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Latour à Pomerol 1981I drank the wine because of a Facebook discussion. It was about a bottle of L'Evangile 1981, characterized by a wine friend with the short, pithy word: "disappointed". Of course, that's when the discussion started: "I also had an 81 10 days ago, unfortunately it wasn't a pleasure either." And we had already arrived at the 1981 Bordeaux vintage, which was already controversial at the time: "For those regrettably ill-informed people who call 1981 a classic vintage, this term simply means that it is a typically good Bordeaux vintage with medium-weight, well-balanced, graceful wines. However, despite a round dozen of excellent wines, 1981 is in reality only a good vintage, surpassed in quality by most recent vintages," Parker wrote ten years ago.(2004). Today, the vintage is considered to be rather weak - also due to the development of the wines: "81 has probably long since gone to the eternal hunting grounds in Bx, with very few exceptions. It was simply not a long-lived year". And a conclusion: "I'll never understand why you can buy BDX vintages like 1981 'today'".

Such discussions are exciting, as they show how differently old Bordeaux are valued and/or what one expects from old wines. I understand that one can be disappointed by an Evangile 81, the wine is still traded today around 100 euros (and more). One has the right to expect something that has to do with pleasure. Is one allowed to do so? Certainly, if you consider what you are spending a hundred euros on (in real or theoretical terms). But there is another aspect: that of maturing, becoming, changing, passing away. Even wines - at least those that can be stored - go through something like "phases of life". Old wine drinkers are above all interested in these phases, the different stages of a wine, but also how wine was once made. In the 1970s and early 1980s, not only was the philosophy in viticulture and vinification (including Bordelais) quite different from today, but the possibilities of technology have also changed. Thus, an 81 is not just an 81 of a more or less famous château, it is also a document of time, which - if the wine is not yet "dead" - can be incredibly exciting and also enjoyable. Especially when you take your time to listen to the wine, discovering characteristics, aromas, harmonies that you have hardly noticed or paid attention to so far.DSCN4543

For this reason, I drank the Latour à Pomerol 1981 yesterday, more so, spent the evening with it. Latour à Pomerol is not an Evangile, a good two classes lower (if there were classifications in Pomerol) or expressed in terms of today's retail price, 100 to 40 euros. The wine, that is, the much smaller Pomerol, was not a sensation, not a great wine, in the pattern of today's wine style or consumption. So it was not "cool" at all, but rather exciting, contemplative, interesting - a good or passable old wine. It was not dead or otherwise damaged (off-key, oxidized, over-aged, etc.), it was simply old. The question is: What does this mean, what has become of the wine? In colour still with a surprising amount of blue-bordeaux red, few brick tones, slightly brownish edges. In the nose a bit dull at first, then deep, deeper and deeper, like going into a forest, with bushes, trees, but also clearings. I decanted the wine (as I decant all wines - even old ones). Over the course of the evening it opened up, releasing aromas that delighted me at certain stages, it was a quiet but beautiful panopticon of flavors that I can only find and experience in old wines. The wine - compared to today's Bordeaux - was certainly thin, rather lean (as the opposite of fat) and - at first sip - boring, inconsequential. But then - gradually - something developed that can lead to enjoyment (in the usual sense of the word), in this case led to it, something that gave me a voyage of discovery, into the world of old wines. Sure, I've had many better wines, including old ones, much older. But why must we always compare, put things into perspective? I spent the evening with an 81, which was able to develop for 33 years and has become old (can no longer keep up with the young), but has something to offer that only age can offer: the experience of many years of change and development, the result of having lived, even if it was "only" a wine life, and what has become of it, I have absorbed as a real gain and pleasure.

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