1988 Château Pape Clément
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Tasting notes
The 1988 Pape Clément is a blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot. Now at 30 years of age, it has a deep core with a thin brick rim. The nose is classic in style with blackberry, cedar and sandalwood, just a touch of tobacco. This is very composed and refined, not powerful but it has certainly aged better than some of its peers. The palate is medium-bodied with grainy tannin, vestiges of black fruit although that has ebbed away to reveal a rather dry and austere, though not unattractive finish with touches of truffle on the finish. Drink now. Tasted at the château.
Critic scores
Wine Spectator
Robert Parker
More reviews and scores
A gorgeous wine and one of the vintage’s most successful efforts, Pape Clement’s dark plum/purple-colored 1988 has a nose of roasted herbs, sweet tobacco smoke, red as well as black currants, and scorched earth. The wine still has a deep ruby color, with only a hint of lightening at the rim. The wine is medium to full-bodied, with sweet but high tannin and a lot of smoke, earth, and asphalt notes. This is a chewy, very complex, aromatic, and authoritatively flavorful wine that has reached its plateau of maturity. Anticipated maturity: Now-2014. Last tasted, 4/02.
Aromas of iodine, pipe tobacco and red fruits follow through to a full body, with soft and silky tannins and intense flavors of tar, berry, and licorice. Beautiful texture too. Long and seductive. Really excellent.¿'88/'98 Bordeaux blind retrospective (2008). Drink now. 11,000 cases made. James Suckling, Wine Spectator 2009
Possessing the quintessential Graves elegance and perfume, the 1988 is impressively deep in color for a Graves, with a thrillingly fragrant nose of roasted chestnuts, tobacco, currants, and earthy stones. One notices that this is an atypically backward, full Pape-Clement, but there is wonderful ripeness, and high, velvety tannins. The finish is all smoky-scented black-cherries. Anticipated maturity: Now-2008. Feb 1993, www.robertparker.com
About the producer
Among the oldest estates in Bordeaux, Ch. Pape Clément has been guided into the modern era by Bernard Magrez, who has managed the estate since 1985. It makes some of the best reds in the region.