On Saturday night, we had a very spoiling evening. A few years back a great friend of mine bought a collection of wines from the year of his birth. These were supposed to be drunk on his 40th Birthday but that came and went, so this dinner party of no particular occasion was organised instead.
To kick things off, we drank Krug Grande Cuvee which, as one would suspect, was absolutely delicious. Lovely and rich with plenty of complexity. I think it went down rather too well as the whole case was drunk. Yes, they were keen!
When we sat down for dinner, the first wine in the line up was 2004 Puligny Montrachet Champ Canet, Domaine Jean Marc Boillot. This was classic of the vintage – good minerality and with a lovely long finish, really superb.
With the main course we had a line up of First Growths; starting with 1966 Ch Margaux in magnum. This was very good indeed, it was lovely, elegant and very refined on the finish. The 1966 Ch Mouton Rothschild was more evolved and is now certainly showing signs of its age but still holding reasonably well.
Finally last but not least, moving forward a few years we ended on 1985 Ch Lafite. This seemed surprisingly closed so not typical of 1985 which on the whole tend to be more lush. Maybe we opened it too early?! Whichever way you look at it, having three First Growths in front of you and two of them older than me was quite something!
With the pudding, we moved onto a sweet wine. It was 1967 Ch Suduiraut and for me this was the wine of the night. It was magnificent, still fabulously fresh, very good acidity and hugely complex on the palate. It still has plenty of life ahead of it, a remarkable wine!
Finally with the cheese, we had another pair of clarets. These were 1970 Grand Puy Lacoste and 1986 Domaine de Chevalier which again were both very interesting. The Grand Puy Lacoste was very traditional and the 1986 Domaine de Chevalier was fairly tannic and structured. As you can imagine at this stage of the evening things were now starting to get a little blurred…
There was also a double magnum of 1966 Ch Lafite. Very sadly it was completely dead and when you poured it the glass almost looked like a strawberry smoothie. I’m not sure what was going on there!?