Still remarkably youthful, my most recent bottle of the 1986 Gruaud Larose exhibited an impressively opaque hue, followed by aromas of blackcurrants, cigar ash, loamy soil, pencil shavings and subtle hints of smoked meats. Full-bodied, deep and concentrated, it's a rich but tightly wound wine, with a deep core of fruit, lively acids and an abundance of powdery structuring tannin. Incredible as it may seem, it's comparatively advanced bottles of this 1986 that are drinking best today, as pristinely stored examples with perfect corks are still almost painfully youthful.

Still tasting as if it were only 7-8 years of age, the dense, garnet/purple-colored 1986 Gruaud-Larose is evolving at a glacier pace. The wine still has mammoth structure, tremendous reserves of fruit and concentration, and a finish that lasts close to a minute. The wine is massive, very impressively constituted, with still some mouth-searing tannin to shed. Decanting of one to two hours in advance seems to soften it a bit, but this is a wine that seems to be almost immortal in terms of its longevity. It is a great Medoc classic, and certainly one of the most magnificent Gruaud-Larose ever made. Anticipated maturity: 2006-2035. Last tasted, 10/02.