Wine ChroniclesPessac-Léognan 2018 reds
Hits amidst gravel and heat By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 24 January 2021 2018 was not the ideal vintage for warmer soils, so I would tip my hat more to 2016 as the recent vintage to purchase from Pessac-Léognan. Still, some very good to excellent wines. A few stars and several superb price/quality ratio wines make 2018 […]
Ode to France, Les Accabailles and Les Crus Classés de Graves
Tasting dinner of top Pessac-Léognan wines at Château Carbonnieux By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 21 November 2019 A round-trip on the high-speed train TGV traversing France from Strasbourg to Bordeaux and back took less than 6 hours. No stop in Paris. Comfy, first class seat at €170: Convenient, efficient and greener than flying or driving. […]
Graves and Pessac-Léognan 2018 (reds)
Noteworthy vintage By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 26 April 2019 The hotter gravely soils of this famous appellation may have been too … gravelly and hot for the vintage. Here is a case where the question of 2016 is quite relevant. In some cases, I do think that 2016 may be a better vintage than […]
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 […]
Graves in red and white #Bdx17
Some very fine reds, some even finer whites By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 18 May 2018 For your mid May weekend reading, my notes on barrel samples – red and white – of Bordeaux’s famous Graves region. They are Left Bank, but to the south of the Médoc. In the Pessac area, it was generally […]
Bordeaux 1966: 50 years on
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 9 December 2016 Wine is a drink for civilized discourse, as I found out yet again, close to my 50th birthday, over dinner with friends and family, with a horizontal of mostly 1966 Bordeaux. Host Olivier Bernard of Domaine de Chevalier has a justified reputation as being savvy, gentlemanly, suave, fun […]
2014 Bordeaux in barrel: smoking Graves
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com MAIN BORDEAUX 2014 BARREL TASTING PAGE 15 May 2015 My faves: Among reds, Haut Brion rather rules the roost, but watch out for an excellent and (hopefully) well-priced Domaine de Chevalier red and the usually fine Haut Bailly. Pape Clement has more linearity than I can ever recall – and that’s […]
Dining at Château Haut Brion with Prince Robert of Luxembourg
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com 13 May 2014 Prince Robert of Luxembourg – owner of Château Haut Brion – loves history. Last year, the estate awarded several cases of Haut Brion 1989 to art historian Laurent Chavier, who won a contest to find the earliest mention of Haut Brion as a wine. “I launched the […]
Recent Comments