a question about aged bordeauxs

[newsguy]

can someone please explain this green/bell pepper thing to me? i've only had one "aged" bordeaux, and that was last month when i tried the '87 chateau talbot. by far the strongest characteristic in the flavor was green pepper, which i didn't care for at all.

last night i opened my bottle of '96 chateau cantemerle. it was on the shelves at a wine shop for a while before i bought it and put in storage for a couple years. i know i opened it a little early, but since i wasn't sure how long it had been on the store shelf (at higher than ideal temperature), i decided to go early rather than late. colorwise, wine reminded me very much of how the ch. talbot looked at 16 years old: a whole lot of bricking, though there were still quite a bit of tannins. and here again, a hugely prominent component of the flavor was green pepper. (though fruit was doing quite well and really opened up with time).

so, is it common for older bordeauxs to have that green pepper component? i can't imagine wines from the top chateauxs do, but the only first growths i've tried were young. someone *please* tell me that my '96 ch. montrose isn't going to be like this when i open it in '07!