Wide, red fruited and floral – you could think a 1990s wine! Supple, almost liquoreux, long a touch of tannin, almost but not quite touched by astringence. Very long. Just delicious and blind you would say needs a couple more years! The way the tannin still shows, I wonder at what age it first became drinkable! An honour to have tasted twice!
Bouchard Père et Fils
1928 Bouchard Père et Fils Beaune Avaux
From a heavy glass bottle that at first glance looks more like a magnum. The label indicates this as a premier cru, though the vintage pre-dates premier cru AOC’s by about seven years – it was labelled after 1935 says my host! Vernal colour, medium at the edge, deep at the core. The nose is hardly older than Le Corton and slowly widens to provide tiny red berry fruit aromas. In the mouth it’s ripe, but not too ripe and very long. Despite the quantity of solid material in the bottles (and some glasses) this vigorous wine still shows a lick of tannin and never faded in the glass over 2 hours. It isn’t magical in terms of complexity – it shows too damn young – rather it’s magical in terms of what it delivers from a a very different world of eighty years ago. Blind you might place this as late 1980’s early 1990’s – that’s clearly magic!