Ten Years On: The 1994 Vintage
And so to 1994. These Ten Year On tastings are probably my favourite event of the year; a chance to reflect on a past vintage and to think of wines in a different context. Here we consider wines not by producer or region, but by vintage. So the wines could just as much be from Maipo as from Margaux.
The 1994 vintage was a step up in quality for Bordeaux, which had seen three less than exciting vintages in a row. Nevertheless our tasting group had already visited the region twice this year for a 1994 Bordeaux tasting (I missed one tasting – I was visiting vignerons in the Loire), and so it was not likely that it would feature heavily in this tasting. Other European regions that enjoyed a good vintage included Iberia (great for Rioja, Ribera del Duero and Port) and Germany (very few German vintages of the 1990s are actually poor). In the New World there were some great successes in Australia and California.
This was a challenging tasting, where I happily eschewed the primary objective of blind tasting – assessment of the wine unbiased by the label – in favour of a ‘spot the wine’ approach. It wasn’t easy though – how many ten year old Chilean wines have you tasted?
Sadly this year, because of lack of time, I was unable to squeeze in a ten year on tasting dinner as I did for the 1993 vintage, and so many of my other 94s – featuring wines from Bonnezeaux to Rioja, Châteauneuf to Pessac-Léognan, go unopened. Ah well…something to drink over the festive season, I suppose. (30/12/04)
