Return to Bordeaux

A group of five gathered for another night of double blind (at least for four of us) wines à Maison Steefel in the quiet hills of Moraga. The theme: red Left Bank Bordeaux from 1996, a chance for me to see how many of the wines I sampled in a horizontal about 7 years ago were doing. This was almost like a homecoming for me, since I have been tasting relatively few Bordeaux in the last year or so as my attention has shifted to mostly Burgundy, with the occasional foray into southern Rhone and northern Italian wines. Young Bordeaux no longer holds a great deal of interest for me, not because they are not enjoyable wines given the right circumstances, but because I know pretty much what to expect from them. But I was hoping the 1996 Bordeaux would show at least a slight turn to secondary characteristics, and with it, some potential for surprises. With an aged wine, slight differences in their aging curves can result in wines that show distinct aroma or flavor profiles, and I think this was borne out in our tasting.

Prior to sampling the five reds, we tasted a 2005 Smith Haut Lafitte Pessac-Leognan Blanc, a rich sappy wine that showed its Sauvignon Blanc character in spades, with a floral nose of freshly mown hay, faint tropical fruit, and an oak note that grew with time in the glass. In the mouth, the grassy note was present as well as a brassy acidic element that dominated the finish. One could pick out perhaps the similarities to a very good Sancerre in the dominance of the Sauvignon Blanc here, but with an extra level of palate-coating richness lending the wine a hedonistic, almost exotic character.

On to the reds, which were introduced double blind for all but myself. It didn’t take long for the group to zero in on the Left Bank in Bordeaux, but several seem to slightly underestimate the age of the wines, perhaps due to some lack of familiarity with the glacial aging pace of the Medoc wines. Top honors, however, went to Board Member Lou Rittenhouse, who identified the Pichon Lalande in the lineup double blind as its telltale Petit Verdot green floral element emerged with time in the glass.

The 1996 Pontet Canet Pauillac showed well from the very beginning, with dark rich cassis nicely balanced with aromas of slightly green tobacco leaf. About half way through the tasting we noted that the green leaf on it almost gave it a Cabernet Franc aromatic profile, although the palate always struck me as more classically Cabernet Sauvignon sweetened by a healthy dose of Merlot. This is still very much a Cabernet dominated wine, however, with its firm tannins and emphatically stated structure—not the most complex wine of the night, but one of the best balanced with its rich core of sweet fruit softening the Pauillac steel.

The second wine in the lineup was the 1996 Pichon Longueville Baron Pauillac, which turned in a creditable if less than outstanding performance. Certainly a solid example of Pauillac in its overall balance, minerality, the aromatic profile and overall palate impression were just a little bit less powerful than that of the Pontet Canet. I bought this bottle at the Chateau, where I had tasted the 1996 up against the absolutely outstanding 2000, and the 1996 had suffered in comparison. The mid-palate richness is just not there at the same level in the 1996, and this seemed to be more subtly the case in the present company as well.

Third in the lineup was the 1996 Ducru-Beaucaillou St. Julien, which showed a distinctive nose of soy and mushrooms merged with rich ripe cassis fruit that I seem to recall even in a bottle of Ducru-Beaucaillou from 1982. One is tempted to label this as faint oxidation, but it never gets any stronger with time and simply seems to be part of the aromatic profile. Despite the softer aromas on the wine (which I recall also from an early tasting of the 1996 DB), the palate was still quite firm, but with a rounder aspect that distinguished it from the Pauillac in the lineup. The fine tannins here are nicely balanced by a rich, almost velvety mouthfeel that seems to grow in power on the finish. The wine seemed to ebb and flow over the course of the tasting, now losing some of its extravagant nose, now regaining it with a slightly different character by the end of the tasting.

Fourth up was the 1996 Pichon Lalande Pauillac, which had shown extremely well when tasted about seven years ago. Well, the performance was repeated here as the wine slowly evolved over the course of the evening, gradually expanding and unfolding to reveal new layers of complexity. The distinctive Pichon Lalande nose, which Lou Rittenhouse was able to recognize, only emerged clearly after about 45 minutes in the glass, appearing almost magically as if from some great unseen depth. I can only describe its nose as floral, although I cannot for the life of me think of what flower presents these rich, slightly green aromas, but it is very different in style from the green leaf aspect displayed by the Pontet Canet, for example. While the nose was slow in emerging, the power and finesse of the wine on the palate was apparent immediately, with the considerable but quite fine tannins buffered by a great depth of material—no bottom to be seen here. And its depth was matched by its length, with the half life for decay of the finish longer than some of the radionuclides targeted for disposal in Nevada. Yes, la Comtesse still rules…

Fifth in the lineup was the 1996 Sociando-Mallet Haut Medoc, which perhaps surprisingly seemed the wine that was most nearly ready to drink. Displaying an expressive menthol-tobacco nose, this wine was a little more workaday on the palate, with a finish that seemed a tad shorter than the other 1996 in the lineup.

We finished our dinner with a beautiful mousse au chocolat paired with a half bottle of the 2001 Chateau Suduiraut Sauternes. While this wine was delicious, with rich, sweeping sweet fruit flavors, I missed something of the almost symphonic clash of sugar, racy acids, and botrytis that had made an earlier bottle of the Suduiraut absolutely spectacular. Perhaps the pairing with chocolate was wrong, but more likely this wine is simply going in to a shell, and now needs some few years (maybe 10?) for its full potential to re-emerge.