Chateau Gruaud Larose 2eme Cru Classe, Saint-Julien 1982

The 1982 Gruaud Larose has long been one of the outstanding successes of the vintage alongside stablemate Talbot. This bottle is superb. Relatively youthful on the nose, it offers blackberry and mulberry fruit, veins of pressed violets, and is quite powerful with a subtle and complementary minty element. The palate is beautifully balanced with admirable density and grip. Very harmonious, silky in texture with a luxuriant finish, this is a Gruaud at the peak of its powers. Yes, please. Tasted single blind at the 1982 dinner at Cornus in London.

One of the most powerful, massive wines of the vintage is the 1982 Gruaud Larose, a full-bodied, broad and concentrated effort redolent of ripe black fruits, loamy soil, smoked meats, leather, espresso roast and hints of cigar wrapper. Rich, layered and expansive, its deep core of ripe, fleshy fruit is framed by sweet, powdery tannins. As ever with the wines of the Cordier era, the fly in the ointment is that the wine's wild, somewhat animal profile is strongly marked by the presence of Brettanomyces, yet the 1982's intensely characterful, singular style means that I am personally able to overlook that defect. Still youthful, and actually evolving more slowly than the brilliant 1986, this is likely to number among the longer-lived wines of the vintage.