1978 Las Cases and 1996 Calon, Cos and Leoville Barton

Cos D'Estournel 96', unbeatable

 Yesterday a few friends and I enjoyed a small horizontal tasting of 1996 wines, and a rather special birthday bottle.

First, the 1996 wines. We tried:

1996 Cos D'Estournel

1996 Leoville Barton

1996 Calon Segur

Opinions differed slightly on the Calon. Some felt it still very closed, even after an hour or so in the decanter.

Others said its nose was superb and it was a great example of Calon Segur's more recent output.

The Barton, we all agreed, was a little rough around the edges.

Las Cases, Barton, Cos and Calon, lined up

It lacked balance, but that may be been the bottle: One of our party has tried it previously and noted that bottle was quite different, as far as he recalled.

The Cos won, as Cos usually does in these circumstances. It still has decades to go, and the forest floor mustiness is just emerging, with so much fruit, depth, character, complexity and finish, it was the wine of the night.

The only one that competed, for very different reasons, was the 1978 Leoville Las Cases. This was something of an outlier to the others, impossible to compare really.

A St Julien wine, but overlooking the Latour vineyard in Bordeaux (Pauillac), some might say it had gone past its best. But for us it still had plenty of fruit, depth and complexity, with that wonderful aged claret nose and finish. A truly great "super second" that I doubt I will taste again, at least in that year.

The wines came from Fine and Rare. Not cheap, but well worth it for a special celebratory evening.