All I want for Christmas is a magnum of Ch. Grand Puy Lacoste 1986 (done!)
perfect cork
This has been a week of good wine drinking. First a visit to The Sampler with Sarah and now Christmas Day and a magnum of Ch. Grand Puy Lacoste 1986. My friend James had been dying to open this one up ever since he bought it and what better time than Christmas Day! Bordeaux is one of my favourites but I don’t get many chances to drink aged Bordeaux.
Christmas red
One of the better estates in Paulliac, Ch. Grand Puy Lacoste was classified as a fifth growth back in 1855 but it’s such a consistent and well made wine, that many consider it to be as good as if not better than many a second growth in Bordeaux.
1986 was a hot summer producing thick skinned grapes yielding wines with plenty of firm tannic structure. On the 23rd of September there was a thunderstorm in the Medoc which missed the northern part. The result being that Paulliac and St. Julien were spared, enabling them to produce dry and compact wines. Wines with great minerality and aromatics.
wine &"crackers"
A blend of 75% Cab, 25% merlot and aged in 30% new oak, it’s best served at 19 degrees, the perfect temperature for such a wine with quite a tannic structure. We could smell the cassis even before pouring the wine into the glass. Notes of cedar, graphite, coffee cream (James said. I got more of a fresh coffee bean aroma) and sweet licorice. On the palate an intense fruit core, rich, ripe blackcurrant predominately, excellent tannic backbone to hang the fruit on along with plenty of acidity to balance it out. Drinking perfectly at the moment and the quintessential food wine for the holidays, marrying fabulously with the turkey and all the trimmings, except for the braised red cabbage, but what goes with that, anyway?
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Great Post. I hope you don’t mind me posting here. I love your site, I’m looking forward to your next article
I adore Krug so don’t mind a plug for you guys! 🙂
I have a couple younger bottles of theirs that I picked up a few months ago while visiting them!
Great winery and great juice!
Lucky you, getting to visit the winery! I’m making a new year’s resolution to get over to the Continent a bit more and visit more vineyards and wine regions in 2010. I couldn’t agree more, a great wine. I also tried their second wine, the Lacoste-Borie which was very good but part of my Thanksgiving Day wine disaster! Watch out for friends topping up their glasses with Jacob’s Creek! 🙂
Oh! Lovely Denise. Sounds like a very special wine for Xmas day. Love the background too 🙂
Thanks! It was a fabulous wine to have on Christmas Day, makes you appreciate it all the more.