2006 Screaming Eagle and 1986 Chateau d’Yquem

2006 Screaming Eagle

I pulled a couple of glasses worth of wine from the bottle with a Coravin to pair with a steak dinner for my 40th birthday. The aromatics were explosive even just extracting it from the bottle — overwhelming floral notes even though it was a foot away from my nose. I've never had a wine do this before so that was a pretty unique moment!

The body was bold and viscous, but not over-the-top syrupy. For context, it didn’t quite have the sheer thickness of something like Quilceda Creek if you've ever drank that.

My first few sips found a noticeable peppery finish that softened and integrated with more exposure to air. As it continued to open, there were more prevalent notes of berries. Notes of vanilla were present throughout drinking but restrained and balanced against the larger profile of the wine as compared to very overt vanilla notes I experienced in a bottle of 2019 Scarecrow.

Drinking it via Coravin (with a couple of hours of decanting) over the course of a meal gave it time to evolve in the glass, and it clearly benefitted from air. The transformation from pepper-forward to fruit-forward with integrated oak was one of the more interesting aspects of the experience.

1986 Chateau d'Yquem

I don't think that I have anything enlightened to say about this wine so I'll keep this one shorter. The wine was thick as you would expect a Sauternes to be. There were notes of honey and golden raisins throughout drinking this. I've had a much younger bottle of Chateau d'Yquem before and the interesting difference is how there is more caramel notes in this bottle as compared to the younger bottle. I can't imagine how prevalent the caramel notes would be in a bottle a few decades older