2003 Sociando Mallet

This one gets very good write-ups from Parker and Jancis robinson (whom I've just subscribed to). On the first night, 10/31, the wine was dark and silky with plenty of acid and softening tannins but I found the fruit overwhelmingly tinged with black olive--not one of my favorite aromas. Gassed it and tonight the olive was gone to be replaced by spring woods, flowers, violet, and hint of cassis. So it's much better tonight. However it also was oxidizing, in my view; i'm not sure how good the gas valve still is. I say oxidizing because the acid seemed too high tonight. Nonetheless I'd say what I need to do is let this sit for another year or two before drinking the other 10 btls I'm storing. I'd give it 92 based on potential for future mellowing, rounding and shedding the olive. Here's Parker and Jancis. For her 17.5 is very high.

Sociando-Mallet is the poster child for what cru bourgeois estates can achieve. This is a wine that is consistently of classified-growth quality and also one of the longest lived wines made in the Medoc. An exceptional vintage for Sociando-Mallet, 2003 has produced a spectacularly concentrated, inky blue/purple-colored wine with an extraordinary nose of blackberries, raspberries, some white flowers, and a hint of lead pencil shavings. The wine is powerful, extremely full-bodied, quite tannic, and seriously endowed. This is stunning wine that is rich, layered, and in need of 5-6 years of bottle-age. It should keep for 30+ years. It is certainly a riveting effort for the vintage and, as I wrote last year, probably a modern-day version of a hypothetical blend of a 1970 and a 1982.

Ch Sociando-Mallet 2003 Haut-Médoc 17.5 Drink 2007-20

Harvest date 10-24 Sep; yield 49.5 hl/ha; vineyard area 70.62 ha
Very dark indeed – much more so than most 2003s. Right out to the rim too! Mineral and heady – this smells like one of the most successful wines of this vintage. Succulent and ripe and exotic but not overdone and without a hollow middle. The tannins are a bit dry on the end, which stops it being a top scorer for me, but it’s definitely one of the best 2003s. Flattering and with sufficient freshness – the structure is rather Italian actually! Some bitterness and acidity... I wonder whether this was acidified?