dinner feat 91 cathelin

Apologies for the low-quality writeup as i rarely do these but wanted to memorialize the occasion for myself and hopefully help others if they have the opportunity to drink this. backstory in the first paragraph so feel free to skip ahead for impressions of the wine and serving thoughts. Caveat all observations by saying i'm working with a very small sample size .

For those who may not know, Chave's Cuvee Cathelin is made from a subset of grapes that otherwise would go into his Hermitage and is made only in select vintages. Production is ~2k bottles when it is made but even that understates how rare this wine is, at least in my circles. I have never seen let alone tasted it until a buddy of mine and I saw a (relatively speaking) well-priced bottle of 03 cathelin on a list and pulled the trigger. It had this rich overwhelming unctuousness and long finish that reminded me of a great d'yquem. While not my cup of tea (apparently 03 was a very hot vintage) and while i never had nor have any any desire to drink 03 chave, my experience raised the question of whether cathelin was not merely incremental, but could be an altogether different experience vs. the hermitage. As i absolutely love 90/91/95 hermitage my friend and I swore a blood oath that day that if either of us had the chance to drink cathelin from one of those years we would loop in the other. In the back of my mind I had already resigned myself to the likelihood that that day would never come, but fate had other plans. A good number of years later, I received a text. My friend bought a 91 cathelin that was coming direct from Chave. After reminding my friend about the importance of staying true to one's word we decided to wait a few months for the wine to settle and to open in the next time we got together.

91 cuvee cathelin:

I neither find value in reading nor have any aptitude in producing flowery prose about how a wine smells like gunflint and gooseberries. The most (only) important things to me in reviews especially for rarer more expensive wines are i) is this a bad wine; ii) is it stupid to open this now and iii) if opened any thoughts on serving. To that end, this wine is young and could easily age another decade+. bottle was opened and double decanted 8 hours prior to serving then further decanted for a few hours over dinner. It probably was only midway through dinner that the wine really started singing. I hate drinking wines young but i would not discourage anyone from opening one now but you ABSOLUTELY will need to give it ample amounts of time and air before and during drinking.

As for how it showed, while based on the 03 i expected a completely different wine vs. 'base' hermitage, the '91 I'd say it was more incremental (to be clear, i love '91 chave and think it routinely beats out very strong wines at dinners). The same teritary tobacco, leather notes were there but the difference was MUCH longer length and more piercing pure fruit the likes you only see in really dialed in red burgundies. Is it worth the price on an absolute or relative basis? I went in thinking maybe it could be but came out thinking not. Putting aside the novelty / rarity, I think you can probably get a similar experience for…20% cheaper? But was it worth having on the bucket list? no doubt. am i going to seek out a repeat experience in the same way? nah.

quick thoughts on other wines:

75 dp p3: a bit different in that when I've thought these wines haven't shown their best its because the wines have picked up a bit too much oxidation. This bottle instead had lost some effervescence so drank more vinous. I know some people seem to like that but that's not why i drink these. a shame as when they're on this wine can be epic. Ive had this a few times but this was the first bottle to show like this so quite possibly a one-off.

11 lafon montrachet: only time i've drank this. well surpassed my expectations. zero signs of oxidation. In most dinners would have been the wine of the night.

10 valentini trebbiano: something added in while we waited for were stalling for time on the chave. I love these wines but given the company the savoriness made it seem a bit more rustic. I suspect i could have convinced someone that we were drinking bonin.