Château Gruaud Larose, 2ème Cru Classé, St Julien, 1986
This was the undoubted star of the St Julien UGC tasting. Unlike many others, extractions seem to be spot on here; there is a real purity and intensity to the fruit that is very alluring, but it is the gentleness of the extractions that allows the fruit to sing over the tannins. The palate is awash with beautiful red and black berry flavours; mineral, yet clear with complex stony fruit notes. This is a very sleek, refined Gruaud with wonderful energy and freshness. Bravo. * It is worth noting that we tasted at the St Julien UGC at the end of a very long day. We felt that the samples were not necessarily representative. Our notes are an honest account of what we tasted, however, we are sure that the wines are much better than our notes suggest.
critic reviews
The 1986 Gruaud Larose is a vintage that has cropped up several times at various dinners, and after the splendid 1982, it vied with the 1989 as the best of the decade. A magnificent-looking imperial is poured at Zoldering in Amsterdam. This indicates that a proportion of the fruit has faded in recent years, rendering the aromatics a bit distant and standoffish, in direct contrast to the 1982 that doesn't disguise its desire to give sensory pleasure. The palate is medium-bodied with firm tannins that are typical of this vintage. A little austere at first, it requires time to open in the glass, black fruit conveying a Graves-like personality, warm gravel/terracotta notes infusing the slightly faded black fruit, perhaps just a little Brettanomyces towards the finish. Maybe a bit unyielding for some Bordeaux lovers, it is a vintage I would broach in the near future. Gentleman's claret? Tasted in January 2024.
Still remarkably youthful, my most recent bottle of the 1986 Gruaud Larose exhibited an impressively opaque hue, followed by aromas of blackcurrants, cigar ash, loamy soil, pencil shavings and subtle hints of smoked meats. Full-bodied, deep and concentrated, it's a rich but tightly wound wine, with a deep core of fruit, lively acids and an abundance of powdery structuring tannin. Incredible as it may seem, it's comparatively advanced bottles of this 1986 that are drinking best today, as pristinely stored examples with perfect corks are still almost painfully youthful.