CH’NG Poh Tiong
Which Vintage is Stairway to Heaven
Our Wines of the Week are also the focus of a Decanting/Dinner Masterclass scheduled for 30 August 2021.
By then, hopefully, Singapore can go back to sitting down at coffee-shops, food courts, and restaurants as the country’s Multi-Ministry Covid Taskforce intimated two weeks ago.
For our event, you need to be vaccinated with either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna as these are recognized by the Singapore Ministry of Health. A couple – both, co-incidentally medical doctors – has signed up and there are 2 places left.
The idea of a Decanting/Dinner Masterclass is to show participants the benefit time and air bring to a wine.
Wines that benefit from decanting would otherwise be closed, tight, taut, and wound-up if not decanted.
Participants will discover for themselves the differences as they will taste Chateau Leoville Barton 1996, 2001 & 2000 before and after being decanted.
Of the trio, Leoville Barton 2000 is the most powerful. As per instructions from Proprietor Lilian Barton Sartorius, I double decanted it for 4 hours on 9 July 2021. It opened up with sandalwood, mint, capsicum, blackcurrant cassis of unbounded concentration, persistence, and freshness. It will have no problem evolving another 20, 30, and more years.
Leoville Barton 1996 is drinking deliciously now but still needs 2 hours decanting. It possesses shades of Leoville Barton 2000 and will continue to evolve another 10, 20 years.
Leoville Barton 2001 is closer in tone and temperament to 1996 but also shares some of the richness of 2000. Less concentrated and powerful, it wears its intensity more lightly, buoyed by lots of freshness. Twenty-year young 2001 is more vivacious to its more dense, richer sibling. Both vintages – and Leoville Barton 1996 – display in fulsome pride their famous terroir and pedigree.
In music, Leoville Barton 2000 is Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, lifting, sweeping us away like a tornado with burst after burst of spiraling power.
Leoville Barton 2001 is Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, a magic carpet ride that weaves in and out of scenery at once dazzling and disarming.
Click here to read details and register
