Château Cos d'Estournel - 1996

My good friends served this wine with Sunday lunch recently. I am lucky to have such good friends. This was one of the best Bordeaux reds I have ever tasted. 1996 was a very good vintage. Château Cos d'Estournel is located in the commune of Saint-Estèphe which borders onto Pauillac to the south. The Château itself is a magnificent sight. The wine is a second class growth but in no way does it have a second class taste or quality. The 1996 vintage is ready for drinking now; it is highly concentrated wine which is full of fruit with a strong nose and taste of cloves and vanilla. The wine has extremely long length on the palate and the tannins are softening and ripening. Even so, this wine could easily be kept ten years longer.

My wife and I tasted it blind and I guessed that it was from either Pauillac or St Julien but I was not surprised when I was shown the bottle. This was not a bad guess as I have not drunk a lot of wine from Saint-Estèphe. How anyone could narrow the commune down further I do not know?  But, you would have had to have drunk or tasted an awful lot of wine from the area. I was able to tell that it was exceptionally good wine from my training.

I looked up the prices of the wine on the web: a bottle of the 1996 vintage will cost you around £110.
Compare that to a bottle of 1996 Château Latour (Grand Vin) which is about 5 times the price. Château Latour is a brand name which is more highly prized by investors but from a drinkers point of view it is not worth the extra premium.

The price of Château Cos d'Estournel is also inflated by the fact that it is on investors' lists. However, if you want to have a taste of the high life and want to spoil yourself for a special occasion then it is worth the price. It is red wine heaven on earth.