L'Evangile 1975

One of the finest mature Pomerols in my cellar is the 1975 L'Evangile, a wine I have drunk three times this year at the time of writing. Offering up a complex and compelling bouquet of plums, sweet berries, vine smoke, baking spices, fruitcake and truffles, it's full-bodied, satiny and sensual, with melted tannins, ripe acids and a seamless, enveloping profile, concluding with a sapid finish. While it is fully mature today, it appears to be in no danger of imminent decline. Drink 1995-2035.

Another great wine from the 1975 vintage (isn't it interesting that most of the extraordinary wines of this vintage have emerged from Pomerol?), the 1975 L'Evangile was extremely young in the Rodenstock tasting. Bottles I own are exceptional, but far more advanced. This wine displayed a slight hint of amber, as well as a huge nose of fruitcake, sweet cedar, and gobs of black fruits intermixed with scents of truffles. Interestingly, the only other recent L'Evangile with a bouquet similar to the 1975 is the 1982. Powerful and forceful, with rich, jammy fruit buttressed by high tannin, this full-bodied, superbly extracted wine is soft enough to be approachable, but this bottle remains 5-7 years away from full maturity. Drink the 1975 L'Evangile between 2000-2025. The notes for this wine are taken from the description of Series I of the 1995 tasting conducted in Munich by Helga and Hardy Rodenstock.