Rosemount Balmoral 97 and D,Arenberg Custodian Grenache 96
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:30 am
Anyone tasted either of these wines recently? Which would you prefer now given the choice?
caper wrote:Anyone tasted either of these wines recently? Which would you prefer now given the choice?
Hi there and welcome to the forum.
The first thing I'd like to mention is that the search function can be pretty useful here - typing in "1996 and Custodian" and "1997 and Balmoral" in the search box narrows down the hits down to a few that could be useful.
I last tried the 1996 Custodian a year ago if that's current enough:
n4sir wrote:1996 d’Arenberg The Custodian Grenache: Dark brick colour with a hint of orange on the rim; there’s heavy crusting so decanting is essential. The nose was perfumed, sweet and dusty with dried flowers/earth, dried herbs and some leather. The palate was extremely sweet from the beginning, with bright raspberry and boiled lollies, Turkish Delight and some leather, finishing with sweet, fine tannins with some licorice, strawberry and just a touch of alcohol on the aftertaste. This was a great old Grenache with no signs of falling over soon.
I haven't had much luck with the 1997 Balmoral, which from my experiences seems to have a large bottle variation problem:
Last year at the Blacktongues 1997 Shiraz tastings the bottle was oxidised.
A year before that a Southcorp Rep' opened five bottles in one hit at an instore. One was corked, and one reeked of VA and eventually was thought to be randomly oxidised. The remaining three were remarkable different:
The first was very savoury with fish sauce, leather, earth, and a hint of barnyard on the nose, and very powdery tannins on the palate.
The second was closed initially, then opened up a lot fresher with some blackberry and nutty oak on the nose, and tighter grained tannins on the palate with a hint of VA.
The third was remarkably oaky on the nose and palate, and pulled up rather short compared to the first two.
Given my experience I'd recommend you open the Balmoral and have the Custodian as a spare in case you have the same unlucky streak I did.
Cheers,
Ian