1999 Château Canon-la-Gaffelière

Vintage: 1999
Type: Red
Producer: Château Canon-la-Gaffelière
Variety: Red Bordeaux Blend
Country: France
Region: Bordeaux
SubRegion: Libournais
Appellation: St. Émilion Grand Cru



The Wooden Guys are running to see if their store has any more of this wine.

Night One

The nose starts with blackcurrants and mulberry, pencil lead and green olives. This is a real snoot-full, the sort of wine you can forget to drink, it's so easy to get lost in the different layers of the nose.

Deep dark brooding fruit leads the palate, mulberry, blackberry and blackcurrant. A little bit of redcurrant brings some bright acidity to balance the silky sweet tannins. Pencil lead, a bit of dark earth, and a touch of cedar show up on the mid-palate. The finish is mid-length.

Night Two

On Night Two the fruit, on the nose, seems lighter. Some red fruit has joined the black, a little black cherry and raspberry dancing with blackcurrant and mulberry. Pencil lead, some dark loam, and some cedar round out the nose.

The palate, on the other hand, is still dark, brooding, silky, and wonderfully smooth. Blackcurrants and mulberry, a little bit of blackberry, pencil lead, and a bit of the crispy end of a prime rib. Tannins are silky smooth, bringing just a bit of leather to coat the sides of your cheeks and coat your teeth. The finish is long.

This is good wine, very good wine. I think I'm going to go buy some more.

Other ratings include a 92 from Robert Parker, 88 from Wine Spectator, and 90 from Stephen Tanzer, all in 2002. Of them all, I would have to say Parker, who noticed the graphite, meat and sweet tannins (isn't the definition of genius "anybody who agrees with me"?), gave the best prediction of long-term quality.






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Chateau Branaire-Ducru 1999

Grand Cru Classe en 1855
Saint-Julien, Bordeaux, France
13% alcohol

The Wooden Guys liked this one!

Night One

The color is garnet, but starting to turn to brick. The rim thins out with a hint of brown just before it turns clear.

This wine has a big strong nose. It has a lot of barnyard funk to open, but that blows off quickly. Then it brings a lot of smoky meat, real cigar box (cedar and tobacco) and a bucketload of red fruit.

The palate is big, too. It carries that bucketload of fruit from the nose to the mouth. It has smoked meat, pencil lead, and cedar. Flowers join on the midpalate. Tannins are very fine but still powerful, a rigid backbone that offers a promise of more years in the cellar.

Night Two

Red fruit, lots of red fruit, opens the nose. Cigar box follows, cedar first, then if you sniff deeply, tobacco second.

I don't want to stop drinking this long enough to reveiw it. The palate, like the nose, explodes with red fruit. Pencil lead, cedar and tobacco, then violets and a touch of clove. Tannins are smooth and silky, but still retain enough power to coat and dry the mouth.

This is good wine. It is still fruity and a little tannic, hinting to a lot more life left in the cellar.

Domaine des Amouriers Vacqueyras 1999

$19.99 in Indianapolis
14% alcohol
France, Appelation Vacqueyras Controlee

The color of this one was interesting, a very deep dark ruby, almost like fresh blood in india ink (did I mention that I do some political cartooning, and that pen nibs can be very sharp?). It was also just slightly cloudy.

This is definitely not a "fruit forward" wine. If you're looking for parkerization or spoofilation, the nose will send you running. It is distinctly vegetal first, with brambles, mushroom, barnyard and a touch of tarragon, plus some wax, allbefore you start to find any fruit. There is a bit of black fruit hiding in the background, along with some black currant, but with the bottle only open an hour or so, you really have to look for it. It will be interesting to see if fruit makes more of an appearance the second night.

The first impression on the palate is grit. The second is tart fruit. Have you ever had native cherries or strawberries? They taste of cherries and strawberries, but mostly tart, very little sweet. Some sweetness is there but it seems to come more from florals than fruit, florals including violet and gardenia. Vegetals from the nose are in the palate, too - cloves, brambles, and just a bit of dirty hay from a barnyard floor. It also has gritty mouth-drying tannins. I am making it sound far worse than it is. This is a great big mouthful of wine with layers of flavors. The grit is a downside, but otherwise it works (assuming, again, you're not looking for Everclear and Welches). I am very curious to see if this comes together or drops off the map overnight. Aren't you?

Second night. It spent the night under a Vacuu-Vin closure and in the wine cellar.

The nose is, if anything even more vegetal, but more floral as well. To the herbaceous brambly smell add tarragon and some strong flowers, like magnolias and gardenias a day or two past bloom. I am still getting some wax, like, do you remember those little wax "candies" with juice inside that you used to get for Halloween, the ones that always had a waxy residue/taste? That is the wax smell. Okay, a few minutes in the glass and the smell is mellowing, the sharp herbaceous smell giving way to some meat, raw wet beef to go with tarragon and flowers.

Menthol, tarragon, that same wax and flowers open the palate. The meat is there too, perhaps a bit more bacony than beef, but not heavily smoked. Fruit is certainly more apparent the second night, blackberries, cranberries and plum skins, then cloves and pepper. It is a very interesting evolution in the mouth. Every stage has two or three tastes, which are one at a time replaced by the next, flowing all the way through from start to finish. Tannins are no longer gritty, or even dusty, though I would not go so far as to call them velvety.

Conclusion- I am surprised. Given that this was a 1999, just purchased at a wine store so probably not stored perfectly (only their top of the line stuff gets the temperature control), I expected it to fall precipitously from night one to night two, and instead it improved. This probably has a couple more years of cellar improvement in it. I am going to go back for more.