”First I cannot, second i do not deserve it, I am a sheep”

”First I cannot, second i do not deserve it, I am a sheep”

1973 Vintage (tasted in 1982)
The year Nineteen Seventy Three (1973) Ch.Mouton-Rothschild was officially made a first growth and was celebrated by a beautiful label done by Pablo Picasso. Whether one is an art or a wine critic, the label clearly surpasses the wine. Very oaky and woody, with rapidly fading fruit, this is a wine worth having if only for the historic significance of the bottle´s label. – February 1982 by Robert Parker Junior 65/100pts –

1973 Vintage (tasted in 2026)
On the 9th of October 2026 three wine trade chums et moi (just in case they are reading this: R.C., R.H.M.W. & B.C.) planned on having a lunch at Simpson´s´in the Strand. I last went to Simpson´s for lunch with my father in 1973 and can still remember the delicious smells from the kitchen, the unique table service & of course the beef. I also remember the reason why my mother, Stella, was not with us for that lunch. Women back then were not allowed into Simpson´s to eat, they could only go to the bar upstairs & wait. Anyway, as the current day team Jeremy King esq. would not let us in with our own wine (always happy to pay good corkage fee) we decided to bail out and went down the road, almost next door to The Savoy Grill (London) to have our lunch and to check out their Beef Wellington (a French invention by the way! not Chef U-tube G.Ramsay). We each put our bottle on the clean white table, two Red Burgundies and two Clarets. After some delicious house Champagne and a fullish Meursault villages we polished off the three bottles of red and then followed by mine being the oldest. It was a high fill bottle, good colour & clean labelled 1973 Ch.Mouton-Rothschild. Savoy´s wine man at the grill, Thierry (ex Angelus), had no qualms about us bringing our wine in, expertly used his Durrand cork puller and slowly out came the Mouton’73 cork, in good shape and of course all in one piece. We of course dived straight in, no decanter, and came across a thinnish wine with Mouton’s classic perfumed bouquet, short, compact, agreeable flavors and of course it was on the light side. We drank up and agreed that it was a very good and also indeed a very special bottle. We were all surprised how drinkable the wine was after 53 years and given the state of the vintage: 1973!. – October 2026 by William Hancock 90/100pts –

Make of this what you will dear reader, but it does remind me that there can always be some vinous-magic upon opening older vintages along with old and weaker vintages of Claret especially! Do you remember the story of the 1972 Ch.Musar? and still, to date, my best ever bottle of an older vintage Ch.Latour from the 1964 vintage which had a poor top-shoulder level. It was rich, round & supple. Soft tannins and with a silky long finish. That same year (this would have been around 1995) I had drunk some 1961 Ch.Latour which was totally lovely, but I still preferred this bottle of 1964 Latour. Who am I?

For those of you that never heard the story behind 1972 Ch.Musar vintage. Another odd one. The year ’72 had been one of the worst years of Civil War in the Lebanon. Harvest time in Bekka Valley had been completed and Gaston Hochar (the boss) suggested that the four trucks full of harvested red grapes, be driven separately to the winery in Beirut, normally a journey of 50 kilometres direct. Two truck taking the north route through the mountains and the other two trucks driving south, the coastal route to the winery. The idea being that there were so many road blocks on the main roads & motorway that there was a high probability of the grapes being totally ruined by the stoppages and blockades in their long journey. Even with the possibility of the grapes actually never arriving at all. Hochar was not wrong, two trucks took over 24 hours to arrive at the place and the other came in 2 days later. Upon arrival they put all the grapes into a de-stemmer and pumped the juices off, all into one empty cemented fermentation wine tank that was at the back of the winery. Things were not really looking good, what was left to ferment fermented and finished naturally and then a week or so later they took a sip of the wine. It was of course not very good at all, as expected, in fact the wine was terrible, so they closed off the tank and literally forgot about it. The journey from vineyard to winery had taken so long that most of the grapes had begun fermenting in the back of the lorries, most of the fruit totally ruined, as you can imagine. Some twenty years later, Monsieur Hochar was doing a winery inspection, tasting and general tour of the place and asked the manager at the time what was in this cement tank at the back of the winery. The manager, a recent addition to the crew, did not actually know as he was not part of the original story, and suggested that they taste some of the tank’s contents. Samples were taken to the office and they gave the wine a good going over. They found, from the records, that it was from 1972 vintage, and that this forgotten wine tasted remarkably good, hidden away there in the dark and went on to become an outstanding wine. Full of special Musar flavours that would only come from a great vintage like 1969, 1981 or 1999. They decided on the spot to bottle the 1972 Musar, un-filtered as usual, and then label it with the properties Grand Vin label. Still today it is one of the most spectacular wines from the Lebanese winery. It is very hard to find a bottle. The wine has a harmonious, aromatic intensity featuring resin, incense, tobacco, pine, candied fruits, caramel, cigar box, and old charred wood, with multi-dimensional meaty-minty scents. Silky, elegant, and full-bodied with a balance of softness and vibrant acidity, echoing an old Châteauneuf-du-Pape with warm, spicy sweetness, leather, and cassis fruit. – 99/100pts W.P.H.

Here is another example of a wine that for reasons and circumstances stacked up against it, turns into something rather special. Maybe this tells us that wine is more than just a vinous product in a glass bottle. But with some attention, special storage, some wine knowledge and a lot of good luck, we can still have great great pleasure, and learn something new from the Old n Bold as much as we can from the youngsters. There is a young fellow with a large wine collection called Beckham, who once said that he will never ever drink a wine older than the 2000 vintage. He is of course missing out on a lot, to understand the new vintages we must taste and drink the older versions & learn, what a silly billy!

”premier ne puis

second ne daigne

Mouton suis”

”primero no puedo

segundo no me lo merezco

soy una oveja”

”First I cannot

second i do not deserve it

I am a sheep”