Twenty Years On: The 1994 Vintage
After my recent forays into the 2004 vintage at ten years of age (too young, I know) and the 1999 vintage at fifteen years of age (getting there), I guess it is pretty obvious what is coming next. It is time to take a look at wines from my cellar currently celebrating their twentieth birthday.
Without any real planning (I’m not organised enough to buy a collection of wines on release, in anticipation of a tasting nearly twenty years later) the wines tend to originate from the Loire Valley (no surprises there) or from Bordeaux (ditto), with only a few representatives from a number of other regions including Rioja, California and the Lebanon (no prizes for guessing the identity of the latter of these wines).
The Loire Valley
The quality of the 1994 vintage was – as is perhaps usual for the Loire Valley – determined almost entirely by weather prior to and during the harvest period. Early on it was a vintage that raised some hopes, the flowering was uneventful, and a warm albeit occasionally stormy summer saw the vines advance nicely through July and August. Some even wondered if this would be another 1989 or 1990, both of these recent vintages having been excellent. It was in September that the weather broke, and plentiful rain from then on severely dampened everyone’s enthusiasm.
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