Wine Chronicles2020 Bordeaux: bottled classic
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 21 October 2023 TASTING NOTES CLICK HERE Dear Readers, It has been a while, but after buying a new apartment with renovation work, prioritizing articles in magazines for which I am paid, and work from my day job at the Council of Europe, I took a hiatus from this website. […]
Top 50+ hits: Bordeaux 2020 from barrel
The emotional, the intellectual, the (i)Deals In a vintage that favors Merlot from cold clay and limestone soils By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 26 May 2021 No ads, no fees charged: Here my objective and experienced impressions of 2020 Bordeaux, 18 years in a row assessing Bordeaux from barrel, including visits during the pandemic era. […]
Saint Estèphe 2018
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 24 January 2021 Fascinating to see – in a blind tasting of the five classified growths – just how impressive Château Montrose turned out to be. I have tasted the wine twice from bottle, once at the estate, once in the blind tasting (held at Château Lafon-Rochet), and although I […]
For hedonists and intellectuals: Bordeaux 2018
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 7 May 2019 My top barrel samples from 2018 Full tasting notes by appellation and area: Pessac-Léognan+Graves (reds) / Médoc-Haut-Médoc-Listrac-Moulis / Margaux / Saint Julien / Pauillac / Saint Estèphe / Saint Emilion / Pomerol / Fronsac and other bargains / Dry whites including Graves / Sauternes & Barsac NOTE […]
Wild n’ Crazy Saint Estèphe 2018?
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 26 April 2019 Saint Estèphe is an appellation that tends to thrive in hot and arid summers. Take for examples the torrid heat of the 2003 vintage. The cooler soils underneath gravel in Saint Estèphe seemed to counter the extreme weather better than any other Bordeaux appellation of note. Many tasters […]
Ringing in 2019 with good vintages (not “great”)
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 11 January 2019 After an annual holiday dinner with wine loving pals – this year at the French embassy in Washington D.C. – the overriding theme was “good” vintages. Neither “off” nor “great”, but vintages that sometimes get overlooked by critics seeking to obtain fame with 100 point scores. And […]
Northern Médoc: Sweet spots confirmed in 2016
A modern era 1986? Great stuff in Saint Julien, Pauillac and Saint Estèphe ? (Bordeaux 2016 from bottle, part 2) 11 November 2018 By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com Just as we saw how well Pomerol excelled in 2016, another area of consumer interest, also in terms of quality across all price points, is the northern […]
The revenge of Saint Estèphe
Bordeaux 2016 barrel tasting notes By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 29 April 2017 Most readers have read the positive feedback from the barrel samples of Bordeaux 2016, including from me. Yes, there is hype, as usual, and some prices are high (such as for Cos d’Estournel, one merchant told me), but I do believe that […]
Bordeaux in barrel 2014: Mighty Montrose, classic Cos and perplexing Calon Segur
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com MAIN BORDEAUX 2014 BARREL TASTING PAGE When I was asked to do an educational blog for Total Wine, we agreed to have top ten lists: top ten reds, top ten whites, top ten bargain wines. One of the very best barrel samples of 2014 is Château Montrose. Fellow wine writers and […]
Recent Comments