Most disappointing 'great' wine you've ever had?

Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande 1982.

Call me a philistine, but 3 random bottles from the same case were thoroughly underwhelming for all the hype of '82.

1989 Lafite was underwhelming. Elegance and class for sure, but underwhelming.

I didnā€™t love the 1985 La Tache that ironically is displayed in my avatar.

Same.

Iā€™m not sure '89 Lafite was ever hyped as ā€œgreatā€, but thereā€™s certainly a lot of examples of supposedly great vintage + first growth = dud. FWIW, all the '82 PLs I was lucky enough to taste were quite lovely. My nominations would be:

  • Chateau Grillet (just not a good or very interesting wine)
  • Egon Mueller Scharzhofberger Spaetlese (just not showing anything this philistine doesnā€™t get from dozens of cheaper Riesling)

I havenā€™t listed dozens of examples of Rhone wines that were super-hyped and high-scoring on release, because thatā€™s a road well-travelled on this Board!

most lauded post-1999 Bordeaux, with a few honourable exceptions.

Most recently the 2005 and 2010 Chateau Palmer I had the other day, which were really underwhelming (thought admittedly the 2015 and 2016 were pretty good - are they turning the tide? I guess weā€™ll have to wait and see).

I bought a bottle of 1945 Domaine Ponsot from the Clos St. Denis Grand Cru appellation from this guy name Rudy K in NY. It just tasted like red blend someone put together in their kitchen. :slight_smile:

On a serious note, I know this isnā€™t a Grad Cru or anything, but I remember early in my wine life I tasted I bottle of Silver Oak from Napa and I didnā€™t understand the hype at that time. I wish I remembered the vintage.

a run of Lafites from the seventiesā€¦

2001 Masseto [scratch.gif]

I remember the hype about Lafite that year well.

Ended up selling the other 9 bottles of PL '82 for a fortune and buying other wines instead.

1990 LLC (what a boring wine)
1990 Jaboulet La Chappelle

So the ā€˜100ā€™ hype was not all it was made out to be? - never had the '90 La Chapelle though I wish Iā€™d had the '61.

1961 Palmer, but it was a suspect bottle.

Easy. An obscenely corked 1982 Margaux.

krug ambonnay - 95, 96, 00

ā€œGreatā€ is an overstatement here, and itā€™s not in the league of these first growths and all in the thread.

But as far as a wine that was $90, got huge scores, and comes from a grape (cab franc) and region (Tuscany) both of which I generally love, I was horribly disappointed by Le Macchiole Paleo. So soft, oaky, generic, no sense of the grape or the place, could have been just about anything, tasted like it was worth more like $25.

Not sure the vintage, maybe 2013 or 2014.

+1 on 1990 Jaboulet La Chappelle. Enjoyable, but definitely not worth the price.

I forget the vintage, but it was an older Dom Peringnon that tasted like fizzy sourdough starter (bottle probably wasnā€™t flawed, just way too old).

I think Jaboulet is generally overrated, and the 1990 was part of how I came to that view. Iā€™d quite like to have the La Clapelle too!

And I can +1 that LLC. The 2002 LLC was better. [soap.gif]

The La Chapelle 1990
I understand more than one bottling, and the European versions are stellar. The ones I have had in the U.S. were underwhelming.

My underwhelming wine was the famous Cheval 1947, two bottles, the first a Van der Meulen bottling. The tasting was memorable anyway, as two of the people started a fist fight over Parker, one having to be restrained. Passions must have been running high as the big guy was around ten inches taller and probably eighty pounds heavier.

Back to the Cheval. This was not just a bad bottle, it was godawful one. It smelled and tasted of skunk; and it wasnā€™t just a nuance, it was front, center and round the sides.

The second bottle was chateau bottled and pronounced correct. Overripe, plummy, essence of raisin, soft from an almost total absence of acidity. Tasted around 2000, it showed no complexity whatsoever, but there were some in the group who liked it, but there were no takers for wine of the century or even wine of the night (La Mission 1955).