of these days...
1996 Latour Haut Brion has become the 2nd wine of La Mission H.B. starting with the 2005 vintage. The bottle we had last night had a fine Cabernet/graphite nose, but was more elegant and lighter in body on the palate than one might have expected from the bouquet. I felt that the fruit/tannin balance was just about right. Seeing as there are already tertiary characteristics to this wine, I'd suggest drinking it sooner rather than later, even if it will age for years to come. Slight dryness on the finish.
With dessert, we enjoyed a 2006 Domaine Pinnacle ici cider brought by a friend from Québec. This drink had won serveral international medals, and it's not hard to see why. At 12° alcholol, it was neither too strong or too sweet, and most of us agreed it smelled like a mellow Calvados. It was a nice way to end the meal with a drink that was neither too heavy nor cloying, but rather pure, fresh, and interestingly aromatic.
Best regards,
Alex R.