Whenever I bring this "little Bordeaux" out of the cellar, a discussion is inevitable, not heated, but definite. For once, there is no differentiation with my wife: "not a good wine". Full stop. Her otherwise well-formulated statements are never that clear-cut. In the worst case, she says: "I don't like this wine! I can accept something like that, but not so much her categorical rejection, which this time ends in the epilogue: "sour and without fruit". I probably expected something similar, even if I thought I had been particularly clever this time. To her question: "what good did you bring from the cellar?" I gave no answer, but went straight to decanting. A particularly beautiful carafe was henceforth its dress. I was convinced that I had outwitted her accumulated prejudices. Wrong! The comment - see above - came immediately and unmistakably.
However - and this is not the wine's fault - it seems to me clearly over-aged. Ten years too long in the cellar, unfortunately. It is not a wine to be cellared, it has simply been left lying around (with a few other bottles) because it is not my wife's wine. Because - even with so-called everyday wine - I always treat her to something good.
For me, Reysson is a "cru bourgeois", which - at least in our country - is usually judged below its value. It is a wine from the house of Dourthe, where some so-called "small" Bordeaux are made on different estates: Château Belgrave, Château La Garde, Château Le Boscq etc. There are about eight wineries that specialise in inexpensive and good wines from the Bordelais, wines that you can usually buy sight unseen even in shopping centres. But which - and this is perhaps the most important lesson from our domestic debacle - you have to drink early (at least earlier). Combine this with the fact that the Reysson 1996 (contrary to the quality of the vintage) is rather weak and perhaps even - as Gabriel says - slightly "unclean". Younger vintages - I recently drank the 2010 - are far better.