1947 Petrus - could it have been a fake?

31 Dec 2010: New Year's Eve - time to sum up the year.  As luck would have it, we started the evening by being disappointed by a half bottle of Krug Rosé.  Lovely salmon pink, creamy mousse and persistent and fine bubbles.  Refreshing, with red cherry and redcurrant nose.  Yet the finish was incredibly short - the taste just disappeared almost as soon as it left the mouth.  14.5/20

The half bottle of 2006 Le Clos Blanc de Vougeot, Domaine de la Vougeraie, delivered more pleasure.  Pale gold in colour.  An attractive nose of lemon curd, acacia, honeysuckle, marzipan, macadamia nuts, honey and a hint of toast.  Rich in body, with a viscous texture.  Balanced, robust in structure.  A sweet finish.  Bolstered by the small component of Pinot Gris, the wine reminded us very much of its New World counterparts.  16.5/20 (It was not the perfect accompaniment to prawns in marie rose sauce!  Champagne or a racy Chablis would have been a better match!)

The mottled 1947 Petrus label



Glue on bottle



The Mahler-Besse slip label

Then the 1947 Petrus, Mähler-Besse bottled.  Richard said he bought it somewhere in Paris.  A mottled main label, that spoke of mould and damp storage, at some point in its life (see photo).  Yet, the label felt very dry and brittle.  So we later removed it to find that it was glued on rather haphazardly (see photo).  The Mähler-Besse slip label (photo) looked much fresher and more firmly stuck onto the shoulder of the bottle.  The cork looked its age. By the time we tried the wine, it had been decanted for about an hour.  A garnet core, quite expectedly.  However, the nose was an unappealing mix of metallic and oxidised aromas.  The wine tasted rather uninteresting and the finish was extremely short, and drying out.  I am not so experienced with these older vintages, but Richard assured me that this did not taste right, at least compared to the last bottle of the same wine that he tried.  We were rather baffled by this wine.  This certainly did not taste anything like the 100-pointer wine described by Parker.  Could it have been just a lesser quality old Bordeaux wine (might not have been Petrus) that someone decided to bottle it in an old Mähler-Besse bottle and stick on a 1947 Petrus label to con a few bucks?  Or was it a genuine bottle that had been badly stored?  Yet if the latter, how could one explain the poorly applied glue and the rather fresher Mähler-Besse slip label????   Still intrigued by the explanation, but the evening must go on.  So we opened a half bottle of 1961 Ducru Beaucaillou.

The 1961 Ducru Beaucaillou (half bottle) was an absolute delight after a rather disappointing succession of bottles.  Very textbook bouquet of blackcurrant, blueberry, cigar box, tobacco and violet.  A wine still in its prime, tasting extremely fresh, firmly structured and beatifully balanced.  Great length.  18.5/20

As finale, we opened a 1988 Yquem (full bottle).  Luscious, opulent and profound.  Though the wine was not shy in flaunting its voluptuous build and richly botrytised character of layers of marmalade, kumquat, dried apricot, honey, white chocolate, fruit cake and walnut, all the richness and sweetness was neatly wrapped up with just the right amount of acidity to make it a gloriously balanced and complex dessert wine, with a finish that lasted a few minutes before tempting you to take another sip!  20/20   (I am so happy that I still have more than a few drops of this heavenly nectar to enjoy over the next few days!)

Our New Year's Eve menu read like this:

Gougères
King prawns in marie rose sauce served in an avocado with salad, drizzed with almond oil vinaigrette
Truffle-infused roasted poussin on a bed of baby turnips and haricot beans, served with sautéed Chinese pea sprouts
Cheese platter (Délice de St Cyr, Munster, Ossau Iraty, Comté and Gubbeen)
Desset platter (a mélange of florentine, boule de chocolat and raspberry sorbet)

An evening not short of surprises, followed by sweet dreams of 1988 Yquem! 
Welcome to 2011!