Jancis Robinson MW

Château Smith Haut Lafitte White 2020 - The Cathiards' 30th vintage. My saviour wine. Just when a bitter taste post-antibiotic for double pneumonia seemed to blight my impressions of all wines, this was the first wine that seemed free of it and gave me hope that my palate would be restored. I first tasted it on 22 Feb (last dose of antibiotic was 12 Feb) and kept retasting over subsequent days to check that I wasn’t kidding myself (high-acid whites generally seemed worse affected than full-bodied reds). Smoky-oaky nose and lots of fruit impact on the palate with masses of refreshing acidity too. Flatteringly satin texture with real pungency and interest on the end. Great balance. Just the right side of the oiliness that can dog some white wines from this appellation.

Château d'Yquem 1961 / Extraordinary in every way.Looked almost like black syrup, a PX, with gamboge rime. Smelt of treacle toffee and tea and moved like a thick treacle too.Very very sweet and concentrated. Certainly not fine but, amazingly, well balanced. A one-off. 23 and nearly at its peak. 19.5p

Château Montrose 1888 / Mid clear fox red. Sweet, tender, gentle. Wonderfully hedonistic. Liquorice again. Very Montrose – with a real core of rosy sweet fruit. Very rich, racy and thoroughbred – just like a wonderfully sinewy racehorse. Shiny. Not unlike the marvellous 1911. There was an extraordinary variation between the paleness at the top of the bottle and the dark graininess of the sediment at the bottom. Bravo!

Batàr is a wine unique among Italian whites, let alone Tuscan whites. It manages to be both rich and fresh and seems capable of evolving virtually forever.

M. Chapoutier Ermitage La Pavillon 2014 is very dark indeed. Real lift and twang to this on the nose. Very sophisticated. Surely long lived. Remarkably muscular.

Olivier Leflaive Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru 2014 – Reductive flint and smoke on the nose. Exquisite oak intergration – real mastery of the creaft here. Great volume, goegeous purity and superb concentration. Outstanding.

Ceretto Barolo Brunate 2013 –  La Morra. Pale ruby with orange tinges. Although the Brunate has the same ageing regime of one year in barrique, of which 10% was new, the oak is much more noticeable here than in the Bricco Rocche just tasted. Elegant and subtle focused fruit with fine, grainy tannins. Finely tuned, elegant wine with a subtle fresh finish. 17+/20 points.

Alión 1994 / Production was much smaller then than now. All bought in fruit of course. There are different phases for ageing of Ribera. After bottling it is depressed and then the wine starts to develop. After 8 months some reduction but not a problem because reduction protects the wine against ageing.After 7-10 years there will be light reduction. This is the 1994 stage currently. Some people will call this brett butit’s not because we have analysed all our wines. We have observed that the 1994 is leaving the reductive phase but the 1996 is approaching it. This is why these are the two wines from the whole set that are more difficult than most to understand. We prefer not to decant.
Blackish crimson. Slightly cheesey on the nose – even a bit dusty. A more traditional style than many – hint of burnt toast. Really interesting and logn – complete. Thick and sweet. Dusty finish. Rich but with lots of very firm tannins.

Penfolds Bin 144 Yattarna 2018 / Launched in 1998 with the 1995 vintage, Yattarna is the result of one of the most comprehensive, focused and highly publicised wine development projects ever conducted in Australia. The aspiration and independence of mind across generations of Penfolds winemakers inspired the ambition to create a white wine that would set the standard for ultra-fine Australian Chardonnay, a sortof 'White Grange'. They aim to source and select only the very best Chardonnay fruit from cool-climate regions, in this case Tasmania, Tumbarumba, Adelaide Hills. The name Yattarna is drawn from local indigenous language, meaning ‘little by little, gradually’. Acidity 7.3 g/l, pH 3.12. Aged for eight months in French oak barriques (60% new). All three regions enjoyed a relatively wet winter and spring, setting the vines up with healthy soil moisture profiles for the ensuing growing season. Tasmania experienced clear and generally warm conditions from January onwards, with no extreme heat spells leading into harvest. The temperature breached 35 °C only once in January, resulting in optimal conditions for ripening. Tumbarumba had plentiful rainfall right up to December, when a dry spell set in. In February, temperatures were generally cool allowing for slow, consistent ripening. The Adelaide Hills fruit set was slightly above average. The region experienced a warm finish to the growing season, but well-developed canopies shielded the fruit from adversity and ensured the berries ripened evenly. Harvest was an orderly affair across the three regions. 

Fine, complex, really rather burgundian nose and great crystalline fruit and grip without austerity. The acidity level is really quite high compared with many other Chardonnays. Pretty smart. You would be very happy with this if labelled Puligny-Montrachet actually. Good stuff and it should have a long life but could be broached already.

Opus One 1979 / Fully mature, brick rim but good depth of crimson too. Sweet, gentle fully mature nose. Not desperately intense but certainly eloquent enough. Quite a luscious palate entry with a bit of acidity showing now and some dryness on the finish. As though this wine is going downhill but very, very slowly. Not especially alcoholic. Fresh, refreshing. Contrary to popular folklore, Opus claim they didn’t poach fruit for this from the 1979 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Reserve because Lucian Sionneau of Mouton chose the leaner samples, leaving the fatter ones for Reserve. Only 10 day skin contact and he captured some of the press wines to mitigate this.

Cristal 2008 / 16% malo, only on Pinot Noir from the Montagne de Reims. ‘There were lots of similarities with 1996, which gave us the possibility to replay the 1996 vintage! Maybe we picked 1996 a bit early so in 2008 we waited longer, by at least a week, than in 1996. Lots of tasting – far more than in 1996 when Roederer based picking only on analysis – and there was no malo in 1996.’ For the first time ever, they decided to release it later than the younger vintage, 2009 – so 2008 had nine years on lees. The last batch of 2008 will be disgorged in March 2019. (Scan the back label via the Roederer app to get the disgorgement year.) Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon is coy about the assemblage. ‘I’m looking for chalkiness.’ In 2008 60% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay, which reflects perfectly the balance of their plantings. 40% of the estate was biodynamic then.
Really dense nose with lots of evolution but still extreme freshness. Some apple-skin character. Bone dry but wonderful lift and freshness. Long and super-lively. Real undertow, but very racy on the nose. Lots to chew on. Really elegant!