40 Years Of Wine Tasting: Renowned Critic James Suckling On How A Bottle Of 1966 Château Lafite Rot

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Few things encapsulate time’s role as creator better than wine. And few people understand that better than James Suckling, who embarked on his career as a wine critic more than 40 years ago and is today one of the busiest and most influential critics in the world.

“A bottle of great wine is a time capsule,” he says. “You open a bottle and drink it and it takes you back to the moment the grapes were harvested and when the wine was made. There’s no other consumable product that can do that, except for some spirits.”

That makes a celebratory glass to mark life’s most important moments all the more apt. Suckling discovered his taste for wine when his father shared with him a bottle of 1966 Château Lafite Rothschild.

“It was one of my most memorable times when I was a teenager and it taught me how amazing wine was. I understood why my father loved it not only for the taste but also for the connoisseurship, conversation and sharing it created.”

A few weeks after Suckling’s own son was born, he marked the occasion with a bottle of 1966 Quinta do Noval, even sharing a drop with the boy, and “he’s loved wine ever since!” Years later, his wife-to-be served a bottle of Armand Rousseau Gevrey-Chambertin 2017 on their first dinner date together. “I knew she was the right one for me,” he quips.

By James Durston
Source and Complete Article: scmp.com
Date: December 26, 2022