Chateau Maucaillou 1998

First had this wine in a beginners wine tasting class I was doing for Bacchus in Oxford about five years ago. This was being shown as the example of a Bordeaux left-bank wine. I thought at the time that it would benefit from a bit of age so went and bought a couple of bottles and completely forgot about it! Until now.

Five years on, it's still surprisingly young-tasting and looking. Red and opaque, although the rim is fairly watery. The colour on the rim is still more towards red than brown. The tannins are still very prominent and perhaps now a little out of balance to have on its own. However, with the stew I ate this with it all came together really well. Very woody on the nose with blackcurrant and tobacco. Medium bodied and smoky on the finish. Medium length. After about an hour and a half it opened up into something pretty amazing and I was reminded of what prompted me to buy it in the first place.

So all in all, not a bad little experiment. Plus it had the benefit of nostalgia from my early wine-tasting days. It is hard to pick up a decent wine from Bordeaux at any kind of reasonable price but this was not too expensive. Of course, it's all gone now.