The guide to the best wines of the 1986 vintage
Are you looking for a wine from 1986 to mark an important date or celebrate an anniversary? La Bouteille Dorée offers you a little practical guide to find your way around these old vintages and to find a bottle from 1986 that will really please its recipient.
Bordeaux 1986
1986 was an excellent vintage for Bordeaux wines thanks to a hot and very dry summer and ideal conditions during the harvest. And with superb weather at the beginning of October, the Cabernet Sauvignon wines of the Médoc and Graves reached perfect maturity and the châteaux produced exceptional wines that were highly concentrated and cut for a very long ageing! In Saint-Emilion and Pomerol and even more so on the left bank, in the Médoc and the Graves, the great wines offer a very colourful colour and powerful and complex aromas, a strong tannic structure and a long finish. The best wines can still be left in the cellar, but they are already a great pleasure to be tasted. The white wines are also very successful, especially the dry white wines of Pessac-Léognan and the sweet white wines of Sauternes.
Burgundy 1986
A good vintage, better in white than in red, but of variable quality due to difficult weather conditions until June. The late flowering went perfectly, but thunderstorms in August and rains that continued into September caused grey mould. The warm weather then returned for an ideal harvest. You will have to turn to the grands crus of the Côte-de-Nuits, which are generally more successful than in the Côte-de-Beaune.
Champagne 1986
In Champagne, the vintage was successful more in quantity than in quality, the latter being very variable, although sometimes excellent in the great vintages. A wet spring and, despite a beautiful month of June conducive to flowering, a summer disturbed in August and until mid-September by repeated rains, affecting the quality of the grapes. The harvest took place in good weather but the grey rot was already there and the sorting of the grapes was crucial for the quality of the cuvées produced that year.
Other successes of 1986
Among the great successes of the 1986 wines, we can note:- Alsace wines in general and in particular late harvest wines and a selection of noble grains. The 1986 harvest proved to be very good in terms of quantity and very good in terms of quality, with a superb Indian summer favouring the harvest.
- Cabernet Sauvignon wines from California
- The great red wines of Italy, Piedmont and Tuscany, intense and balanced but rare due to a small harvest.
- The natural sweet red wines of Roussillon, the old Maury and Rivesaltes.
Find all the bottles of 1986 on sale now
Find all the bottles from 1986 currently on sale at La Bouteille Dorée. All these wines from 1986 are in stock in our cellars and can be delivered in 24 hours throughout France and even within the day in Paris and 48 to 72 hours in most european countries. If you are looking for a particular bottle in the 1986 vintage, do not hesitate to contact us at info@labouteilledoree.com or at 01.46.22.29.79.