| Region | |
|---|---|
| Subregion | France > Bordeaux > Right Bank > Pomerol |
| Colour | Red |
| Type | Still |
View all vintages of this wine | View all wines by Vieux Château Certan
Tasted at Pebbles/Zachy’s 1982 dinner in Hong Kong. This is the best bottle of VCC 1982 that I have encountered. The reason is that you can feel that three grape varieties all working together to create a multi-faceted Pomerol that is really coming into its own. It has a wondrous bouquet that is very savoury with meaty notes, Asian spice and a touch of bitter chocolate, all with outstanding definition. The palate follows suit with supremely expressive Cabernet Franc that lends the 1982 so much character, a part of its personality that was less pronounced a few years ago. There are lovely saddle-leather, animally notes infusing the dark berry fruit with a hint of sage and heather on the grainy finish. Maybe this VCC is improving as it enters its fourth decade? Tasted November 2012.
Not yet fully mature, this wine reveals some amber at the edge as well as a complex, intoxicating nose of cedar, licorice, spice box, black currants, and cherries. While medium to full-bodied with sweet tannins, and beautiful concentration, it appears to me that more recent vintages are stronger and denser than the 1982. Nevertheless, it is a beauty that can be drunk now and over the next 15-16 years
The 1982 Vieux Château Certan didn't make waves in its youth, yet it is going from strength to strength today. Produced by Léon Thienpont, four years before his son Alexandre took the helm, it offers up rich aromas of mulberries, black truffle, forest floor, spices and cedar. Medium to full-bodied, fleshy and enveloping, with an ample core of fruit, melting tannins and an expansive, sapid finish, this is a comparatively underrated 1982 Bordeaux today.
Bottle variation, for reasons that escape me, have plaqued all my tastings of this wine. It has hit full maturity and is certainly not one of the most profound Vieux Chateau Certans, but nevertheless a very seductive, delicious, round, and savory wine that offers notes of open wood fire intermixed with roasted herbs, dried sweet cherry fruit, and an intrigiung peppery, almost tapenade sort of nose that suggests Provence more than Bordeaux. In the mouth it is lush, succulent, and medium bodied, with outstanding concentration, low acidity, and sweet tannin. The wine may turn out to fool everybody and last another two decades, but it seems to me that, to maximize its pleasures, it should be consumed over the next decade. Anticipated maturity: now-2010. Last tasted, 11/02.
An herbaceous, cedary, spice, and fruitcake-scented bouquet jumps from the glass of this medium ruby/garnet-colored wine. More complex aromatically than on the palate, this supple, velvety-textured effort exhibits abundant glycerin, an open-knit, expansive mouth-feel, but not the depth, power, or density of the vintage's finest efforts. Fully mature, it requires consumption over the next 5-7 years.
