Fifteen Years On: The 1997 Vintage
A chance to reflect, and to pull some older bottles from the cellar, makes for a good combination; these glances back at vintages gone by, often seen through a rag-tag and rather eclectic selection of wines, is more about pleasure than the provision of a comprehensive tasting report like those I write for the Bordeaux and Loire. Pleasurable as they are, however, sometimes they are also mildly disconcerting. It seems to me to be very recently that I was last reviewing some of these wines from the 1997 vintage at ten years of age. Questions of doubt suddenly bubble to the surface. Where have the last five years gone? What have I achieved in this time? How many of these wines should have been drunk up years ago? How many should I actually be leaving in the cellar instead of opening them today? The only way to answer questions three and four is, of course, to pull the bottles and take a look. Questions one and two I will just try to gloss over!
Before we come to my tasting notes, which I have divided into two sections, let’s take a quick look back at what was happening in 1997. From a personal point of view, by the end of July 1997 I found myself unemployed. It wasn’t unexpected, however, as my new-found freedom (and after just one more mortgage payment, new-found poverty too) merely represented the end of a two-year employment contract. Rather than kick off with another job straight away, I figured I could probably afford a few weeks of life without any income. It wasn’t that I was rich, or had savings. In fact I had nothing but debt. It was more that, with the confidence of relative youth, I was sure I would just ‘wing it’ somehow. And so, with very few francs in my pocket, I set my sights on the vineyards of France.
Destination: Châteauneuf du Pape
What is the ideal wine tour? I think it would differ for all of us, and the answer I give today would perhaps be different to the one I would have given fifteen years ago. Nevertheless at that time, with three weeks to kill, I decided that a grand tour of the Rhône Valley, Burgundy and Champagne was called for. And let’s not take the easy route here; no flying, and no modern hire car. In fact no modern car at all; why not undertake the entire trip in my 27-year old (as it was then) MGB Roadster? Well, at the time it seemed like a great idea; looking back, I must have been nuts.
