1985 Château Margaux

More old notes:

1985 Château Margaux (among others), late June 2005, dinner at the now-defunct Lumiere Gallery, an art gallery cum French country restaurant located on one of the main thoroughfares of the Makati central business district.

After excellent preliminaries of onion soup, blini with salmon mousse and a salad sprinkled with crispy bits of fried duck skin, we were ready for dinner proper. Upon one of the owners' suggestion, we were served a dark, sturdy red from Cahors to go with our main courses of duck breast. She had told me that their food, hearty country cuisine, would be too heavy for so delicate and fine a wine such as the one under review. I could not but agree. Both wines were served side by side and the Cahors, indeed, blended well with the rich, gamy flavors of the duck.

We had most of the 1985 Margaux after the meal, before dessert and coffee.

The wine, in the glass, was a deep, dark reflective violet with a dark ruby blush. Against the light, clear ruby highlights reluctantly shone through. An initial sniff above the rim yielded a perfume of violets and vanilla with blackcurrant and smoky undertones. A deeper sniff, nose in glass, revealed more blackcurrant as well as some oak. In the mouth, the initial strike was quite easy, the wine making a casual yet confident blackberry entrance. Thence, the flavors opened up luxuriously from front to mid-mouth with violet flowers holding sway over vanilla/oak and the blackberries, the blackberries/currant flavors reasserting themselves to the back (with a handful of the violets in tow) through to the long, long elegant finish. The texture was an exquisite, sheer, delicate silk making one savor each and every mouthful, holding the wine mid-mouth for as long as politely possible. The body was medium, approaching, but not quite achieving true fullness. No fat, no plumpness. No angles. No wantonness. Just smooth, supple curves coyly, yet seductively, displayed.

Without a doubt, this is a wonderful wine, one for special occasions or those odd, self-indulgent and contemplative moments. I would drink this wine without accompaniment to be able to fully appreciate its complexity, finesse and delicacy.