Special offer
Wine Club
Auberon Waugh
The one disappointment of last month's offer was how few people took up the 1982 Pichon Longueville Baron at £65 the case ex-Bordeaux, for which I had worked incredibly hard. Perhaps I should have mentioned that the IEC Wine Society is offering exactly the same wine at £76 the case. Compared to the prices being asked for other 1982 deuxiemes crus of comparable or inferior quality, I thought I had found quite a bargain. The conclusion must be that Spectator readers are not only greedy but also impatient, and not prepared to Wait 12 or 13 years for their pleasures. Well, everything in this month's offer is for im- mediate drinking. 1 think it is one of the Most interesting offers yet, depending for Its appeal on a very nice balance between snobbery, anti-snobbery, avarice (i.e. com- pulsive bargain-seeking) and good sense.
For years I have marvelled at the stupidi- ty of claret drinkers, never more noticeable than in the 1982 opening offers, where they are prepared to pay £30-£35 ex-Bordeaux, and even more, for the premiers crus but only £9 for the very best deuxiemes crus like Leoville-Lascases or Pichon Lalandes. The difference between the good, the excellent and the very best is simply not in that ratio. Brooding about this, I wondered whether • the same consideration might not apply with equal force to vintage years.
The year 1972 is universally agreed to have been a pretty poor one in Bordeaux. Few wine merchants hold stocks of it. Hugh Johnson gives it 2-5 but many treat it in !heir lists as a non-year, like the disastrous 65s and '68s. For some time I have been chuckling over the Berry Bros catalogue, which still lists 21 bordeaux of 1972, Wondering when anyone was going to buy them. Then it occurred to me that they were very cheap, and couldn't be all that bad, coming from some of the most famous chateaux and best wine makers in the world. For instance, the Chateau Margaux 1982 will certainly cost at least £100 a bottle by the time it is ready to drink, probably much more. Here, with the 10 per cent dis- count which the Wine Club can demand, we have a Chateau Margaux 1972, ready to drink for £10.85. So long as it tasted like anything remotely resembling a Margaux, it seemed worth giving it a whirl. And lower down the classifications, I think I have found some amazing bargains. Let us start at the bottom. Lynch Moussas is a small 5e cru Pauillac, bought by Batailley in 1969, and, in Hugh Johnson's words, 'now making serious wine'. This example is Basingstoke-bottled by Berry Bros. One member of my I3-strong panel thought it too sweet for her austere, left-wing tastes, but I thought it
outstandingly the best and it scored easily the highest marks among the three in its price range. It tastes like a good, fruity mature claret, and I should judge it a bargain under any label at £4.32.
All the rest are chateau-bottled. The La Lagune struck me and everybody else as a really beautiful wine, which would not have disgraced a 1971 label, let alone a 1973. Un- fortunately it is only available in magnums at £10.89 the magnum, and it is also the only one in short supply (with 80 cases of six available). I do not know really why we do not all make more use of magnums, since one very seldom opens a single bottle of good wine and magnums are more festive. These look a treat and taste a treat. Perhaps it is a tiny bit thinner than the same wine in a 'great' year but, I should say, all the more elegant and aristocratic for that.
The Leoville-Lascases is not at all thin, but it is definitely for those who prefer the drier, more austere claret taste. It has plenty of that, and is agreeably long in the finish, although 1 found it a little bony, not to say stalky, for my own lascivious fancy. None of the wines on offer is remotely sharp (let alone sour, like the appalling '69s) but this was my least favourite, and I would not in- clude it if I had not been heavily out-voted by the left-wing caucus. Grand concentra- tion of a not particularly pleasant taste, 1 would say.
Anyway, it is heavily out-fruited by the Beychevelle whose price is just beginning to creep into the range for wines of com- parable quality from California. Actually, at this quality level, the Californians begin to take off, so the Beychevelle may still be cheaper. More fun, I would have thought, to serve it in a Beychevelle bottle. This is a fine, round mouthful with only a certain lack of decisiveness in the finish to distinguish it from the '71, which is usually priced around £14.30.
What shall I say about the Chateau Margaux? It would be absurd to pretend it is a 'great' wine, in the irritating vocabulary of claret drinkers. It scored more points than any of the others on a blind tasting (tiresomely enough, scores followed prices except that La Lagune pipped Leoville- Lascases by two points out of a possible 130) but so it should. It is the most Burgun- dian of those on offer. If I were asked whether I would be prepared to pay £10.85 for a burgundy of this quality — say one of Avery's excellent declassified '76s — I would say: No — perhaps £6.25. But then this is not declassified burgundy. It is a Chateau Margaux 1972. Punters will have to decide for themselves. My elder son eventually preferred the Leoville-Lascases to any of them.
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