Two 1996 Cortons – well, that was a waste of time!

24.3.2022billn

1996 Cortons

The 1996 Castagnier of the weekend was just so damn good – so why not a couple more from 1996?

I’d been doing a little cellar-sorting and had happened upon (as you do…) some older Cortons – that would work!

1996 Thomas-Moillard, Corton Clos du Roi
A cuvée that Clive Coates used to love from this producer that, like most Corton of the era, was something of a masochistic pleasure when younger. The cork had no more than a mm of wine that had had tried to travel up its length and was very impressively robust – a great cork! Or not. The wine was actually corked!!!
Rebuy – No

1996 Hospices de Beaune, Corton Cuvée Charlotte Dumay
Way back when, I scored a whole case of this – do you remember 12-bottle cases of grand crus? Just two remained from this case – a wine equivalently masochistic as the TM when young but, historically, a bit less energy and flavour precision than the TM. Also a decent cork but a wine that smelled much sweeter – though with a tell-tale accent of brett. Just for information, I like Marmite (Vegemite) on my toast but within short order, this wine absolutely stank of the stuff. Pinch your nose and you could lose some of it – but NO! I could no-longer put it in my mouth. Reject!
Rebuy – No

Some weeks, the cellar depletes faster than other weeks!

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There is one response to “Two 1996 Cortons – well, that was a waste of time!”

  1. R Norman24th March 2022 at 7:57 amPermalinkReply

    Bill, the Moillard reds, in my experience of them, were mediocre at best, as your assessment of the 1996 Corton confirms. Best wishes.

    • billn24th March 2022 at 8:04 amPermalinkReply

      R
      A surprising comment from the perspective that ‘corked’ has nothing to do with the quality of a wine…

      However, 😉
      A few notes on my interactions with others about the TM wines that I put online this week:

      Clive (Coates) actually did call this wine Grand Vin – he often bestowed 20/20 on that wine and TM’s Bonnes-Mares too – I wouldn’t go quite that far but they are usually more than very good, often showing great dimension but in a slightly agricultural style…

      It was really 06-onwards with consultation work by Pascal Marchand and Bernard Zito that the wines had the chance to show a bit more class – they had already converted part of the estate to organic – but moving away from their big old rotary fermenters which extracted so much they turned the grapes to soup was a necessary step, because in years where the material extracted easily like 99 and 05 they made some brutal wines.

      Old – ie 30+-years-old – TMs always managed to impress – the younger ones only by chance.

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