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. […]
Saint Emilion rankings 2022: Is Grand Cru Classé accurately reflected?
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 29 September 2022 Following up on my text on the latest ranking of Saint Emilion wines – as published in Club Oenologique earlier this month – I focus on the total of 71 Grand Cru Classés, which is just shy of record from the 1969 classification of 72 wines so […]
Bordeaux 2020 : Saint Emilion shines bright
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 26 June 2021 For my summary on the vintage, please read what I had published in Club Oenologique. And you can also read my overall Top50+ wines across appellations, after having tasted hundreds of barrel samples of Bordeaux’s latest vintage, 2020. Saint Emilion is a star appellation in 2020. Readers […]
Bordeaux 2018: Where does reality in bottle meet hype from barrel?
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 24 January 2021 From barrel, I had characterized 2018 Bordeaux as a vintage for “Hedonists and Intellectuals”. Over the course of the last few months, including several visits to Bordeaux during official lockdowns in France, I tasted 2018s on location, after recent bottling. Some bottles had been sent to me to […]
So Satisfying Saint Emilion 2018
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 24 January 2021 The revolution towards freshness continues. Sure some wines recall the oaky tannic obsession of the mid-2000s. Not long ago, I recall tasting the Grand Cru Classés blind with too many wines, too hard, over extracted and/or finishing on drying oak tannins. Had the 2018 vintage happened 10 […]
Wine snapshot: Château Corbin
Sure-to-enjoy from Saint Emilion, with a good price/quality ratio By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 4 June 2020 Ripe plum, red berry and floral aromas beckon drinking from the get go. The bottle was pretty much “popped and poured” but it opened up more in glass. After nearly 10 years in bottle the Château Corbin Saint […]
Through the years with Château Figeac
Going back to 1949, but looking forward to new cellars By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 17 June 2018 Some of the best wine experiences I can recall involve older vintages of Château Figeac. Take for example a dinner in Saint Emilion that did not happen: hail destroyed table settings just as participants were enjoying magnums of […]
#Bdx17: Best of the red rest
Right Bank Satellites By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 26 May 2018 2017 makes the adage of seeking a “petit château” in a great vintage (and vice versa) less clear-cut. Certainly top terroirs excelled – on a general basis – so you can (more often that not) find happiness from the “grands châteaux” in 2017 – if the […]
Freshness from Saint Emilion: Bordeaux 2017 from barrel
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 7 May 2018 Given its rather large size, Saint Emilion is heterogeneous in quality. 2017 compounded differences from the challenge to remove grapes from frost-affected vines, of which there were plenty. Properties with the most financial means did best to remove under ripe second-generation grapes that may have otherwise wound […]
Saint Emilion 2015: Changing Tides
2015 from bottle shows return to freshness, if not for all estates … By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 11 March 2018 When assessing more 2015 Bordeaux from bottle at the UGCB tasting in New York, I was struck by just how much fresher some Right Bank wines especially tasted: wines that had not too long […]
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