Richebourg 1976

A positively gorgeous nose that is fully mature and offers a wonderful mix of spice, earth, leather, aged fruit, dried rose petal and hints of sandalwood leads to rich, full, sweet and still powerful flavors that possess excellent depth as well as superb length without any of the usual excessively dry '76 style tannins. This is a lovely effort but particularly in the context of a difficult vintage. I should note however that I have experienced a lot of bottle variation with this wine; undoubtedly part of the variability is due to storage issues but some of it seems to also be attributable to the barrel by barrel bottling. Two other recent examples were somewhat green on the nose with equally green, and slightly drying, tannins. In sum when this is "on" it can be excellent but it can also be disappointing.

Score: 92

Allen Meadows, Burghound 22 April 2016