Sunday 10 April 2011

My First First

This is one of the great pleasures of blogging. You can write whatever you want and no-one can do more than post a snotty reply on your blog, which you can then, of course delete. With that in mind I shall record my first taste of a first growth claret. As a wine bore in the making, this is both a event of geekery, luxury and frankly enormous generosity on the part of a friend who presented this bottle at a recent meal along with a sterling steak and chips (is there a better accompaniement to claret?).

I would love to wax lyrical and roll out a Jilly Goolden like rollcall of tasting notes but rather than fill the screen with the predictable (blackcurrant, cassis, pencil box, lead, spice etc) what actually struck me most was the endless length of this wine, the freshness of the fruit that suggests a good couple of decades of life ahead of it, even at 28 years of age, and a concentration the like of which few now have the budget to enjoy and which I will remember for some time to come.

For anyone who doubts the sheer grandeur of Bordeaux's greatest, if you ever have the chance, indulge.