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Ausone 1985 - 2It is not one of the "great" Ausones - and yet it is a great wine. Ausone 1985. Many of my Bordeaux friends will now turn up their noses: once "only" 85 Parker points, later just 75 (tasting in 2003), and today...? I don't know, Parker would probably - ten years after his last note - empty it into the sink. For me, it's the Christmas wine this year. Christmas wine? I reflected on this in my column on www.wein-plus.eu: "...A Christmas wine is any wine that brings joy, contentment, pleasure, contemplation at Christmas. Grape variety, country of origin, price and style don't matter at all. In this sense, I wish everyone who likes wine a real Christmas wine - as once in childhood under the tree - or just - matter-of-fact worldliness - on the table..." And so it was yesterday with the Ausone 1985. A great wine, perhaps not quite as great as other Ausones. Maybe, but that's the way it is. Somehow you can also be Beckmesserei at a high (and highest) level. After all, the wine costs between CHF 300 and 400 today. Who would pay so much money for a bottle of wine that, according to the usual evaluation, is rated at most "average", usually even "weak"? Does one simply pay the name, the relation to an "outstanding" Ausone? For example, the 2003 (100 Parker points), for which one would have to pay 1,100 to 1,800 CHF?Ausone Weingut I don't think about such things when I'm enjoying my Christmas wine. Only afterwards - when the pleasure has faded away - do I think (now and then) about what to make of the whole price-performance-enjoyment-quality system. And again and again - very often, in fact - I come to the same conclusion: little or nothing at all. Wine pleasures cannot be pressed into a scheme. It is price tags that all too often mislead. They are as individual as a wine can be. Only if it is faulty (with off-tones, oxidised, inharmonious, corky, etc.) does it deserve to be labelled poor, weak, unsatisfactory, etc. (in the 100-point system between the two). (in the 100-point system between 50 and 75 points). My Ausone would have deserved 100 points as a Christmas wine. Knowing full well that there are better Ausones, that even - according to René Gabriel - as a "Premier Grand Cru from such a potentially great St. Emilion year, it is a bitter disappointment". The wine was still present yesterday, it was not just in the glass, no it withstood my quite critical sensory impressions: soft, open, warm, even harmonious and filigree, still full of aromas - preserved, even developed in the almost 30 years of its existence - although many of these (and other) characteristics are denied to it. What do I care about all this? The wine is not a disappointment, because what I expected was: a good, an enjoyable, a sensual Christmas wine. And this it has delivered.

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