Valandraud man

The Atlantic listed "The 100 Most Influential Americans of all time" and Robert Parker was one of them. This started a thread on Mark Squire’s BB, and I was mentioned as the “Valandraud Man” by Vera Lhener… A nickname I should certainly ad to my exisiting list!

In addition, François Mauss reviewed the recent tasting event in Paris which I participated in:

"All 1855 Bordeaux over 5 decades"

11 members of GJE (including Michel Bettane, Herwig Janssen, Dirk van der Niepoort) with 2 guests (JL Thunevin and Alan Plotnik) were invited at restaurant Laurent ** in Paris) , the 5th of december for a very special (and costly) tasting where we had :

Haut-Brion-Latour-Margaux-Lafite

in these vintages (semiblind : they knew what they were expected to taste):

1966
1975
1982
1990
2000

Origin of this tasting : as a lover of Haut-Brion, I was not happy at all with the recent results of this wine in the last tastings of Bordeaux by GJE during our regular sessions.

I did taste too, but since I take the last glass, I had a lot of sediments, and certainly Herwig will write his own comments.

The results are:

In absolute, per wine:

1 Margaux 1990 94,91
2 Latour 1990 94,35
3 Margaux 2000 94,19
4 Latour 2000 93,96
5 Lafite 2000 93,63
6 Haut-Brion 1982 93,62
7 Latour 1982 93,59
8 Haut-Brion 1990 93,45
9 Haut-Brion 2000 93,43
10 Margaux 1982 93,27
11 Lafite 1990 92,12
12 Haut-Brion 1966 91,33
13 Lafite 1982 90,88
14 Haut-Brion 1975 89,93
15 Latour 1966 89,71
16 Margaux 1966 89,41
17 Latour 1975 88,59
18 Lafite 1975 87,55
19 Margaux 1975 87,36
20 Lafite 1966 87,11

Most probably, the 2000 will overpass later the 90 who are, at some kind of peak actually.

I will not take too much room in this post, but it is easy for those interested to compute the ranking per wine in all vintages as well as the ranking per vintage.

Haut-Brion is n° 1 in the 3 older vintages, but in recent, we have latour and Margaux.

One possible conclusion : in recent vintages, obviously Haut-Brion is hidden and needs a minimum of 15 years to come out.

It was during this tasting that Laurent Vialette offers us this somptuous La Mission haut-Brion (white) of 1929.

Many thanks to those who offered us some of these bottles !

A great moment."