Ten Years On: The 2003 Vintage
Having already polished off more than a handful of wines in my 1993 Twenty Years On and 1998 Fifteen Years On reports, it is time now to look back to 2003. As you might imagine, we have here a larger selection of wines than in these two earlier reports; I was buying a lot more wine for the cellar ten years ago than I was twenty years ago. Nevertheless, I am not going to feature as many wines at ten years of age as I have done in other recent years because I have decided not to included any Bordeaux in this report. The reason for this is that it is only a few months since I reported on a recent 2003 Bordeaux tasting which took in many of the big names, including Château Haut-Brion, Château Montrose, Château Pavie and Château Ausone, as well as many more earthly wines (about sixty all told), and it seemed pointless to revisit the vintage so soon.
So with this in mind I present my tasting notes in just two instalments this year. Below, I kick off with the wines of the Loire Valley. On the next page a broad and varied selection from across Europe, featuring wines from the Rhône Valley, Languedoc, Roussillon, curiously quite a handful of wines from Burgundy (I’m not sure how I ended up with so many wines from this region in my cellar in this vintage), Provence and Germany, before ending up with an interloper from Washington.
Of note, all the wines in this 2003 Ten Years On report, as well as those in my 1993 Twenty Years On and 1998 Fifteen Years On tasting reports published this year, were opened and drank at home, usually with dinner. They were not slurped and spat in a clinical setting, but were instead enjoyed as wine is meant to be, with food. This explains why my notes can get rather long and lyrical at times – please accept my apologies for this!
