This bottle wasn’t from the lucky bag that just arrived, but a bottle I had kept from last year’s set, meaning it had been resting in my cellar for a year. Since this year’s purchase added two more bottles of the same wine, I decided to open one on short notice. The last time I tried it, the taste was pretty underwhelming, so I was curious whether a year of aging had improved it at all. Poured into a Riedel Bordeaux glass, it shows an inky ruby color with no visible signs of maturity at the rim. The nose offers blackberry, black cherry, spices like star anise and clove, along with showy notes of brandy cake and dark chocolate. After such a long rest, I can at least appreciate the well-composed, seductive bouquet.
Seen that way, it somehow makes sense that this cuvée was discontinued after the 2016 vintage. To be fair, my impression wasn’t quite as bad as when I drank it a year ago (perhaps because I knew what to expect). So I still hold a faint hope that another year or two of aging might soften it a little—though such high alcohol probably won’t change with time. One small upside is that it gets you drunk efficiently (lol). Now that I’ve become much more sensitive to alcohol, even a third of a bottle makes my head spin, so I’ll wait until my son comes back to Tokyo before opening the next one.