Another "Drink it or hold it" question: 1998 Cos D'Estournel?

In perusing Cellartracker, there are quite a few tasting notes suggesting this is approaching nice drinkability, if not peak form by any means. It's an under-rated vintage, so....anyone tried this vintage lately?

I can always wait, or drink my few Cru Bourgeoise wines instead.

Hold. '98 seems to be shaping up to be a classically proportioned vintage for many wines (and by my last taste of Cos almost 2 years ago, this is certainly one classical wine), so I would wait until about age 15 before opening one of this caliber. Of course it will depend on how you like your wines, and whether or not Graham's 1977 has happened to this wine (i.e. it has developed very, very strangely indeed).

-O-

[David M. Bueker]

No offense to the masses, but CellarTracker is filled with folks who have never tasted properly aged Bordeaux, or at least very little of it.

But there are some questions:

1) Do you like the taste of older Bordeaux?
2) Do you have multiple bottles?

If the answer to either question is no then you would be better off commiting infanticide and drinking the wine in the next 2-5 years. If the answers to both questions are yes then "hold" away but drink one just for the sake of science if you feel you really want to.

Thanks, guys. I do have some lesser wines that I can drink instead.

Just for the sake of the 1998 left bank drinkability question, friends of mine opened a Leoville-Las-Cases last weekend and with a decnt decant of a few hours the wine was pretty well open for business - unusual for LLC, as my rule of thumb is to leave this Chateau for around 15-20 years from vintage before opening. Might have something to do with the difficulties of the 1998 vintage on this side of the Gironde.

[David M. Bueker]

David,

Open for business or matured and "ready to drink"?

Just curious, as '98 on the left bank was a pretty hard, tannic vintage, so I have a hard time fathoming significant softening/development after only 9 years.