The guide to the best wines of the 1996 vintage
Are you looking for a wine from 1996 to mark an important date or celebrate a birthday? The 1996 vintage offers excellent wines for ageing that have kept very well over the last 20 years. La Bouteille Dorée offers you this little guide to help you find the bottle from 1996 that will really please its recipient.
Bordeaux 1996
After several rather weak vintages in the early 90s, 1996 was an excellent vintage for Médoc wines and undoubtedly the best since the sublime 1990 vintage. However, the climatic conditions were quite unusual: heat and drought in June and July, coolness and humidity in August, heat and drought again in September and then heat and low rainfall during the harvest made it possible to obtain perfect maturity of the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes and to maintain the acidity levels and to offer complex, ripe and well-structured wines, Cut for ageing. As for the Libournais, the 1996 Saint-Emilion and Pomerol wines are quite successful, quite tannic, although surpassed by those of the 1995 vintage, which are richer and fruitier.
Burgundy 1996
The Burgundian vineyard experienced hot and dry weather that year in June, synonymous with rapid flowering. The summer was disrupted by cool and rainy periods, but by the end of August and beginning of September, the beautiful dry and sunny weather had returned and the cool nights allowed good acidity levels to be maintained. The result was therefore very good both in quantity and quality, with an advantage for the red wines of the Côte de Nuits over those of the Côte de Beaune, and for the white wines, the wines of Chablis are still excellent twenty years later.
Rhône 1996
A beautiful month of June allowed a successful flowering and the quantity was there. Winegrowers in the Rhône Valley, especially in the north, had to be rigorous in sorting the grapes that year due to a cool and wet summer. With a fairly high level of acidity, the great red wines of Côte-Rôtie and Hermitage offer a good longevity, more so than the wines of the south, in Châteauneuf-du-Pape for example, healthy and ripe but to be drunk faster.
Champagne 1996
If we had to classify this 1996 vintage for champagnes, it would be among the top 2 of the last fifty years with the 1990 vintage. Thanks to a hot, dry summer, the grapes, and perhaps even more so the Pinot Noir, offered an exceptional combination of ripeness and acidity. The great Champagne houses produced superb vintage cuvées in blanc de noirs and blanc de blancs.
Alsace 1996
After several sometimes difficult years, Alsatian winegrowers have found their smiles again with the 1996 vintage. The health of the grapes was perfect and a sunny and dry month of October favoured very good ripening, especially for Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc. The other grape varieties, Gewurztraminer and Riesling in the lead, have a beautiful freshness typical of the vintage. The morning fog allowed the production of many Vendanges Tardives and Sélections de Grains Nobles with great ageing potential.
Other successes of 1996
Among the great successes of the 1996 wines are:
- Elsewhere in France: the great sweet and sweet wines of the Loire (Coteaux du Layon, Quarts-de-Chaume)
- In Italy: contrasting climatic conditions resulted in an excellent 1996 vintage for Piedmont wines, and even more so for Barolo wines. The weather, both hot and dry in May, June and September and rather cool and sometimes slightly rainy in July and August, allowed very good ripeness to be achieved while maintaining high acidity levels. The 1996 vintage is more uneven for Tuscan wines, but we can still stand out very good wines from the Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese grape varieties.
Find all the bottles of 1996 currently on sale
Find all the bottles of 1996 currently on sale at La Bouteille Dorée. All these wines from 1996 are in stock in our cellars and can be delivered in 24 hours throughout France and even during the day in Paris. If you are looking for a particular bottle in the 1996 vintage, do not hesitate to contact us at info@labouteilledoree.com or at 01.46.22.29.79.
