The ebullient nose of cedar and spice rose as the wine was decanted. Complex flavors of berries, anise, coffee, and chocolate kept on coming throught the hour it took us to finish the bottle. There's still plenty of tannin that, with the abundant fruit, indicate many years of life left. This was my last bottle of this wine. 92 points. I love aged Bordeaux.

Thanks for the notes - La Mission is a estate I hope to try one of these days. As a Bordeaux newbie, La Mission, Lynch Bages and Pichon Lalande are on the top of my list. One of these days...

Board-O - do you have a little memorial ceremony when you finish off some of these great wines?

No. If I did, I would have used it when we had our last magnum of the '62 Gruaud-Larose, one of my all-time top ten. I had that wine about thirty times, 13 of those times from magnums. I do feel a certain sadness when I have the last bottle of a wine I've loved and had numerous times. Another was the 1953 Chateau Lascombes, bottled by Cockburn. Alexis Lichine bought Lascombes in 1953 and sold off some of the wine in cask to Cockburn in Edinburgh. I was just learning about wine and bought 6 bottles of it, not realizing when I bought it that it wasn't estate bottled. I was crestfallen and opened the first bottle with a close friend in the wine business. Imagine our exhiliration when the wine proved to ber outstanding, another in my top ten, I believe. I felt the same way when my 12th and final bottle of 1953 Petrus was opened. I bought many of these wines in 1978 when their prices were surprisingly low.

Good memories! I hope to have some good ones someday. My cellar is still too young.

cue song, memories, like the .......

winetex, speaking from experience with sharing some of Board-o's great bottles, it is a real pleasure to see the kid in Board-o bubble to the surface as he takes his first wiff of one of these suckers. The expression on his face and his exuberance were priceless.

I'm never going to grow up.