A Tale of Two bottles------a randomized blind tasting of two versions of 2000 Chateau Lascombes

By Dr. Law Chi Lim

Introduction

There is a myth among wine drinkers that half bottle (375ml) wines of the same vintage are inferior to full bottle (750ml)ones. I have even heard someone saying that wine estates tend to put wine of lesser quality in half bottles. This is certainly not true because my experience with buying wine future ( en primeur , i.e. buying wines that are still in the barrel and not yet bottled) is that the wine maker always asks the buyers how they would like the wine to be bottled when it is time to bottle the wine before shipping ( which may be anything between 1 to 2 years after one bought the wine). Most people would opt for bottling the wine in the standard 750cc format. However, some people may want a certain wine of a certain vintage to be bottled in a certain way (like having 1.5 litre magnum bottles or even double magnum , or big versions like jeroboam ,imperial ,etc) for future occasions like birthdays or anniversaries, while suppliers to restaurants may want to bottle them in half bottles for diners.

Good wines (but certainly not all wines) continue to evolve and develop after they have been bottled as the small amount of air left in the neck of the bottle interact with the wine slowly over time. In time, the wine will shed some of its tannins and become more “mature” and generally softer on the palate, and develop certain characteristics and complexity. Since the amount of air left behind in a half bottle is the same as that in a full bottle, theoretically at least, the wine in a half bottle (with less amount of wine for the same amount of air) will mature more quickly than its sibling in a full (or even bigger) bottle. But does this mean that the wine in bigger bottles will become better wine or not? And what is the best time to drink the same wine in different bottle size? To help to answer( as least in part) this question, I organized a random blind tasting of the 2000 Chateau Lascombes in half and full bottles.

Method and Material

Two half bottles and one full bottle of the 2000 Chateau Lascombes were purchased from the same wine shop in Central. They were taken to the HK Medical Association club house in Central 2 days before the wine tasting to allow them to settle before the tasting. The wines were uncorked 2 hours and decanted 1 hour before tasting. As the amount of wine in each decanter is about the same, the participants would not be able to tell the difference between the wines just by looking at the amount of wine in the decanters. To prevent preconceived ideas about half-bottles from influencing their opinion, the identity of the wines in the decanter were kept hidden from the participants by labeling the two decanters just A and B.

In fact, none of the participants have any idea what sort of wine they are supposed to be drinking.

Nine people participated in the wine tasting. Eight of them had wine cellars with temperature control at home to store their wines and each had more than 10 years experience in wine drinking. The ninth person claimed to be a novice who just “liked wine-drinking”. They were asked to decide which of the two wines they liked better and what they thought of the wines in general..

Results

Both wines exhibited similar appearance of deep ruby colour with attractive elegant aromas of sweet , concentrated jammy black currant fruit mixed with some spices and cedar. On the palate , wine A( half bottle) was softer and more pleasing while wine B ( full-bottle) was more tannic ( note 1). To a certain extent, the wine in wine B appeared to be more powerful.

Out of the 9 participants, 7 ( including the novice wine drinker)liked the half bottle better while the other 2 thought that the full bottle was a better wine. Out of the 7 people who liked the half bottle , one commented that the full bottle had continued to evolve during the evening over dinner while the half bottle had remained rather static.

Comment

The 2000 Bordeaux vintage is supposed to be one of the best in many years. As the doyen wine critic Robert Parker puts it : “the 2000 vintage has produced some of the most immense, black-coloured, concentrated , powerful and tannic wines of the last 30 years…. The finest 2000s possess the most impressive length, structure, concentration, and delineation that I have experienced in 23 years of tasting…..” Parker particularly likes the 2000s from the Margaux appellation (which includes Chateau Lascombes). The 2000 Lascombes is a blend of 58% Cabernat Sauvignon, 35 % Merlot, and 7% Verdot. Parker considers the 2000 Lascombes to be the finest wine the estate has produced in the last 35 years and gives it 92 points(out of 100)

It must be noted that since the 2000 vintage from the finest Bordeaux producers tend to be big and tannic wines, it would take some time for them to mature and become drinkable for most people. Patience in waiting is really needed here. So , when are the best 2000 wines ready for drinking?

In this study ( at least so far as the majority of wine drinkers are concerned), we have shown that compared with the same wine in a smaller bottle , the full-bottle 2000 Lascombes appear to be more tannic. This is most likely due to the fact that half bottles do mature more quickly than full-bottles. Thus, if you are rather impatient, this study shows you that you may want to purchase the half-bottle version of the wine to enjoy it now. Otherwise you may need to wait for a few more years to have the same enjoyment. However, if you belong to the minority of wine drinkers (like two of the participants in this group) who like big tannic wines, you may want to drink the full-bottle wine even now.

It must be admitted that accelerating the maturity of a wine may not necessarily be a good thing. It has been said that the optimal bottle size for good wines is the 1.5 litre magnum which would allow a fine wine to mature slowly------------but perhaps too slowly for most of us. However, in reality, a proper test of how bottle size affects the quality of wines would be to compare ,say, the performance of a half-bottle now in 2008 with the performance of ,say, a full-bottle 8 years later in 2016. It is quite possible that in 2016 the full-bottle of 2000 Lascombes may taste better than the half-bottle version presently in 2008. Furthermore, by 2016, a half bottle of this wine will have an approximate age equivalent of 32 years of a full bottle and this wine may not be made to last that long. But that is something that would be extremely difficult to prove as most people , by 2016, would not be able to recall exactly what the half bottle really tasted like 8 years ago !. As for now-------- for most of us mere mortals anyway--------- half-bottle version of the 2000 vintage of Chateaux Lascombes does taste better than the full bottle when tasted now at the same age. So, let’s say that if you are having a romantic dinner for two and you need to drive afterwards, do not hesitate to order a half bottle of wine!

(Note 1. Tannins belongs to a group of chemicals that occur in the skin, seeds, and stems of the grapes as well as the wood barrels used to store wine during the process of wine making. These substances give the often bitter and astringent taste of a red wine. Careful handling of the tannins in wines is important during wine making. Tannins are natural preservatives. If a wine is supposed to be made to last for decades , it would require a lot of tannins to begin with . As a result , this sort of wine, when young ( say 2-3 years after bottling), may be very bitter and difficult to drink for most people. As time goes on, when a wine matures it will shed some of its tannic characters ( hence the sediment at the bottom of the bottle), and it becomes more balanced and pleasant to drink. It must be noted that many wines (in particular, relatively inexpensive new-world wines) are meant to be drunk young and thus have their tannins removed early in the wine making process.)