I usually just lurk here, but must report a sort of double miracle. Night before last I pulled a bottle of 2000 Ch. Plaisance to go with braised short ribs. Unfortunately the highly rated (by some), inexpensive wine was undrinkable. Smelled and tasted like nail polish (or what I imagine nail polish to taste like). It was summarily dumped out.
In the slot in my cooled space (I'm in Florida, and I have an above ground, built-in wine "cellar" that I keep at a relatively warm 63 degrees F.) I found an old forgotten bottle. It was the 1982 Chateau la Garde (Graves). The wine was beautiful claret. Nice mahogany to purple still. Lovely cedary, earthy nose, and in perfect balance on the palate. Coffee, tea, what I take to be forest floor, all around a lovely core of cassis, black cherry, and plum notes with silky tannins. A full one-minute, layered finish.
The second miraculous part of the episode is that I remembered buying the wine in about 1985 when I was just beginning to buy wine to lay down. I got it at a beer store that had a bit of cheap wine. My price, $3.79!
Can't think of a better value in my experience.

Marc Branch wrote:
> I usually just lurk here, but must report a sort of double miracle.
> Night before last I pulled a bottle of 2000 Ch. Plaisance to go with
> braised short ribs. Unfortunately the highly rated (by some),
> inexpensive wine was undrinkable. Smelled and tasted like nail
> polish (or what I imagine nail polish to taste like). It was
> summarily dumped out. In the slot in my cooled space (I'm in Florida,
> and I have an above ground, built-in wine "cellar" that I keep at a
> relatively warm 63 degrees F.) I found an old forgotten bottle. It
> was the 1982 Chateau la Garde (Graves). The wine was beautiful
> claret. Nice mahogany to purple still. Lovely cedary, earthy nose,
> and in perfect balance on the palate. Coffee, tea, what I take to be
> forest floor, all around a lovely core of cassis, black cherry, and
> plum notes with silky tannins. A full one-minute, layered finish.
> The second miraculous part of the episode is that I remembered buying
> the wine in about 1985 when I was just beginning to buy wine to lay
> down. I got it at a beer store that had a bit of cheap wine. My
> price, $3.79! Can't think of a better value in my experience.


That's a great story, Marc. The longer I've been drinking wine, the
more I've become convinced that it's the rare bottle of wine that is in
fact too old. Even older bottles show so much character that it's very
rare for me to encounter one that is truly over the hill and dead.

Mark Lipton
(still hanging on to some '61 and '66 Bdx)

Nice story- I've liked la Garde before, never had one with that much age.