Loire 2003 at Twenty Years
Subscribers scouring the pages of my recently published Bordeaux Threes report, which showcases a smorgasbord of tasting notes on wines from vintages ending in ‘3’, from the painfully youthful 2013 Château d’Yquem to the rather more mature 1923 Château Siran, for signs of life from the Loire Valley will have been disappointed.
You might say the clue was in the name – after all, there is probably only one region with a right to appear in a report entitled Bordeaux Threes – but to be fair I did sneak in some new notes on wines from far beyond Bordeaux’s borders in among all the Pauillac and Pomerol. A trio of wines from Châteauneuf du Pape and a lonely Bandol, for example, all from the 2003 vintage, not to mention a 1973 Rivesaltes and 1963 Vintage Port. So who could be blamed for hunting down the odd tasting note on 2003 Quarts de Chaume or similar?
Such hunts, however, would find no prey. Given that the Loire Valley has long been a focus of Winedoctor I didn’t want this relatively small cohort of sixteen tasting notes on les vins Ligérian, revisited at twenty years of age, to get lost among all the Palmer, Petrus and Poujeaux (and before you snigger at the composition of that trio, I should point out that the 1953 from Château Poujeaux was exceptionally good). And so in this latest Winedoctor report I publish my updated thoughts on the 2003 vintage, revisited at twenty years of age, as seen through a lens powered by Olga Raffault, Couly-Dutheil, Domaine des Baumard, Philippe Foreau and a handful of others.
First though, as is customary, a quick recap of the vintage and harvest. For the run-down of the wines, and my notes and scores, simply scroll down a couple of paragraphs.
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