1978 Chateau Margaux

It's always an amazing experience tasting wines of this stature and especially those that have been carefully aged over a few decades. I consider myself extremely lucky to have a few generous friends and acquaintances that would allow a young whipper-snapper like me to indulge in such wines. As for scoring a wine like this, I really don't have much in the way of experience with wines like these (except for a few gems you can search for in the archives) to be able to opine or compare. These are just a few thoughts I wrote down while tasting this beauty:

On the nose I got an ever-evolving bouquet of plum, tobacco, soft leather, game, Spanish chorizo, and semi-sweet coco. Yeah,.. I know the chorizo thing sounds a bit odd, but I would have bet my life on it!! There was also a sweet tea leaf element that crept in as the wine continued to open up after an hour or two. On the palate this wine was extremely soft and urethral, touches of leather, tea leaf, tobacco, and plum were the main elements, with soft cherry notes on the finish. Speaking of the finish, seldom have I tasted a wine with such depth and length, the wine finished for several minutes on the palate. What caught me off guard was the deep color, which I had expected to be more red-brick, but was surprisingly a youthful looking ruby red just fading clear towards the edges. Comparing it to all other wines I've tasted and to those few heavy hitters I've experienced in the past, I give this wine a 98 point score.