opinion / one bottle / 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild
Curtain up on the modern wine world
Andrew Jeff ord T
hen, suddenly, everything changed: curtain up on the modern wine world. We didn’t know we were
waiting for Bordeaux’s 1982 vintage. Hindsight suggested it. After ’82, ambitious bottles began to teem the shipping lanes, finding appreciation in climates and cultures where they’d never roamed before and inspiring new wine endeavor. This good-natured, generous harvest of wines seemed to cross a chronological frontier. It unlocked assured wealth and untroubled ripeness; it buried a postwar world of glut and slump, of generational conflict, of threadbare returns, of stricture and of inadequacy. It suggested that the new chemical fixes that had blighted the 1960s and 1970s weren’t necessary. It was communicable; it communicated. In 1982, the sun came out. I was there, as a modest novice
consumer, spending a little money and finding a lot of joy in its wake. My friends and I wolfed our ’82s too soon, but no matter; we now understood pleasure in red wine. We now knew how enticing it smelled and what gratifying maneuvers it performed in our mouths. We felt its soft glow in our innards as we sank back into night’s arms. And—of course—this vintage in Bordeaux lingered, moving forward in time like a leading actor or actress: embodying the passing of the years in its own changing physical form but always memorably, scattering insight and understanding as it did so. From time to time, most of us got to see 1982 perform on stage thanks to some friend’s kindness. It would enter from the wings unfussily enough, easy of gesture and unstridently vocal. As the play of dinner unfolded, though, it would command attention, hush, gaze. How many are left? No idea. But The
World of Fine Wine’s long-term Bordeaux taster and vintage interpreter Michael Schuster has several 1982 treasures as has his nonagenarian friend Alan. In September 2022, almost 40 years to the day after their Cabernet grapes were
160 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023
picked, Alan’s Latour ’82 was uncorked with Michael’s Mouton ’82 one Saturday lunchtime, preceded by a whispery 2002 Salon and followed by a dramatic 1962 Taylor’s Colheita and finally the allusive, companionable 1982 Hine. Michael’s wife and astute fellow taster Monika sat down with us; beef Wellington came courtesy of Waitrose. The more-than-fortunate fourth palate was mine. All was warmth: the day, the company, the smiling vintage, the ocher-red walls of Alan’s dining room in his central London flat, and the paintings he had collected over the years that hang there, dominated by an Alfred Wolmark nude, graceful in shadows yet lit from above, as if by a skylight.
Innocence lost
Latour was a little paler than Mouton in color—but darker in aroma. Both these Pauillacs had a seamless harmony, of course, but there was more firm black fruit hidden away in the Latour, faintly smoke-twined, settled, and wise. It had more palpable tannin, too, than the Mouton, with more evident acidity. It was complete, even pristine for such a mature wine. Of the two, it would probably be the one to keep for longer should you be so endowed and so minded. I’m not so endowed, nor would I be so minded; everything about it was graceful and expressive, measured and well proportioned, but nothing needed further unpacking. It promised no more hidden mysteries, and it would be a shame to see the flesh shrink from emergent bones. This was its memorial day. As it had been, when paint met canvas, for Wolmark’s model. Mouton was a different case, though I think its memorial day had come, too. It seemed to carry more color, and to do so in a brighter and more glint-laden way— and it was certainly chattier aromatically. The years seemed to have teased the cedar out to camphor and incense; what was faint bonfire smoke in Latour took us downwind of a cigar in Mouton. There
Few of the great vintages since have the same sense of eff ortless grandeur as ’82. Will this sort of “great” ever come again?
was a bass pulse, a visceral thrill: not so much a scent as something you can sense by smelling. There was length and luxury stretching out in sunlight. It was smoother on the tongue than the Latour, but not untextured; the black fruits here melted into a glowing pool. Much less acidity, but for all that the decking was tangible, falling away softly, layer after layer, riper and ever riper. And finally it found a savory place to nestle that seemed to elude the Latour. I’m sure those who still have ’82s will continue to feast on them, and always with pleasure. The legend, though, may begin to take over where the wines leave off. How far we’ve moved in 40 years… There have been many “great” Bordeaux vintages since ’82: torrents of excellence, to the point at which Michael felt obliged (in issue 78), to assert that this “adjective’s currency is effectively shot,” and that something “more descriptively imaginative” is required. Few if any of these vintages, though, have the same disarming easiness of articulation, the same sense of effortless grandeur as ’82. Will this sort of “great” ever come again? Perhaps we have lost the innocence that made ’82 possible; our vineyard endeavors, our “precision,” and our craft now drive us more deeply into intensity, for better or worse. The world’s atmosphere, too, has changed dramatically. With hindsight, once again, it would indeed seem that 1982 stood on a threshold of some sort. Seasons now begin and end earlier, and the pulses of heat between the two beat—and bite—harder. We’ve built ourselves chariots of summer fire, and we’re racing them forward so fast that they seem beyond stopping.
Illustration by Dan Murrell
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220
