1970 Chateau L'Arrosee

[TheEngineer]

I'm reporting in from Hong Kong these next few week and meeting up with friends other folks.

I was worried that the bottle would be very bottle sick. Super condition bottle. only about 1/4 inch between fill line and the cork. Cork came out in perfect shape.

On opening, this wine was still very fresh after the travel and the colour, while leaning towards the brownish hues, was still mostly deep garent/brick. The winophiles are the table were impressed with the condition.

Nose was very perfumey, but muted after the travel. Lots of secondary notes, nuts, leather, mushroom, but it was light and racy still. It took some time to open back up in the glass.

[This message has been edited by TheEngineer (edited 11-28-2006).]

[winoweenie]

Have had some terrific bottlings from this St Emilion producer ( 82, 85, and 86) and also feel over the past 10 years this property has underachieved. Haven't bought a dram since the 86. Never had the pleezure of trying the 70 so I'm delighted it made a trip of over however far it is and showed well. Have fun. WW

[TheEngineer]

WW, the people that I opened this with said exactly the same thing that you said. Most have never had the 1970 but they all noted that since the late 80' they all stopped purchasing L'Arrosee (in fact many thought that the 70 was considerably in better shape and quality than the 90 from Arrosee). Interesting to hear what wineophiles from around the world think! I have one more from the 70's. I'll bring it to the next offline whenever we get together!

[winoweenie]

Had some fine bottles from 70 and also some terribly dissaponting ones. The same with the supposedly outstanding 75s'. Ended up doing the Buckster Shuffle(trading) on most of mine after cellaring thwem for 10 years. Did make a sizable investment in the 2000 Bordeaux. WW

[TheEngineer]

I pulled what I thought was a second bottle of this and I had purchased it at a different time. When I cut the capsule, it surprised me. The cork on top read 1996 while the rest of the cork read 1970. I'm guessing that this was a Chateau held bottle and then recorked for shipping. I was looking forward to see if there was much of a difference.

In fact, I think I preferred the original bottle.... This one was just fine too, the wine was solid, opening up jsut a bit funky but then moving forward with some nice forest, earth, nuts, mushroom, leather, and then the fruits even emerged better in this bottle which survived a long night (12 hours in the bottle), but it felt just a tad more reserved than I remember the previous bottle to be. Nonetheless, a nice bottle.