1983 Ch Margaux, 2000 Leoville Las-Cases, 1998 Cos D’Estournel, 2000 Pichon Baron…

Covid-19 has certainly disrupted lives and businesses but life must still continue, for we cannot allow ourselves to be paralysed into a downward spiral. Those of us from the Professorial team that had dealt successfully with SARS seventeen years ago gathered again on 18 February 2020 at Jade Palace (good to see the place still teeming with life) to commemorate our inaugural dinner that had taken place back in 2003. The theme was supposedly Bordeaux 2000 but, in the end, nobody really cared.

2012 Joseph Drouhin Puligny-Montrachet Les Folatieres 1er. Lovely luminosity. Glowing gleaming tone, imbued with delicate chalky minerals and faint overtones of crème de la crème. Developed further notes of raw nutmeg and exotic white fruits over time as it grew in intensity with better definition and focus, laced with sleek acidity. Very fine.

1998 Ch Cos D’Estournel, courtesy of CY. Deep crimson. Powerful bouquet of mature red fruits that exude glowing plummy tones with a lovely gentle earthiness amid very fine understated graphite elements. Medium-bodied. Fleshy and rounded with good transparency and suppleness, well layered with dark cherries and ripe wild berries that are neither gruff nor succulent. Drinking well.

2000 Domaine de Chevalier Rouge. Deep crimson, proffering just a subdued earthiness at first, almost shy. Medium-bodied. Sleek but somewhat narrow in spectrum. Rounded with good harmony, balance and proportion. Not showy. Developed some early medicinal characters after some time, eventually finishing with lifted plummy tones. A little underwhelming compared with a previous tasting two months ago.

2000 Ch Pichon Longueville Baron, courtesy of V. Deep garnet with some evolution, exuding a deep velvety plummy glow. Fleshy with very good concentration and complexity, structured with exciting tannins though it was a tad narrow in body. Still youthful.

2000 Ch Leoville Las-Cases, courtesy of the Professor. Deep purple with some evolution. Its impeccable pedigree is immediately apparent at the first whiff where velvety dark fruits and berries abound on the nose, matched by excellent concentration of fruit with a fleshy suppleness on the palate amid traces of varnish and herbs, its quiet intensity and sophisticated tannins imparting a certain aloofness. Almost aristocratic, as if it knows that it belongs amongst the best. Still not quite ready, I feel, for it may need another decade to develop an additional dimension in complexity.

Blinded Red #1. Deep crimson. This wine opened with a hint of capsicum on the nose amid gravelly tones with a faint delicious trace that lit up with exuberant bright red cherries and sweet red plums on the medium-full palate, layered with cedary characters on the floor. It tasted familiar but certainly not quite Bordeaux though I couldn’t quite place my finger on it. No wonder…it turned out to be the 2000 Parker Estate Terra Rossa First Growth, courtesy of Kevin H. What a spoiler.

Blinded Red #2. Deep crimson with vermilion at the rim, delivering soft floral fragrances with understated characters of sweet incense. Fleshy and open with fine definition and inner detail that traverse the palate with excellent linearity, culminating in melted tannins that still conjure tantalising excitement and intensity. We were right in deducing it to be an ’80s Left Bank….a 1983 Ch Margaux, no less, courtesy of Tall Man. Superb.