2012 Chateau Gloria, Saint Julien, Cru Bourgeois

2012 Chateau Gloria

I have written and reviewed quite a number of Chateau Gloria vintages, but I have not tried vintages as young as 2012, thus this evening I decanted it for 2+ hours to put it to test. A whiff and I get a lot of graphite, cigar, tobacco and dark fruits, very classical Bordeaux bouquet. Even though the wine was only 12 years of age, it was already quite approachable, I attributed it to the decanting hours, which has obviously softened the tannins quite a fair bit. It showed the pedigree of past Chateau Gloria, as the integrated oak masked the fruits very well, even though I found the fruits very slightly diluted, perhaps due to the vintage characteristics. 2012 is comparable to both 2002 and 2004 (I have reviewed both vintages), though the structure of the wine seemed to be better than 2002 and 2004. I believe this vintage will be a very decent wine decades down the road.