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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Fine signs for Bordeaux 2019
Let’s start with some top Cru Bourgeois By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 15 July 2020 As you may recall, back in May, I dubbed Bordeaux 2019 the COVID19 vintage. That was not meant to decry quality, but rather to set context. And as I wrote back then, my intention was not to add hype, but […]
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 […]
2015 Bordeaux from bottle, part 1: Mostly Médoc wines
Margaux shines brightest By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 17 November 2017 – revised, with new video intro, below. How good are Bordeaux 2015 from bottle? Based on two days of tasting top Médoc wines in early November this year, I would say quite good. It does not seem to reach the heights, on a more […]
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 […]
Underrated Bordeaux 2014
Worth seeking out from bottle: both white and red 29 January 2017 By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com When I tasted 2014 and 2015 Château Montrose side-by-side in October last year at the estate, I learned that less than 40% of the harvest was used to make the first wine in 2015, while over 50% was […]
Changes afoot at Château Cos d’Estournel
Visit and tasting with Aymeric de Gironde By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 7 November 2015 Aymeric de Gironde arrived at Cos d’Estournel for the difficult 2013 vintage, although he had a hand in blending the 2012, which we tasted when I visited alongside the 2010, 2005 and 2001. He also shared a recently launched Champagne […]
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 […]
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