Ten Years On: The 2001 Vintage, France & Italy
The purpose of any tasting such as this is, to my mind, pleasure. It is a chance to open a lot of bottles and even if the tasting is devoid of any truly great wines, the process of exploration and examination in itself should at least provide some relief.
These tastings do – for me at least – also tend to engender a little personal reflection, a look back to where I was ten, fifteen or twenty years ago, what I was doing and – sometimes – what I was drinking. In some ways I haven’t changed much – I see that in 2001 I wrote up tastings of 1981 Bordeaux, featuring Latour and Lafite, as well as a 1986 Bordeaux tasting which was capped by a very fine bottle of Lafaurie-Peyraguey. Bordeaux was a region of focus for me back then it seems, just as it is now. On the other hand, my reports look very different to those I write today; the introductions to my vintage tastings were somewhat drier and less informative than I would now consider acceptable, and my tasting notes were shorter (many people might be rather glad of that!). And, despite the Loire having been a passion since my student days, I see I was saying very little about it ten years ago. Happily that has now changed; the Loire coverage on Winedoctor is hopefully one of its more worthwhile features today.
Coming back to the wines of 2001, even if this tasting engenders no desire in you to reflect, you may still have experienced the same emotions I did when I realised this was the vintage up for tasting. It came as something of a shock to me when I suddenly realised that the 2001s are already ten years old. I don’t know about you, but it seems barely a few months ago that I was loading up on the wines of this vintage, in particular those from Sauternes and Germany (like those above), having soaked up the reports of great wines in these two regions. These ten years have flown by. Is this a sign of advancing old age, I wonder?
Before you answer that, let’s get on with taking a look at the vintage, and the wines I have lined up for tasting.
