With the crew at the 2025 Christmas Celebration.

This was a puzzling drink. We’ve had the PC 2014 a billion times and it’s always been great. This tasting was, well, different.

In the class: a rich deep concentrated ruby.

On the nose: slow oxed and drank over the course of about 2 hours. The PC 2014 usually came out roaring with puuuuure rich intense blackcurrant, with time required to get the the usual Pauillac graphite, tobacco and cedar to bloom. This time around, the fruit was meek, and the nose was dominated by a wispy tobacco and graphite. With air, the fruit does take a bit more shape, but it really remained shy throughout the entire session.

The palate was intense, rich, with high acidity and grippy tannins. There’s an intensity of fruit, but it was just masked by the significant tobacco and graphite on the nose.

An odd tasting. Perhaps the bottlings are entering a bit of a dumb phase, don’t know.