Aged Bordeaux vs Young Bordeaux- Does Wine Really Get Better With Age?

It's an annoying cliche. A fine wine gets better with age. You've heard it from everyone, but is that really true, or is that just pretentious wine snob nonsense? Well, instead of talking about it, let's find out in a region that's actually very well known for aging wines for a very long time: Bordeaux. I'm John Honest. I'm a certified sommelier, and today we are going to drink the same wine twenty years apart, both bottles. Then I am going to give you a true whole bottle review of which one was truly better. We're not just going to taste and spit like all those goofy wine critics do. That's nonsense. Me and a buddy—not just me—are going to drink both bottles of this very fine wine, and I'll let you know, start to finish, which one was better, young or old. The result is going to surprise you, and it's going to surprise me too. Today's wine is a Bordeaux from Saint Emilion in France. Saint Emilion is a wine region in Bordeaux that's east of what's called the Gaillon Estuary. One of the biggest features is clay and limestone soil. Merlot is the dominant grape, and it's usually blended with Cab Franc to give a little more structure and wonderful aromatic lift. Grand Cru in Classe, as you can see on the bottle, is a quality designation, and you can get fantastic values from right bank Bordeaux. Now let's talk about what you're going to get in a Saint Emilion wine because I just absolutely love them. You usually get a lot of red plum, some red currant, little blackberry at times, red and black cherry. I love the cherry in these wines. Saint Emilion is also known for the minerality which comes from the limestone and the clay soil, and you get a little bit of earth as well. As they age, something very interesting happens. They develop notes, not just notes, but mouthfeel of espresso and literally Dutch baking cocoa. Let's talk about the 2001 vintage, which is going to be our old Bordeaux. It's called a classic elegant with time vintage, and it's what I call vintage spin. The truth of the matter was 2001 was sort of a nondescript vintage, not like the 2005 or 2010 vintage. It was kind of like, nah. But over time, sometimes you can revisit a vintage, and there are some fantastic wines in the age. More often than not, there are cellars of wine who need to sell wine. They have a lot of that vintage left, and so they start spinning it to give it vintage spin, so people will buy. But the truth of the matter is the only way we can truly evaluate it is by drinking the wine, and you can get some really good values and fantastic surprises in what would be called an off vintage. So what was the weather and the harvest like in 2001 Saint Emilion? Well, it was a mild wet winter followed by warm dry conditions in September and October, which is good, and it let the grapes ripen slowly and fully, which is ideal for balanced elegant wines. These are not opulent high alcohol wines. They're a little more balanced, a little more restrained. And in Saint Emilion, Palmerol right next door, dry harvest conditions that means no rain during harvest made it one of the better right bank vintages of the era. We'll find out. Let's talk about the style and profile. Eric Flair for you here. That vintage is known for its grace, balance, and classic structure. So it's refined and harmonious. You don't get a lot of power in there. You don't get a lot of big wines, but they're kind of wines that you can appreciate for the subtleties, the sophistication. So the reds from this vintage are going to have typically nice, fresh, lively acidity, and they're going to have firm tannins, but they're not going to overwhelm you. And with a lot of them, we're low-driven elegance, shining especially on the right bank where Saint Emilion is from. So let's talk about the evolution in the drinking window of the 2001 vintage, and then we're going to find out the 2001 wines, according to the wine media, have aged very well. With many at peak maturity right now, 24 years later. Some the taste and spit critics who I like to make fun of they describe them as fresh, soft, silky, and refined. Taste spit, taste spit, taste spit, right, right, right. We're going to find out with a whole bottle review. I'm in agreement with them on this. You get great value with mature Bordeaux from off vintage in the right bank sometimes. Let's talk about the young vintage we're going to compare it to 2021. 2021 when it happened right afterwards is characterized as a very difficult vintage. It was marked by frost in April, a cool, wet flowering period. Was like are these grapes ever going to ripen? Then we got a little bit of an Indian summer that really actually saved the vintage and it kind of rescued the ripening. So you got low yields, which can lead to some very good wines, and you kind of get in a vintage like that varying microclimates, meaning that sometimes you got lucky with your location and sometimes you didn't. If you got lucky, great wine making practices can rescue a difficult vintage, even make it shine. If you didn't get lucky, there's just not much you can do. Apparently Bordeaux got lucky, and so we're going to find out. The style and profile, the ripeness, the vintage. It's called fresh, fragrant, and balanced. Lower alcohol than more affluent vintages. It sounds a lot like the 2001 vintage, which is why I selected these wines, and I'm very interested to kind of compare the two. Now, here's a funny thing: wines are generally early drinking, elegant, and accessible. And if you look, you're going to see the favorite word of a bad vintage, charming. If it's a charming wine, it's usually not mint age. But again, you can find great wines in almost any vintage, and we're going to find out by going through the whole bottle if this was a good wine in an off vintage or not. It's respectable aging potential, but hey, I like to drink my right bank Bordeaux a little bit young, so this could be quite fantastic, ready to drink now, could offer really great value. Let's talk about the facts of this winery. What, where is Bordeaux? It's located on the Saint-Christophe-Bordeaux, south-facing limestone amphitheater. It's so minerality in the wines. It's 17 hectares, so you know, not big, not too small, and it's owned by the Cathiard family. In fact, the 2001 was the first vintage that was produced by the Cathiard family, and they are a very highly respected family both in Bordeaux but in California as well. They make a fantastic Cabernet Sauvignon, fantastic Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, and they know what the heck they're doing. So I'm excited to drink these wines. Both of them are by the Cathiard family. You got a modern, eco-friendly winery that built in 2012, which is very interesting too, because the Bordeaux did not become a Grand Cru in Classé until it was promoted in 2012. So the 2001 is a Grand Cru, but it's not in Classé yet. However, it was deservedly promoted, so it's going to be very interesting to see if it had been promoted earlier. Well, we'll see. The soils and the farming sustainable. I don't think it's quite organic, but they don't dump a bunch of chemicals in there. The wine style: classic right bank Saint Emilion, 80% Merlot, 20% Cabernet. With some small batches aged in new French oak, to give it a little bit of vanilla, not too much, but nice, restrained, integrates well. And like I said, 2012 was promoted to Grand Cru in Classé, and so the reputation. It's not like you know Chateau Cheval Blanc or Chateau Latour's own, but you get great value from these wines. It's elegant, charming, right bank Bordeaux. The 2021 vintage. Hey, I got it for 42 dollars at Total Wine. Let's see what one of our tasting spit friends, James Suckling, had to say. He gave it 93 points. He said there were strawberries, spices, dusty tannins, and lightly tincted taste. Spit review. Wine Advocate, Robert Parker's old publication, praises layered richness and medium to full body. Wow, did you get that in a sip? And vinous, not to be left out. Called it supple and juicy. We shall see. Funny how no one ever really says the same thing about these. Maybe they should do a whole bottle review. Talk about the 2001 Bordeaux. This one's going for 75 bucks right now, and like I said, it was the first one by the Cathiard family who took over the took over the property in 2000. Signature blend of eighty percent merlot, twenty percent cab franc, and that's kind of like the proportions. I really like to see in a Saint Emilion. Our taste and spit friend Jeb Dunk, what did he have to say? He scored it ninety five point, and he did so in twenty twenty, which is a little interesting to me. And he said it's full body, textured palate with complex notes of blackberries, chocolate, Dutch baking cocoa, tobacco, and Asian spices. They always got to throw in the Asian spices. I don't know what Asian spices are, but hey, if you're writing a taste and spit wine review and you don't know what to put in, put in Asian spices. The tannins are resolved. This is what we would expect from a twenty year old wine. The mid palate, oh, they always got to say mid palate. The mid palate is rich, concentrated, and powerful, and the wine is drinking beautifully now, isn't it? We're gonna find out by going through a whole bottle, not merely doing a taste and spit and swish and swallow and write. We want to find out what's really going on with this wine. One thing I mentioned about the Saint Emilion is that I like to drink some of them young. So what happens when you drink them young? They can be fruit forward, they can feature the fruit. I like that. I'm an American. I like fruit in my wine. They have minerality in it. I like minerality too. I'm kind of a fruit for minerality. I love the minerality and the fruit combination, and you know they can be a little tight and tannic sometimes, but they're not high tannin wines. They're mostly merlot with a little cab franc, so they can be medium to medium plus tannin. I usually the ones that I have, I think they're quite organically, but when they're young, the fruit predominates, and that's a good thing. But when you drink them old, fruit begins to kind of fade and mute a little bit. It's still there, but then you start to get these soft notes of Dutch baking cocoa, espresso, some tobacco notes, and there's sort of a balance with the fruit, the sweet spot that I like them in is before they become nothing but Dutch baking cocoa and espresso, or they're only anything but fruit. There's kind of a nice little mid point there where you get these wonderful chocolate covered cherry. So we'll see if we're gonna hit that with any of those. But to me, there's kind of a sweet spot in the Saint Emilion where the fruit and the Dutch baking cocoa are perfectly in harmony, and you taste it and you're like, ah, chocolate covered cherry, fantastic. So without further ado, let's open the wines. Let's have a taste. Let's look at the colors. We are going to start by opening the two thousand one Chateau Bordeaux, and let's see what kind of cork we're gonna get on here. When I open this, what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull the cork out very slowly and methodically. It might be perfectly fine. But remember, we're dealing with a twenty four year old cork right now, and the last thing that we want to have happen is this thing split in two. And then I have to dig it out, and then I have to filter it to see if we have a drinkable wine. Hopefully, it will come right out. With the Saint Emilians, I found most of them do, but you never know. One other thing, while I'm opening these, that I'm going to tell you is, make sure that you serve them between fifty-five and sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Here in Texas, sometimes we have people that want to serve their wines at seventy-two degrees, red wines, and it just ruins it. I'm really big on proper proper service temperature, and it makes a gigantic difference. So I'm going to decant this wine. I've got a special contraption that I've got that keeps it at absolutely the right temperature. All right, the cork seems to be slowly coming out. Fine so far. Let's keep going here. Oh, here we go! Let's have a little bit of fun with this. I've been doing this a little too long, it seems. All right, I'm gonna see if I can get down in here. Get the rest of this cork out with no crumbling in the wine, because I really don't want to filter this. And we have success. Hey, that's a really good lesson in how to open up a difficult bottle of wine, and why you want to be really, really, really slow and methodical. Because sometimes those corks, they're old. You know, they can split in half, and if you're not careful, you'll get a lot of debris in there, and the wine just is not drinkable. But luckily, this one turned out to be pretty good. So I'm going to drink these both in a redel Bordeaux glass. We're going to have a look at the 2001 first. We're going to nose it. We're going to taste it. We're also going to look at it. What I expect to see around the rim is some orange color, which is an indication of a little bit of oxidation. But it gives me just by looking at it an indication of the age. That actually looks quite nice coming out. Have a look here. Knows it now. Usually, what I like to do when I look at the color is I want to look at it over a piece of white paper. A little bit of an orange rim there. Maybe we have, I would say, like a two. I see three rings on there. It's orange, but it's a beautiful color. It's not what I would call any bricking or anything at all. It's just a gorgeous orange with orange rim, red ruby. This wine looks beautiful. On the nose, I get a little bit of vanilla, soft red plum seems to define it. I'm really getting a lot of that red plum. Some currants, maybe a little bit of strawberry, but red plum really seems to be the defining factor. Oh my gosh! This is just so smooth. Everything is so beautifully integrated. A little bit of Dutch baking cocoa. But I get that cherry. This has that little bit of chocolate cherry with red plum wrapped around it. Oh, but this wine is just so soft. It is restrained. It's more medium body. I wouldn't characterize it as as full body, but it just kind of sits there. It kind of floats, and it immediately gives me kind of an emotion of feeling calm, happy. This is going to be a really fun bottle of wine to drink and see where it goes. But it's off to a wonderful start. So I'm I'm going to give this. I'm be a little hard on this, but I'm going to give this an initial taste, sip, swallow review. I'm going to go ninety four. I want to go ninety five, but I'm going to go ninety four just because I want to see where it goes and see if I could even upgrade this as high as a ninety seven. But this is off to a really really nice start. All right, let us move on to opening the twenty twenty one Chateau Bardot, and we are going to compare it immediately. I don't think I'm going to have a cork issue with this one, but you know you never know. So I always like to open it exactly the same way. I want to get the warm all the way into the cork, and I'm only I'm always going to lever it out very very slowly. Because like you saw with the first one, these things can split at any age. We just don't want any debris in our wine. So. See how the cork is here. Again, I'm going to lever this out very, very, very slowly. What I want to feel for is if there's if it suddenly gets light and there's not a good pull on it. So far, so good. There we go. Nice, beautiful cork, no issues. Unlike our other one, which show you this. So it was like this, and that kind of split apart right there. But luckily, as you can see, there's no wine creeping up. I tasted it; the wine was perfectly fine. We just had a little bit of a risk of kind of the cork beginning to crumble and get into the wine. But when you're very careful, like I was, you can get it out, and everything will be okay. All right, so let's have a taste of the 2021 Bardot, so we can compare it. All right, so we can definitely tell by looking at this already that it is a much younger wine because you got a lot of pink around the rim. You don't get any orange. It's got a very, very gorgeous ruby color. It's not red like the other one was. We'll look at them side by side, but you can tell this is a young wine because the the rims, the rings on the rims, they're pink. So you look at this, you can say, yeah, this is really about a four year old wine. Well. Let's nose and taste the four year old one. I'm getting a lot of berries on this. A lot of red berries on this. Definitely a lot of strawberry. See, definitely a lot of blackberry. This wine is tart. It's not nearly as smooth as the other one. It's a little bit restrained. I would say it's a little bit closed up right now. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens as we go through the bottle. This one may need a little bit more time. Certainly not as well refined and integrated as the one that's 20 years younger. But hey, you never know what goes through the bottle. So I am actually going to give this one an initial sip and swallow score of 92 points, and we'll see where it's going to go. So what we want to do right now is let's kind of have a look and compare the colors. Of the wines in the glass, the 2001 obviously just got this beautiful orange rim around it. It's it's almost an orange color. It's it's red, but it's orange, but it just looks absolutely gorgeous and smooth. The 2021 right now, like I said, a lot of pink, a lot of ruby. It looks like it does need some aging time, but we'll find out. Both wines are perfectly fine, perfectly ready to drink. So what I'm going to do is I am going to decant both of these wines, give them a little bit of time. My buddy's going to come over. We're going to drink them together. I'm going to take notes as I go through these wines, and then when I am fully recovered from my wine hangover, I am going to give you my full whole bottle review of the young Bordeaux and the aged Bordeaux, and we are going to see if fine wine really gets better with age. Stay tuned. I have returned from my wine hangover and ready to give you my whole bottle review of Chateau Bordeaux 2001 and 2021 and this was a really really interesting comparison. So let's kind of get right into it. I want to start with the last one of both of them at the same time. Let's start with the 2001 Bordeaux. This one right here. This is the old one, obviously 24 years old. And when I opened it, it had just a wonderful garnet color, very soft. There was several orange rums, and you could tell it was an aged wine. When I tasted it, got my notes here. I was drinking, take notes. When I tasted it, it was very smooth. It was very restrained, definitely very well integrated. I would say it was kind of compressed a little bit, not tight, but the flavors were kind of compressed into each other, kind of linked, not really heightened, but they went very very well together. So you get a little bit of cocoa, a little bit of espresso, but everything was soft and smooth and supple, and most importantly, calming. When I took a sip of it, everything was calm and wonderful. It was just gorgeous, honest aged Bordeaux, no oxidation. Let me talk about the 2021 Bordeaux, the first glass of this, because oh what a comparison! You can look in the glass and you can see that this was definitely a young wine. It was ruby. It had hot pink around the rim, and when you tasted it, oh it was a little rough, a little rough, a little sharp. A lot of intense strawberry. You got some earth. It seemed like it was separated. The first sip, I got to tell you, I didn't want to give a very good review. I wanted a 93, but I was like, wow, that's a little bit, you know, like sandpaper in your mouth. So you never know when these things are going to go. But the thing that I love about whole bottle reviews is the wine speaks for itself. So as I began to go through the bottle of the 2001 Chateau Bordeaux, I didn't get much change, but that was perfectly fine. Every sip was mellow. Every sip was calming. Every sip had a little bit of cocoa, a little bit of espresso, some cherry in it, a little bit of strawberry. It was all around it. It was all together. It looked the same in the glass. It pretty much stayed that way. There wasn't much of an evolution, and honestly, I was okay with that. So after I had the first glass, I was like, man, there is no way this 2021 is ever going to come close. But that's why we do whole bottle review because the 2021 starting around glass two really started to change. And I drank these with the buddy of mine. I drank both bottles, and he really started to notice that. He's like, wow, this wine is really starting to become gorgeous. And so what happened was it did start to soften. I didn't decant this for a while, so the wine began to soften. It never quite got as smooth or as supple as the 2001, but it did begin to soften. You could feel the blends come together. You could feel the fruit begin to get a little bit smoother, a little bit more rounded. And there was just wonderful ripe strawberry that really came to the forefront that really defined the wine. So if you want to know what would define these wines, the 2001 would totally would be defined by everything perfectly integrated. What the finding was of the 2021 was rough strawberry to start out with, but the strawberry stayed there. Other fruit showed up, and it did round and it did smooth every once in the bottle. And so it actually became around glass three and in the glass four a very enjoyable bottle of young Bordeaux. I was really surprised at the evolution. So the conclusion that I would say was was that the 2001 it didn't evolve that much, but it was already where you wanted it to be. The 2021 did have a significant evolution from really rough right out of the gate to nice, smooth, rounded toward the end. I didn't get any emotions come up or any memories. It wasn't a magical bottle of wine, but it was a well priced, enjoyable bottle of young Bordeaux. And so my final whole bottle review for the 2001 Chateau Bordeaux, I'm going to give that a 95. It was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, and it made me calm, relaxed, mildly happy. So there wasn't an emotional component. With the Chateau Bordeaux, I'm going to give this a 94, maybe even a 94.5, starting from a 93 because this started rough and you didn't think it was going to go anywhere, but it actually came on very nicely. Did it beat the aged Bordeaux? No, but it came pretty close. So my advice to you is if you want to get a nice, early drinking fruity wine, Bordeaux is a great deal. But if you want to get a beautiful aged Bordeaux, you might pay a little bit more for. Hey, Chateau Bordeaux is a very good deal too. In this showdown right here, there's no doubt that the aged Bordeaux won, but the young Bordeaux made a nice run towards the end and surprised everyone. What's better than one whole bottle review? Another whole bottle review. So stay tuned for my next video.