Bottle in good shape, with good fill and cork. In contrast to the 1982 Canon of the same evening, this had lost most of its fruit, though there was still a whiff of stewed fruit, mostly prune, on the nose. The taste was all secondary and tertiary for us , and was variously described as earth, tobacco, pine cedar, camphor (usually me after looking at a lot of camphor trunks last summer!), mineral, brine. Clearly showing its age, but nonetheless retained nice complexity and finish. This accompanied all the cheeses well, including surprisingly a gorgonzola dolce. A real pleasure to have two wines at such different stages of their evolution in the same evening.

This medium ruby wine remains closed, but exhibits adequate ripeness of fruit. However, the hard tannins are cause for concern. The 1981 Ausone is a medium-weight wine, with good concentration, but I believe it will always be an austere, tough-textured, charmless wine. It still needs 10 years to soften and develop. Anticipated maturity: Now-2010. Last tasted, 1/90.