Twenty Years On: The 1998 Vintage
I cannot let the end of December arrive without publishing my annual just-for-fun look at a selection of wines which have all celebrated their 20th birthdays this year. As usual, and as with my recently published selection of wines from the 2003 vintage at fifteen years, this is a quite random selection of bottles. Bordeaux features of course, and there is a lone representative from the Loire Valley, but I also dip my tasting toe into the waters of Alsace, Champagne, the Rhône Valley, Provence, Rioja and the Lebanon.
You might suppose that of those regions mentioned, the renowned red wine appellations of Bordeaux, or of the Rhône Valley, might fair best in a line-up of wines at twenty years of age. There were some super wines here, but for me the two most convincing bottles came from Champagne, both prestige cuvées, the Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs from Taittinger and the Cuvée Dom Pérignon from Moët et Chandon. Both were breathtaking, freshly reductive, elegantly vinous and showing superb precision on the palate. With regard to the latter of these two cuvées, I seem to recall discussion among Champagne fans regarding the volume of production, which was always undisclosed but rumoured to be large. If true, this achievement is all the greater, because this is an excellent wine in this vintage.
Returning to the aforementioned red wine regions, in Bordeaux the 1998 vintage was long regarded as a right-bank year, and the great success enjoyed by Pessac-Léognan was often overlooked. This shines through here though, as coming top in this line up was the wonderful Château Haut-Bailly, which I thought just had the edge on two great wines from St Julien. As for the Rhône Valley, Languedoc and Provence, there was less certain success here, and indeed some disappointments. Jaboulet was going through a difficult phase at the time, something that has always shown in their wines in the 1998 and 1999 vintages, so the Hermitage La Chapelle is decent, when I think it could have been stellar. The Janasse Vieilles Vignes showed nicely, but I thought the best wine here was the Bandol La Tourtine from the ever-reliable Domaine Tempier. Some other wines were fading though, including the Château de Beaucastel, which seems to be falling apart in a worrying manner.
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