Ten Years On: The 2000 Vintage
Once again my annual ten-years-on tasting has taken in more than thirty wines, including two dozen reds, and so I have split my tasting notes into white (plus sparkling and even one rosé) and red (plus fortified wines). My notes on the dozen-or-so white wines are written up in part one. Here, in part two, I turn my attention to the red and fortified wines.
As I have already explained, there are only a half-a-handful of wines from Bordeaux included here, as I think it a bit too soon to be approaching these wines at present; but their turn will come very soon. Otherwise the tasting tended to look along the Rhône (including wines from Ogier, Faurie, Burgaud, Marc Sorrel, Noel Verset, St Cosme, Beaucastel and more) and the Languedoc (a Languedoc trio from Mas de Daumas Gassac, Prieuré de St Jean de Bebian and Domaine de Ravanes) more than some other regions. Even the Loire only has a sole representative; but then it was not a very strong vintage for the region.
All my notes are presented in full below, but there are one or two points perhaps worth highlighting here. First, as I have already indicated in my wine of the week note on the Robert Chevillon Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Bousselots, the Burgundies included here all showed pretty well considering it is not regarded as a great vintage for the Côte d’Or, and as usual they further stoked my interest in this region. I enjoyed the northern Rhônes although they do pale in comparison to last year’s 1999s on the whole, and I would advise drinking these wines before returning to the 1999 vintage I think. I was also surprised how much I enjoyed the southern Rhônes; it is a region I have fallen out of love with in recent years, many of its wines seeming too rich and warm for the palate I have today. Many of my 2001s for example, tasted in my recent southern Rhône 2001 tasting, will be sold rather than drunk, I think. But two of the three wines included here, from Beaucastel and St Cosme, were delicious.
From beyond France’s borders, we do have some bottles from Rioja (Muga and López de Heredia) and the Douro (Noval and Passadouro), Lebanon (Musar) and Australia’s McLaren Vale (d’Arenberg). The two vintage Ports in particular were painfully youthful, but full of great potential.
