Château Cheval Blanc 1955 2500ml

For me, Cheval Blanc is the greatest '55 with a long life expectancy (10+ years) and one of the best Cheval Blancs ever. When I see how this grandiose wine is sometimes traded cheaper at auctions and on Ebay than young Chevals, I can't think of anything else! When I read my own notes on this wine, I am immediately overcome with thirst. 1996 at Willi Krähling: great stuff from a great year, perfect wine from overripe grapes - 100/100. 1998 in another tasting: absolutely huge and the wine of the evening, incredible pressure on the palate, stays there forever with wonderful chocolate, against which Valrhona comes from Aldi. Perfection! - 100/100. And again in the same year: absolute perfection, this is how the 47 must have tasted in its heyday, porty, dense, still lives forever. Then in 1999 at Willi Krähling's Cheval Blanc tasting from the magnum: strong colour, the nose of the evening with coffee, mocha and roasted aromas, a great, thick wine with a long future - 100/100. Finally in 2000 blind from a 1/2 bottle: the dense, still quite young colour, the porous melting point to a great 83 Cheval, to 55 in the 1/2!!! I would never have thought of it, unbelievable - 98/100. I also had a very good experience with the Vandermeulen bottling of Cheval Blanc. Only minimally inferior to the Chateau bottling. I have drunk it at least 15 times in the last 10 years and have consistently rated it 97+/100. Was also Cheval Blanc at its very best in December 2003 with René Gabriel and my Swiss friends. In 2006 at the big Cheval Blanc tasting, lavish sweetness, porty density, power and elegance in a wonderful, harmonious whole - 98/100. And a little better a few months later, powerful aromas, slightly porty, sweet, incredibly dense with fine mint and all this in a harmonious whole with almost playful elegance and lightness - 100/100. In the summer of 2006, another Vandermeulen bottling, pure finesse, the entire palate was wrapped in the finest silk - 98/100. And all without any trace of age. Another incredible wine in 2007, still looking so young with the classic Cheval Blanc perfume on the nose, with incredibly powerful aromas on the palate, slightly porous, sweet, incredibly dense with fine mint and all of this in a harmonious whole with almost playful elegance and lightness - 100/100. In René Gabriel's big Cheval Blanc tasting in 2008, it seemed like a younger version of the 47 - 100/100. A strange, unconvincing bottle at the ProSchorn 2012. Shortly afterwards in 2012 at Elke Drescher's, a chateau bottling rode a rollercoaster in the glass, seemed overripe, porty, powerful, slightly oxidative and seemed to be slightly over the hill despite all its class, first increasingly falling apart, then suddenly coming back, becoming more powerful, denser. Yes, it wanted to show us again, and the last sip was at 97/100 level. But Elke had long since disappeared into the cellar. No, she wanted a perfect 55. And that's what she brought. It seemed younger from the second bottle, finer with a dream nose, so dense on the palate, so powerful, so incredibly long. This was Cheval Blanc in perfection and together with 1950 the wine of the tasting - 100/100. Also at Uwe Bende 2012 simply a beguiling dream Cheval with still wonderful fruit and this inimitable Cheval perfume, with fine sweetness and pure elegance, an incredibly coherent and harmonious wine with enormous depth - 100/100. And then in 2012 in my Vandermeulen vertical another perfect bottle with an endless finish - WT100. But also a weaker Vandermeulen bottle in 2013 - WT95. In 2014, out of this world good and simply perfect. What a crazy nose with wonderful, slightly porous fruit, what elegance, fullness and length on the palate, simply world class - WT100. (Source Wineterminator.com Dr Achim Becker)