Thursday, May 26, 2011

Another experiment with surpising results

Every now and then, you learn something new about a wine you thought you knew and, maybe, an experiment pays off. I had more or less given up on the 1996 and 1997 Clos du Papillon years back after they seemed to go into an oxidized spiral. I decided to let a couple of bottles sit just to see what would happen.

1997 Domaine des Baumard Savennières Clos du Papillon
The first thing to grab me was the color, a light yellow tinged white rather than a golden color. The nose was full of pretty flowers and wet stones. What was piercing intensity as a young wine, was lithe grace as an older wine. On the palate, it was organized, but the big structure had faded to a latticework of slender, interconnected elements. The wine was lively on the palate, but in a mature wine way, not an intense puckering way. This is exactly how I had hoped these wines would turn out, but they never looked like they would get here. Maybe it was just a good bottle. Maybe as soon as they started showing weird, I should have hid all of my bottles. Anyway, as these things tend to work out, this was my last bottle. If you have any, I strongly encourage you to dip in.

4 comments:

Scott said...

Wow. I gave up on these ages ago. Damn.

the vlm said...

I know, I did too. That's what really blew me away. It could be just one lucky bottle, I have no idea.

Iuli said...

I had mixed experience with these over the last couple of years. Some of the bottles were a bit oxidized but still pretty. One bottle was perfect, and as you described.

Strangely, i thought the 'Papillon' aged more gracefully than the 'Trie Special', which I thought was the superior wine when I had them next to each other ten years Ago.

nice to see you posting again. happy summer.

Cliff said...

I had a run of sucky ones for awhile and managed to save one in the interest of science. I will have to dig it out soon. Thanks for the prompt.