Château Batailley 2004 revisited
When I say revisited, I am lying. I never actually visited Ch. Batailley in the first place and nor did I this time. I’ve drunk the wine a number of times though, and in my last tasting of 2004, I decided it was too early to drink. Venerable US critic, Robert Parker, agrees labelling 2004 Pauillac as “still tannic”. So why open another bottle now then? Good question. Erm, I panicked…
Whilst retrieving some wines from my garage in preparation for storing them properly I noticed one bottle of Batailley with a slightly protruding cork. This is often a sign that the bottle has suffered from overheating which can obviously spoil the wine. My garage is generally cool but in occasional warm spells who knows? Maybe I caused the damage. Maybe it was just poorly sealed. Either way, I had an attack of nerves and reached for my waiter’s friend.
I needn’t have flapped. The wine was full flavoured, still quite tannic, but definitely not spoilt. Plums, strawberries and smoky tobacco leaves made for a pleasant reminder of the days when a fruity restaurant dessert was accompanied by aromatic cigar smoke from the adjacent table. I am definitely not in favour of reversing the public smoking ban, but is there some way we could allow certain fragrant smoky aromas like cigars and hookahs occasionally in restricted areas?
I looked back at my previous tasting where I recorded strawberries and dark chocolate. This isn’t a precise science but it looks like the wine may have matured a little and the bitterness of the chocolate dissipated. Now I have proper storage facilities I must try to hold off from drinking another bottle for another few months. I hope this wine is going to keep improving for a long while yet.