A Sense of Style

To get the whole gang together isn’t easy.  We’d been waiting for The Young One to find time to take time out, and with JoLo also working hard, some things must be spontaneous.  With the arrival of The Chairman and Jelly Bean Girl, it all clicked, and the opportunity presented itself where we could open some celebratory bottles with a sense of style.  The One Young has some anniversary wines, so three of the more interesting ones were earmarked for dispatching over dinner.  The classical Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhone comparison was the theme, and all from 1992, so the wines were 21 years old.  Not the greatest vintage for sure, but hopefully the labels would provide some interest…

The lightest wine was first up.  A 1992 Domaine Romanee-Conti Romanee-Conti is about as good as you can get from Burgundy.  Clearly lighter in colour, this was redolent with all the perfumes you could wish for.  Waves of red florals, a line of dried herbs and some complexing undergrowth and game.  Quite beautiful, really.  The vintage came through on palate.  Though full of ethereal flavours, the wine was essentially light in weigh and high in acidity.  Just not the ripeness, sweetness and body there.  The mouthfeel seemed resolved in texture and grip.  With some time, the tannin backbone became more apparent, and some fruit interest too.  But the acidity was the driving force.  There was a sense of beauty, and especially florality on nose to this, but it was slender, though not too meagre in mouthfeel.  As the wine received air time, a little soy sauce oxidation peeked through.  Most of us enjoyed this the most, including The Chairman.  Certainly The Young One did.

Middle ground was a 1992 Guigal ‘La Turque’ Cote-Rotie.  Much darker in colour, the bouquet was a strange conglomeration of black fruits and savoury herbs.  The wine had moved on with no trace of primary peppery character, and definitely secondary, if not tertiary characters.  Though riper and sweeter on nose, not necessarily more attractive than the burgundy.  However on palate, definitely sweeter, richer and riper.  Black fruit and earth flavours melded with dark gamey herbs.  And all underpinned by a fine grainy tannin line.  Some suggestions of exotics and opulence were present, making it a comfortably sweet and satisfying mouthful of wine.  As the wine got more air time, the fruit started to fade, and the tannins became a little more prominent, as did the acidity, and the harmony it had took a step back.  I was a greater fan of this one for sure, but it was a cooler expression of La Turque as I know it.

Then the big one.  1992 Ch. Petrus Pomerol.  Dark and still with an impenetrable black-red heart, this was a beast of a wine   Volume and density on the nose, and weighty and solid with a robustness on palate.  Dark black fruits still very evident and marked by strong dark herbs and vegetal notes.  And plenty of animal all interwoven, the game and meat too savoury for SWMBO.  The brettanomyces in this very marked, but integral, too.  The flavours were framed by blocky tannins and rugged structure, as well as a streak of acidity.  All of this added up to firmness,  greenness, depth, and gaminess.  As the wine sat in the glass, as we weren’t drinking it heartily, it grew in game and earthy spoilage.  A pity, as essentially, this was the most youthful of the three.  We’re sure that this would find favour among many others, but not us tonight.

We tend to have a mix of technical and style views when it comes to appreciating wines.  On the work side, we’re technocrats.  When we are drinkers, we look at wines with a sense of style.  Technically these were a little weak or worse, but in the scheme of things, these were wines with pedigree and a sense of style.