1994 L'Évangile

The '95 L'Evangile was the first wine I tasted on one of my mornings in Bordeaux, and a breakfast of champions it was. This estate has been on a roll in recent years, and the '94 and '95, if not quite as superripe as the great '89 and '90 pair, are heartbreakingly beautiful wines. Those producers around the world who continue to perpetrate weedy, thin, young-vines merlots on unsuspecting drinkers owe it to themselves to taste these wines: this is merlot at its most glorious. The '95 here actually features 24% cabernet franc; this was the first vintage since 1990 in which all of the estate's cab franc was ripe enough to use, according to director Jean-Luc Marchive. In general, according to Marchive, the skins were riper in '95 and grape sugars were slightly higher than in the previous year. But, points out Marchive, an obvious perfectionist, '94 can't escape the faint bitter edge that is characteristic of the year. And, he adds, there was some dilution from the September rain in '95. Without the rain, he says, the '95 L'Evangile would have been a 95+ wine. But dilution in the '95 and bitterness in the '94 did not show up in my own tasting notes. As great as the '95 is, the '94 may be an even more impressive achievement in the context of its vintage.