Beschreibung:

Château Cos d'Estournel It clearly wasn't because of Louis Gaspard d'Estournel's connections with India that Cos is such a spicy wine – although at the time (in the 1820s) he almost certainly fostered the story of a returned shipment from India that had developed extra flavours at a time when he was building the estate's identity for which he had enormous ambitions : hence the famous door to the cellar from the Sultan of Zanzibar and the pagodas on the roof. No, the spicy taste must be due to nothing more than the nature of the gravel-clay mix in the soil, which is then deliberately enhanced by a special barrel effect : just like Henri Duboscq did at Haut Marbuzet 140 years later. My first experiences of this special-tasting wine were from the 40s and 60s. I found them deep and exotic and they appealed to my young palate. There followed a leaner period during the 70s and early 80s, but since then, they have been back to their original strong-flavoured character. Bruno Prats, the grandson-in-law of Fernand Ginestet who had bought the property in 1917, told me once that he considered his 1981 to be the turnaround vintage when Cos « became serious again ». I would put that date a little later as, in the early 80s the wines lost precision, probably because of overdoing the pre-fermentation cold soak, and, with the possible exception of the 1985, showing lovely now, the real turnaround was the first of the vintages being offerred today : 1989. There have been many words said about which is the better wine, 1989 or 1990. Most favour the latter : I always preferred the former, and this opinion seems to validate my en primeur notes by remaining the fresher wine today. Nevertheless both are very impressive wines. The 1993 and 1994 were of course much lighter to start with but have held up very well, especially the latter which marked the first vintage of the second wine « Les Pagodes de Cos ». The 1995 is quite hard and tannic but always had the juicier underflow of the vintage. In 2006, Jean-Guillaume- Bruno's son and by then in charge, put on a blind tasting of ten vintages over a dinner at Le Relais de Margaux where each table had to agree on which were which. I hate to say our table won and we nailed the '95 as we did many of the others, but the interesting thing is that we only came to our decision after some discussion whether it wasn't the harder '96. The final three years of the 90s were less concentrated and shone more by their exceptional finesse than by power, which prompted Jean-Guillaume-to ask all his buyers if he should halve the production and make a first growth or continue as he was. I don't know what the others replied but I was firmly in favour of the latter course. Beefy wines were beginning to go out of fashion. The massively built 2000 was new owner Michel Reybier's first vintage, so strong and opulent that it was a no-brainer to spot at the Relais de Margaux dinner, but it was not at all over-oaked as had been, by Bruno's own confession, some of the wines of the 70s and 80s. Cos then moves into the glorious modern period with a stunning unusually warm-fruited '02, an enormously dense '03, a more reserved but just as strong '04 and a massive showing from the for once Cabernet-dominated 2005. As a postscript, I would add that, with the help of the extraordinarily impressive gravity-driven chai in 2008, the wines continued in the same bold and strong style but gradually showing more finesse and precision as from the 2015 vintage. Château Cos d'Estournel 1989 In original wooden case. Good appearance. Level: into-neck double-magnum (1) 1990 In original wooden case. Good appearance. Level: into-neck double-magnum (1) 1993 In original wooden case. Good appearance. Level: into-neck double-magnum (1) 3 double-magnums per lot