With Hart, YZ, Sloke, Sean and Tabs, at Sloke’s.

You know the Chateau. You know the vintage. This is a potentially monstrous wine.

Slow-ox 2hrs + 1.5hrs in decanter. Peaked at around 3hrs in the decanter.

In the glass: surprisingly medium bodied with some translucence. Bright ruby with a distinct pink note.

Nose: Fresh off the bottle, this actually smells a fair bit like the Echo. Pure blackcurrant and blue berries. Huge but delicate waft of oak, with a sweet vanilla, milk chocolate. Mint. Tobacco. 2B pencil lead. The wine is so. FRESH. Interestingly, the wine shut down about 30mins into aeration and its nose became imperceptible for a good hour after.

On the palate: wow. This is silky BUT with distinctly grippy tannins. Mid+ acidity. Mid bodied, but high concentration. This is intense, but fresh and surprisingly, very pretty?? It’s not muscular like I had expected this to be.

I thought the wine peaked around 3 hours in the decanter, when the sweet oak receded and allowed the cedar, tobacco and fresh minty lift to edge forward.

This has been so surprising for me. I thought this would be a BIG muscular wine. It turned out to be intensely.. elegant? Finessed? Idk. Wines like this forces me to acknowledge that some magic can truly only be unlocked with money haha.

This wine is SO young still. It’s entirely primary fruits with secondary notes directly from the oak. SO fresh and perfumey. It’s well drinkable now but an aaaabsolute and complete baby, which is wild given that this is a 15 years old wine. Doubt I’ll touch my stash for another 5 years maybe? I’m under-rating this wine to give me some allowance as it ages