Fifteen Years On: The 2001 Vintage
There was much to love in the 2001 vintage. Putting Bordeaux and the Loire Valley aside for one moment, the first region that springs to mind is Germany, the vintage having taken on almost mythical status from the moment the wines were bottled. In fact 2001 was just one year in a decade-long (or was it even longer than that?) winning streak for this nation, when almost every vintage seemed to give us a slew of great wines. With Germany still in my mind, the Rhône Valley (and in particular the Southern Rhône) appears to challenge its supremacy. This was a vintage in which the vignerons of Châteauneuf du Pape and Gigondas pulled out all the stops to make some of the best wines of their lives. Their peers in Languedoc and Provence obviously sought to emulate them, and I think in some cases they succeeded.
And this isn’t the end of the roll-call of success in 2001. In Spain this was also a stunning top-rated vintage, and the bodegas of Rioja and Ribera del Duero more than matched their peers in the Rhône Valley for the quality of their wines this year. Indeed, in many of the world’s top wine regions vignerons clapped their hands in joy and disbelief at the quality of what nature had bestowed upon them. In Tuscany, in Piedmont, in the Napa Valley, in Portugal and in many corners of Australia, the potential was at the very least excellent, in some regions truly outstanding.
In this brief glance back at the vintage it isn’t possible to be comprehensive, nor would I want to be. My reports on wines at ten, fifteen, twenty and twenty-five years are primarily for fun, to take a look at a broad (or sometimes narrow) selection of wines from my cellar as they mature. In this report I have divided my notes into three sections, first looking at Germany, then some of the leading regions of Europe in the 2001 vintage, featuring wines from the Rhône Valley, Rioja and Chianti in part two. Finally in part three I finish up with every other bottle I could lay my hands on, with some big names from Alsace and the Loire Valley, and stragglers from Chablis and Roussillon.
