Chateau Arnauld Haut-Medoc 2003 Cru Bourgeois

I was at Costco on Clybourn this weekend and saw a lot of this on display for $9.99/bottle. I saw some people buying case(s). When it comes to Bordeaux, I'm clueless. I've heard of the Lafite-Rothschilds & such but I'm unfamiliar with some of lesser known houses. Does anyone have any opinions on this wine?

This sounds like a pretty good value, as I believe that this is a fairly well-regarded chateau (and $9.99 is, frankly, pretty cheap for a good bottle of wine). However, I believe that 2003 probably is pretty young to drink now.

I've not had this wine, but in my experience, $10-15 Bordeaux are not too unlike $10-15 California Cabernet in that you can get a perfectly decent wine but not one that will knock your socks off like a really good Bordeaux or California Cab. I would guess, due to the price point and retail channel, that this wine does not actually need to be aged and is probably ready to drink off the shelf. Furthermore, at that price, there's relatively little risk...I hope you give it a whirl and report back.

Aaron

Aaron Deacon wrote: I would guess, due to the price point and retail channel, that this wine does not actually need to be aged and is probably ready to drink off the shelf.

Aaron

There are five classes of wines

- those that are at their peak and will only get worse
- those that have not yet reached their peak but are drinkable
- those that have not yet reached their peak and should not be drunk
- those that are past their peak but are drinkable
- those that are garbage and should never be drunk regardless of when their peak might be.

I imagine most 2003 Bordeaux fall into the second category. This may seem obvious, but I cannot tell you how many times I have read this statement - "Most wines today are made so that they are ready to drink now." Which is taken by many to mean that such wines cannot be aged. It just ain't true. There are a lot of wines that can be quite enjoyable today, and will also improve significantly with age for a number of years.

I would be happy to hear of any tricks or sources people have to help them decide when a wine will drink best, because I am always struggling to figure that out.

dicksond wrote:I would be happy to hear of any tricks or sources people have to help them decide when a wine will drink best, because I am always struggling to figure that out.

I've got an idea -- what if you used the internets to organize a community of wine enthusiasts to share their experiences and let you know what's good now and what should be saved for longer...

Sorry, couldn't resist. But when I saw this:

In another thread, Choey wrote:I regret opening them too early, but it's only a small regret. These will be wonderful wines for any one with the patience to wait them out.

it did strike me that something is happening here. What did they do before the internet? At least now we know about 1995 and 1996 Bordeaux from Haut Brion...

Besides LTH, there must be some already well established internet communities of wine aficionados who have gone before, for any given wine. Have you ever looked at corkd.com? I am not much of a wine connoisseur, so I haven't made much use of it, but perhaps it could help. If that's not the site, there must be one out there.

germuska - I will ignore the shot and move on .

The original, longer version of my post included some extended notes on what I have tried that worked, and what does not. But I guess I should include more of that, so here it is.

Reviewers' projections about when wines will be at their peak are useless for anything that is not at, or close to, its peak today. I find them to routinely project a shorter aging period than applies for all wines except those that really are not suitable for any aging (some whites, tho not as many as you think, and most Zinfandel, IMO). Not sure why, tho I think it is because they so favor bright, fresh fruit and that is lost to some degree with longer aging. Plus, I suppose there is less risk to recommending drinking a wine before its peak, than once it has started to decline.

Whatever the reason, I find the recommendations not at all useful. [Brief aside: since my cellar is a room in my basement, and the temperature is a non-obsessive 63-65 degrees, you would think my wines would age more quickly, if anything. Not really the case it seems.]

So I have gradually gravitated to places where I can find other people's tasting notes, particularly http://www.CellarTracker.com - free registration last time I was there, and http://www.winespectator.com which I do subscribe to.

But the challenge is always to find specific, recent, notes on the particular wine I am considering drinking. This is not so easy if one has a small production wine, or if one is aging something that people do not consider age-worthy, both of which do apply in my world. And then, even if I find notes, there is some variation in the quality and information in the notes - people tend to like to emulate the reviewers and give you a score and some floral prose, when all I really want is this: open/closed, bright/fading, balanced/acidic/tannic, and if you drank another bottle before when was that, and how did it compare. Sadly, I have not been able to enforce this discipline in tasting notes, since those who post seem to think the note is also supposed to help them to remember the taste and quality of the wine . The gall .

So I stumble on, build my own rules of thumb, and as often as not open a bottle way too early, or less often, a bit too late.

The only real solution I have found is to only buy cases, wait an appropriate time and then open a bottle a year until the Eureka moment, finishing the rest in short order. I do not consider this a great solution though I will say my buying has both decreased in frequency, and increased in quantity, so most of the time I do have at least 2 or 3 bottles of everything I buy except the most expensive stuff. And, since about half of my wine purchases are repeats of wines I purchased in earlier vintages, I operate with the dangerous assumption that I have a clue as to how the current vintage might age.

The last time I asked this question on a serious oenophile site, "How do you know when to drink it?" no one even graced me with a reply. I even provided a list of wines - this may have been my problem, since it was a weird, quirky list with no snob appeal. Maybe I broke some board rule...

Rant over.

So I am curious how others do it. And I am particularly curious on specific rules they follow for particular regions, vintages or wines.

One of my extravagances is to be on Paul Hobbs mailing list (by serendipity I got on his mailing list 7 or 8 years ago when his wines were wonderful and a bargain - no more). I buy a small amount of his Chardonnays and age them. 3-5 years gives you a crisper, less fruity experience. Past 5 years, they begin to oxidize, turning a honey color and losing most fruit and oak, but remaining powerful in their way. Past 7, they begin to fade. About 4 or 5 years is probably peak for most people, though I like that cusp at 5.

On the same note, I like buying Byron Chardonnay, and aging it about five years. Slightly oxidized, oak has now melded with the fruit, pretty damned good with food.

That has been the only way I would drink California Chardonnay, but the recent trend away from big buttery stuff probably means I should re-explore.

Not sure if this should not be a separate thread - Aaron?

dicksond wrote:germuska - I will ignore the shot and move on

Aw, i was just playin!

Actually, it was kind of an elliptical way to ask about what kinds of internet resources are out there, an excuse to point out that I thought it was cool that something like Choey's post contributed (in a small way) to what you're looking for, and to wonder why you can't just somehow put out a little focused alert into the internet wine world saying "1971 Chateau Clouseau - what's the buzz?" or something like it.

I see now that you brought up some of this stuff in this old thread and this idea of a Tasting Notes Request is just that "little focused alert" -- so it's more about accumulating the community of interest, I guess. That, and the more general issues of internet searchability and such, which is something in which I take quite an interest.

I also respect the interest in simply knowing what strategies people use to figure this stuff out. I love that stuff.

dicksond wrote:The last time I asked this question on a serious oenophile site, "How do you know when to drink it?" no one even graced me with a reply.

Dicksond,

This question is at the heart of what the wine experience is all about for many wine enthusiasts. I bet they didn’t know where to start to answer such a question!
There is only one way to attack it from my perspective. The fun of having a hobby like wine is all about trying out every wine under the sun and, over many years, start to realize which types of wines and from what regions make you happy.
From there, start to take note of specific wineries you connect with in a serious way, trying as many vintages as possible; both fair and excellent.
When you are really sure you love how they make wine and think there is something special about it, then you know it’s time to buy a FULL case.

At this point, it’s time to ask the question “How do you know when to drink it?”

Having an arsenal of twelve bottles of the exact wine from the exact vintage is a powerful thing. You’re not locked into trying to predict when it hits its optimum drinking period or having to necessarily yield to others with different palates for guidance. Certainly, other opinions don’t hurt, but your idea of the optimum time to drink a wine and someone else's may be completely different.
I’ve always enjoyed trying one bottle immediately to get an idea of its overall structure. With the bigger reds, I might try a bottle every couple of years whereas for most whites I’m more apt to try it out every couple of months. For better wines, I have fun playing the prediction game of just when the wine might be optimally enjoyable.
Another thing to be asking is how LONG that optimum drinking period will last.
I wouldn’t hesitate to see what the great tasters say but don’t expect anything more than a fairly nebulous range.

There is definitely more of an art to this than any scientific solution. Each wine has its own maturation point of which no one really knows for sure when that might be.

It's also variable. Storage can affect aging. And what I think is drinkable you may not. I had an older Haut Brion and I thought it tasted like old tires (DH was happy to drink my share).

I bought DH a (one) bottle of 1987 Opus One for his PhD graduation. It had gotten 99 in Wine Spectator, and I didn't know anything about wine, but I figured it had to be good to get 99, and I could afford to get it, so I did. We kept hearing reports of this year - in Jan. 1993 the people at the next table over who were drinking it told us it wasn't ready, needed time, sharp tannins, etc. So we said, what the heck, let's keep it for our 5th anniversary (1998) and reports we found at the time said it still wasn't ready. So we said "let's keep it for our 10th anniversary" - which is when we drank it. And you know what, it was over the hill.

leek wrote:I bought DH a (one) bottle of 1987 Opus One for his PhD graduation. It had gotten 99 in Wine Spectator, and I didn't know anything about wine
<snip>
So we said, what the heck, let's keep it for our 5th anniversary (1998) and reports we found at the time said it still wasn't ready. So we said "let's keep it for our 10th anniversary" - which is when we drank it. And you know what, it was over the hill.

What's your basis for the last statement? Your own assessment or 'reports'? How do you know that you wouldn't have disliked (or liked) it at the 5 yr. point?
I'm just curious.

This thread (in conjunction with others - like the Bordeaux tasting) are fascinating. I don't know much about wine - only that I have enjoyed some - for whatever reason. I know too that I haven't tried truly excellent wines - but it isn't clear to me that I'd like or dislike those for the reasons I'm 'supposed' to. Right now there seem to be too many variables but I'd like to attack it (pun intended) soon. I'm glad that this bevarage board has resulted in these discussions

sazerac wrote:

leek wrote:1987 Opus One
<snip>
[2003]- which is when we drank it. And you know what, it was over the hill.

What's your basis for the last statement? Your own assessment or 'reports'? How do you know that you wouldn't have disliked (or liked) it at the 5 yr. point?
I'm just curious.

My own assessment was that it was over the hill. The fruit was gone, but there wasn't enough other things to give it oomph. It was fine, it was drinkable, but it wasn't fantastic, and I think it should have been drunk earlier. Perhaps I was expecting too much of it

I don't know that I wouldn't have liked it at the 5 year point Tasting reports at that time said it needed time (don't recall why).

Opus One tended at that time that wine was made (maybe not today) to have lots of tannins that needed time. In theory, they were trying to make a Bordeaux-style wine that would age well. I don't think they succeeded, in that I have had many older actual Bordeaux wines at lower price points that tasted much better at 10 years. I seem to recall hearing that Opus has changed its style to make a wine that doesn't need as much aging.

viaChgo wrote:I was at Costco on Clybourn this weekend and saw a lot of this on display for $9.99/bottle. I saw some people buying case(s). When it comes to Bordeaux, I'm clueless. I've heard of the Lafite-Rothschilds & such but I'm unfamiliar with some of lesser known houses. Does anyone have any opinions on this wine?

Ron A. wrote:This sounds like a pretty good value, as I believe that this is a fairly well-regarded chateau (and $9.99 is, frankly, pretty cheap for a good bottle of wine). However, I believe that 2003 probably is pretty young to drink now.

I picked up a bottle of the Chateau Arnauld to sample before Thanksgiving dinner and found it to be amazingly lifeless. I wasn't sure if I was being overly critical, so I had some other wine drinkers in the family give me their analysis of it. After all the sampling was done, my assessment turned out to be the kindest!. Comments from "not together" ... "is this wine real old or something?"and "has no fruit" were shared.
The only reason I could imagine why there was a run on this wine that day was the"monkey see, monkey do" effect.

Another real marginal example of '03 Bordeaux, even at $10.

I think Leek's assessment is dead-on.

A little LTHForum re-run...

Not remembering this thread at all, I picked up the 2004 version of this the other day, thinking (like the original poster)....Haut Medoc, ten bucks, worth a shot.

My conclusion was the same as that immediately above.

Not even worth half that.

I take comfort in the cycles of history.

Aaron Deacon wrote:A little LTHForum re-run...

Not remembering this thread at all, I picked up the 2004 version of this the other day, thinking (like the original poster)....Haut Medoc, ten bucks, worth a shot.

My conclusion was the same as that immediately above.

Not even worth half that.

I take comfort in the cycles of history.

I had one recently as well and I liked it better on day two than day one....
We don't drink a lot of Brdx mostly rhones so I'm no expert but it was a nice change of pace for a mid-week bottle.

This does nothing to answer the OP's question about knowing when to drink, but reflects my own diverse experience from which the only conclusion I draw, is that statistically, whatever you do, it's still a crapshoot. (Which kinda keeps things interesting.)

Back in the day, I had accumulated a whole lot of '74 Barolo. This was considered a good, but not great year, worth buying after the dismal '72-'73, and with the great '71s so expensive. (Then '78 came along as another "year of the century" and '74 became a real poor stepchild.) In any case, what with Barolo's reputation for macho toughness, and the year being decent, and then sort of forgetting about them, I ended up keeping them long after most people felt they ought to have been drunk. Then I hauled them all out and had a tasting dinner. This would have been between '96 and '98, I imagine. Given the very primitive storage conditions and the age, it should have been a very spotty event. But, with the exception of 1 bottle that was totally gone, they were all, unaccountably in great shape. Even the next day.

Similarly, I've opened "special" bottles, perhaps a bit early, let them breath for hours, consumed them over a long dinner, and then found, doing cleanup the next morning, that the dregs were still opening up wonderfully.

And then there are those wines that undergo the much talked of "dumb" stage in their maturation. I don't know if I've experienced it, but I keep reading about. I can't imagine how you know if you've got a bad claret, or just one in its moody, hostile, non-communicative adolescence.

I think the best one can do is to buy at least 2-3 btls. of anything one suspects has great promise, and try it more than once.

I thought I'd bring some closure to this ol' thread. I opened a bottle of this 03 Arnauld. Even though it's 3.5 years later, PIGMON, your comment about it being "lifeless" was spot-on. It was totally flat, lacking in fruit, structure, nose, etc.

On the plus side, it also doesn't bring any offending flavors/qualities to the table either, so maybe it'll be destined to become sangria.