12 bottles per lot
Details
Château Latour--Vintage 1955
Pauillac, 1er cru classé
Three recently recorked and nine with embossed metal capsules, four slightly corroded. Bin-soiled labels, five slightly damaged. Levels: three top, four upper, three mid, one mid/low and one low-shoulder
Tasting Note: Very good wine, more complete and better balanced than the '52 and '53. Totally different in style and weight to the Lafite. From the start a deep purple, tannic wine, packed with fruit. Not remotely precocious but needing bottle age, its bouquet and flavour evolving through the 1960s and 1970s. At the age of 40, coming into its own. Several subsequent notes, slight variations due, as always to provenance and condition, five since the mid-1990s, one of the best opened on New Year's Eve 1997 with my family. Always reassuring to pull a good long original cork. It was drinking perfectly, with a lovely old flavour, its tannin subdued. Another wonderful bottle at John Jenkins' Bordeaux Club dinner. Still very deep, surprisingly intense and youthful looking; a fully evolved bouquet, classic, cedary, fragrant and ageing a little, but faultless on the palate. A passable but fractionally acidic bottle at a pre-sale tasting in Los Angeles (1999) and an impressive but imperfect magnum with a gravy-like nose and peppery finish at Len Evans' dinner in the Hunter Valley, Australia. Lastly, deep, healthy colour; perfect nose, flavour, balance and length. Complete. Faultless. Last tasted dining at Jeffrey Benson's, Feb 2001 ***** Will go on, and on. M.B.
12 bottles per lot
Pauillac, 1er cru classé
Three recently recorked and nine with embossed metal capsules, four slightly corroded. Bin-soiled labels, five slightly damaged. Levels: three top, four upper, three mid, one mid/low and one low-shoulder
Tasting Note: Very good wine, more complete and better balanced than the '52 and '53. Totally different in style and weight to the Lafite. From the start a deep purple, tannic wine, packed with fruit. Not remotely precocious but needing bottle age, its bouquet and flavour evolving through the 1960s and 1970s. At the age of 40, coming into its own. Several subsequent notes, slight variations due, as always to provenance and condition, five since the mid-1990s, one of the best opened on New Year's Eve 1997 with my family. Always reassuring to pull a good long original cork. It was drinking perfectly, with a lovely old flavour, its tannin subdued. Another wonderful bottle at John Jenkins' Bordeaux Club dinner. Still very deep, surprisingly intense and youthful looking; a fully evolved bouquet, classic, cedary, fragrant and ageing a little, but faultless on the palate. A passable but fractionally acidic bottle at a pre-sale tasting in Los Angeles (1999) and an impressive but imperfect magnum with a gravy-like nose and peppery finish at Len Evans' dinner in the Hunter Valley, Australia. Lastly, deep, healthy colour; perfect nose, flavour, balance and length. Complete. Faultless. Last tasted dining at Jeffrey Benson's, Feb 2001 ***** Will go on, and on. M.B.
12 bottles per lot
Special notice
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