Chateau Gruaud Larose, Grand Cru, St Julien, 1983

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:59:27 GMT

This was red bottle number two on inauguration night. And once again, another bottle of French. This was also the last bottle we won at the Dougy Center Auction -- which included a bottle of Petrus 1975! This was not that exactly, but, it was very good.

The nose exploded with all kinds of things: rose, sea salt, carmel, herbs, eucalyptus, and beefcake tomato -- which reminded Elizabeth of a caprese salad. Denise in usual form was shouting about how this was a lolita wine! Because it seemed young, sexy and flirty. Later, Elizabeth could smell salomon in there too. Kenny corrected her, it was smoked trout and I agreed.

The taste was also a broad mix -- really interesting. Chocolate. Cinnamon Black Cherry. Raisin. The body was medium and it was, according to Denise, "smooth like water". That is, it was very smooth. It had that deep, cold lake thing we often find in quality Bordeaux's. Here and there, you'd get a flash of peppermint and anise. The finish had various elements from above. Later on, we found firewood (maybe akin to the smoked trout smell?) and tobacco.

I attacked this bottle a bit too quickly, and nearly lost the cork into the bottle!

Oops. But I finagled it out in the end (luckily).

We also neglected to decant this, and paid for it when we got down to the last glass's worth of wine in the bottle. There was just a TON of sediment in there.

Bottomline: I really liked this wine and thought it was the best one of the night. However, Denise disagreed slightly. She liked the Chateauneuf du Pape (see the other reviews) better with the food we were eating (gorgonzola and crab leg tortellini), but thought this was a better wine overall. Either way, this was super yummy.

Cost:

Rating: 9.5

Decanterberry Tales - A Willamette Valley Wine Blog - stjulien tag

Chateau Gruaud Larose, Grand Cru, St Julien, 1983