Bordeaux 2000: Tasting in 2018
It is now five years since I last tasted any number of wines from the 2000 Bordeaux vintage, and so now, sandwiched between their fifteenth and twentieth birthdays, I thought it appropriate to take a fresh look. If nothing else, returning to this vintage as it approaches maturity, after two back-to-back trips to the region to taste the 2017 Bordeaux primeurs, followed by the wines of the 2015 Bordeaux vintage after bottling, should serve as a useful reminder as to what Bordeaux is all about. Top Bordeaux is a wine for the cellar, for pulling from its dark and dusty slumber (or maybe you are removing it from storage, or your Eurocave, or whatever system you have come up with) to enjoy with dinner, or with friends, when they are ten, twenty or more years old (the wines I mean, not your friends). It is only with a suitable amount of bottle age that these wines reveal why Bordeaux is a region so many wine drinkers hold dear to their hearts.
Before we move on, I feel I should reassure readers that yes, you did read that introduction correctly. I did indeed mean to write that this is a look at this vintage as it approaches maturity. Having initially expected to find wines of fading colour and evolved flavours, I was instead impressed by how youthful and confident these wines tasted. But before I present any detail on how the wines taste today, I think a quick summary of the vintage as it was perceived eighteen years ago is worthwhile.
Vintage Review
There was always going to be something of a millennium effect with the 2000 vintage. The yearning among the Bordelais, and perhaps among those who drink the wines as well, for the vintage to be something special, was almost tangible. With the magic 2000 on the label, surely the contents would have to possess some phantasmagorical properties of their own? Indeed, for some regions, these hopes were realised, and alongside the Douro and one or two other hotspots, Bordeaux was one of those regions.
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