“You know I still have that bottle of 1959 Latour…”
It became a bit of a running joke between Irish Times wine correspondent John Wilson and myself. We’d met about eight years ago on a press trip to California where we discovered we were born just a few days apart in one of the Bordeaux vintages. We also agreed that at some stage we would drink his last bottle of Chateau Latour 1959 together. True to his word, where a lesser man could have been excused for failing, John kept that bottle until this summer when we met up at Ballymaloe, East Cork.
Born a few days apart – John Wilson (r) and Peter Dean drinking their birth year bottle.
When a sommelier shows you goosebumps on their arm after opening a bottle you know a treat is in store. If I’d tasted the wine blind – like the two men drinking it (ha!) – I would have put it at least 20 years younger. It was uncannily fresh with secondary rather than tertiary notes. Classic aged First Growth with nothing out of sync.
John picked the wine up at auction for £25 many moons ago – always a punt but he clearly picked a winner. And then some.
Auction houses were where I first started buying wine seriously 30 years ago (at Sotheby’s and Bonhams), and in the past few years I’ve got back into the habit and picked up some beauties.
Although 1999 was not the best vintage of La Chapelle Hermitage, Jaboulet-Aîné the two magnums I picked up for about £100 a pop in auction over-delivered if that’s not too much of an under-statement. Broody, ferrous with lamb’s blood and spice, both were in great shape, better than I remember the standard bottles Wine Society sold 15 years ago.
What made it sweeter, from a buying perspective, was that the wines were incorrectly tagged as Crozes-Hermitage hence the lack of buyer interest. Get in! Also, I bought them in an online auction whilst holidaying in Sicily, drinking an espresso al fresco and feeling very much like the modern buyer.
Also from the same auction house was Volnay 1er Cru Les Caillerets ‘Clos des 60 Ouvrées’, 1995 La Pousse d’Or which I showed at wine club and is possibly my wine of the year (tied with the Latour). It showed the magic of Gerard Potel and how some plots in Burgundy punch way above their weight. Sensual, tea-like tannins, powerful, elegant – a wine that can justly be billed as ethereal.
With the annual charity ride Bike To Care taking part in Bordeaux this year there is a good deal of claret in my wines of the year. And Bordeaux Blanc. In fact, the first evening’s dinner at Haut-Bailly kicked off with a selection of top end white Graves the Malartic Lagravière 2016 beinghead and shoulders over the other wines. When the SB/ Semillon mix is just right in a top vintage, white Graves feels unbeatable, especially with thick chunks of cool foie gras. The balance was phenomenal.
The final gala dinner at Montrose had an extraordinary line-up which drew an uncharacteristic “Feck me!” from ex Decanter publisher John Stimpfig when he saw what was coming.
We were beaten into submission but if I had to declare a (surprising) winner it would have been Château Palmer 2010 which might not have been the ‘best wine’ but was showing the best on the night. We’re drinking a lot of 2009s and 10s at home, incidentally, and they are delivering their early promise, Pichon Longueville and Gruaud Larose 2009s are especially good.
Does 'house wine' get any better?
Bike To Care was 200km of cycling split across two (very hot) days. I never normally drink during a ride but lunch at Cheval Blanc on the first day with Château Cheval Blanc 2012 casually dotted like a vin de table across the shadow-dappled tables was an exception. You felt like a figure in an impressionist painting, the wine exuding a cool core connecting it to the dense clay underneath our cleats.
The highlight of the second evening was a magnum of Cos d’Estournel 2000 but then things got really silly with Nebuchadnezzars wheeled in and decanted with centuries-old aparatus. Wonderful times. (Read more about Bike to Care Bodeaux here).
Formats really change a wine which was re-emphasised at a tasting of various Guidalberto vintages with Priscilla Incisa della Rocchetta. The Guidalberto 2021, Tenuta San Guido in magnum had that ‘otherness’ that set it apart from the others in the vertical we tasted so I bought a six-pack of standard bottles on the strength of its showing but it’s as though it’s a different wine – just doesn’t have the ‘It’ factor that was apparent en magnum, which was a wine of the year, however! Maybe the 75cl bottles will develop – that’s one of the beauties of collecting wine, of course. (More about the Guidalberto tasting here).
Aside from the Lagravière other outstanding whites this year included: Rarity 1991 from Cantina Terlan, although all 10 vintages of this extraordinary Pinot Bianco, that we tasted at one of the events of the year, could have made it to this year’s list. Always aged for at least ten years in pressurised steel tanks high up in Alto Adige, this was a head-turning tasting, a report of which will be up this week on The Buyer.
Peter Hall’s death was one of the low points of the year and please, whoever takes on the vines and the winery, please don’t change a thing. In the short term Peter’s legacy lives on, though, and wines like Breaky Bottom 2011, Cuvée Oliver Minkley which is fresh as a daisy and a world class sparkler has decades ahead of it and proves (like Rarity) what can be done with an under-appreciated grape variety, this time with Seyval Blanc, blended as it is in this wine with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. (More about Peter Hall here)
While we wait for a seamless ‘baton pass’ at BB, François Cotat in Sancerre proves year in year out that, with hands-off winemaking, exceptional terroir can transcend the loss of a great winemaker, in this case his father. The new wines coming out of one of my favourite estates on the planet still deliver head and shoulders above other Sancerre – much the same as Raveneau does in Chablis. La Grande Cote 1996, François Cotat which was shown at wine club was a reminder of how Cotat’s wines can age. Truly mythical.
Also shown at wine club was l’Archiviste Banyuls 1965 which had a bit of a tale to tell. We bought a bottle for Giles for his significant birthday last year but his daughter left it in her car overnight and it being parked in Clapham the bottle, along with the rest of the contents, was stolen. But Giles managed to source another bottle and showed it to us blind. Mahogany-coloured, intense with layer upon layer of aroma and flavour – fig, walnut, toffee, orange peel, dried plums. Like Christmas in a bottle.
Another bottle with a tale was my last bottle of La Tourtine Bandol, Domaine Tempier, 2004 which I gifted to a friend Pascal in Tokyo. A couple of years ago he had been drinking a bottle of the 2014 vintage in Japan, sent me a pic and, bizarrely, I was drinking the very same wine – but the 2004 – which I obviously showed him. Over dinner in Tokyo, on a visit a couple of months ago he confessed that the one time he ‘really hated me’ for my access to fine wine in the UK was that moment.
With a bottle squirreled under the table which he hadn’t seen, he could not have set up a more perfect piece of timing.
“So how could I make it up to you Pascal?” I asked “What’s the one thing I could do to make amends for that?” as I handed him the bottle.
It’s nigh on impossible to source a wine like that in Japan – his eyes lit up and he went home cradling it like a baby, drank it over Christmas dinner with his wife Ayako and sent me this pic.
Pascal Masse, Christmas Day 2025, Tokyo
So, although I didn’t drink my last bottle of this exceptional wine, it was one of my wines of the year not only for the buzz I get seeing that photo, but because it confirms once again the power that great wine has between all of us who devote our lives to pursuing its many pleasures. Happy New Year!
New discoveries and new releases
And lastly, here are the new wines I’ve discovered this year: a trip to Sicily was a great opportunity to witness the buoyant wine scene there – ‘a Rina Etna Rosso 2022, Girolamo Russo was a sommelier’s suggestion for a complex tasting menu which was textural, vibrant and just this side of funky. Terre Siciliane Carricante 2023, Alberelli di Giodo served in magnum was an exceptional example of Etna’s signature white grape (full tasting notes here).
Ornellaia 2022 showed what could be done with this tricky vintage and augurs well for incoming winemaker Marco Balsimelli (more here). I also liked the 100% Merlot, La Côte 2022, Lascombes the new wine that Ornellaia’s outgoing winemaker Axel Heinz launched this year (interview here).
Back to Italy and the Il Marroneto Madonna della Grazie Riserva 2020 was phenomenal and a great example of how to achieve balance in an intense, ripe, flavour-packed Brunello di Montalcino. A review of the tasting soon to be posted on The Buyer.
The wines of Miguel Merino was another example of how exciting Spanish wine has become. I tasted then bought all of the wines – the Blanco and 100% Mazuelo wowing our many dinner guests in the year – with the top-tier red La Loma 2021, an ‘infused’ blend of 90% Tempranillo and Garnacha Tinta from a tiny singe vineyard was Rioja of the very highest order (full tasting notes here). Also, from a tiny plot in Rias Baixas, the Albariño do Ferreiro, Cepas Vellas 2024 from Gerardo Méndez has fruit coming from vines planted in 1790 and is finely textured, fresh and mouth-watering with a smash of saline on the finish (more new Albariño recommendations here).
Fizz-wise I loved the new cuvée Laurent-Perrier Héritage, Brut Champagne which is made from 100% reserve wines and punches well above its price point, if you pay over 10 times more you can get to taste Bollinger La Cote aux Enfants Champagne 2015 which, despite the difficulties of the vintage, is perhaps the best edition of this 100% Grand Cru Pinot Noir cuvée yet.
Sticking with Pinot Noir, The Upper Terrace 2022, Beaux Frères was a good example of just how good Oregon Pinot can get and, if you haven’t already discovered Waitaki Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 from Valli in North Otago then you need to play catch-up. My order is on repeat with New Gen!
New sticky of the year was Vin de Constance 2010, a limited edition ‘black label’ that has had over 15 years in barrel and was a magnificent way to celebrate Klein Constantia’s 340th anniversary (read more about it here).
