With Hart and the crew at Hayop for James’ birthday. Wine from my stash.

Bottle came to me with a low but still decent fill. I was a touch worried because a prominent reviewer’s recent post suggested this might be starting to get a little tired. But nope! This was a banger.

Cork was in superb condition. Wine was slow oxed over 3hours or so.

In the glass: deep dark ruby with maroon tinge. Like all Guados, very high extraction, with an almost cloudy body. Garnet on the rim.

On the nose: let me tell you. When I pulled the cork off, the aromatics literally exploded from the bottle. It was so intensely perfumed, even with my nose a whole foot away. At dinner: this was sweet blackcurrant pastilles, leather, cedar, fresh aromatic tobacco, touch of lean sweet oak. I did accidentally over chilled it, so it took a while to coax the aromatics out by letting it get up to temp.

On the palate: this wine is so energetic. High intensity of fruits, coupled with very bright juicy acidity. That jolt of acidity really surprised me given by earlier concerns. Absolutely perfectly resolved tannins that’s just sooo fine. I would say: the younger Guados have this velvety and powdery tannins. It SEEMS like at 20 years old, a lot of those tannins have really settled out of the wine, so this is a lot less powdery and more silky. Very heavy sedimentation in this bottle.

Tobacco and leather were much more prominent on exhale.

This was a delicious wine. Don’t trust the reviewers. This has so much life in it still.