by Patchen Markell » Sat Oct 15, 2016 10:18 am
Autumn being a time of incipient decline, I figured the night I roasted my first kabocha squash was also the night to open a Robert Mondavi 1984 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve. (This is a solo bottle I acquired recently, so I have zero data points.) The color, initially light but not brown, deepens quickly with air, and on first taste there's still a nice core of sweet red fruit, though it's thin. Andrea furrows her brow; I can't taste anything, but she swears there's a bit of TCA, and she's always more sensitive to it than I am. After a bit of of swirling and tasting, I catch up to her: there it is. Dinner's on, so I run over and grab the first Cab-ish thing I can lay my hands on, a Château Poujeaux 1996 Moulis-en-Médoc. This is lovely: fresh currant, a powerfully aromatic cedar-and-tobacco midpalate, and a slightly rough-rustic finish. No hurry but delicious now. After dinner, though, I went back to the Mondavi, which, predictably, had transformed in the glass, taking on weight and opening up considerably; now, the fruit has become deeper and plummier with a balsamic edge, there's a really nice anise note developing on the finish, and the TCA -- for me -- is only detectable on about one sip out of ten, with the midpalate showing earth and mint instead. Even bracketing the contamination and the 12-year age difference, this turned out to be a nice side-by-side. It will be interesting to see whether anything of interest in the Mondavi survives 24 hours...
cheers, Patchen
