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1981 chateau La Serre, a St Emilion grand cru classé. Again perhaps not the greatest estate, but being run by the same d’Arfeuille family since the mid 50ies, big investments and renovations in the 70ies plus being a grand cru classé (even now, after the latest revision in 2012), this was no bag-in-...

1981 Du Tertre. This is a fifth growth and perhaps a bit underachieving in those days but more recently bought by a Dutchman and since undergone the necessary changes to return it to the status it deserves. The color here very similar to the La Serre, garnet with some ruby red still left at the edge...

1970 Kopke vintage port: This vintage was declared by most of the major houses, so quite a good year and with Kopke not being the least this should be good. With the color the age was already showing : a lighter tea here with an orange hue in the outer edge. After the first alcohol dissipated (in ta...

1978 Krohn Vintage Port -  this bottle hadn’t survived the 3-three and a half decades of cellaring and had started to leak somewhere along the line resulting in a fill level as topshoulder. Now if this were an oxidized fortified wine such as sherry, this probably wouldn’t be an issue, however with a...

1960 Sera’s vintage port: This was the stranger in our midst : 1960 was a vintage that was also widely declared but lots of producers struggled with bad conditions that year and had either low yields or compromised quality. The estate itself is somewhat of a mystery: hardly any information about it ...

1959 Evangile was a mise négoce (merchant bottling) with the level of the wine slightly low at upper shoulder. With wines that haven’t been bottled at the chateau it’s always difficult to know whether the content will reflect on what is stated on the label. In this case everything seemed ok with one...

This was a bottle with level at already mid shoulder and hence a color even darker than usual. Luckily, no signs of seepage were showing anywhere so expectations were still quite high, this was a legend after all : the Lur Saluce family have been producing sweet botrytised wines at the chateau since...

The 1989 Vieux Chateau Certan had besides it slightly lower level also a somewhat damaged label and some corrosion at the bottom of the capsule, so was somewhat likely to be not up to standard. In this case it was better to not offer it for sale and try it ourselves. And unfortunately, not being up ...

This bottle of 1985 had a little lower level too - a very top shoulder, and to make it impossible to sell the label was completely missing, so on the other hand this was perfect material for a tasting. The color here a somewhat similar maroon though a tad more reddish and concentrated. The smells ho...

1996 l’Evangile : This is a wine that was terribly tannic right after bottling and there were lots of doubts whether it would ever come round, so I was very curious to find out what a almost 2 decades of bottle ageing could accomplish.

The medium cherry color gave away it’s age and that was about...