I have little experience with very old Bordeaux > 20-30 years old, but the last few 2000 Bordeaux I have opened this year were all excellent, including a 2000 Gruaud Larose, 2000 Grand Puy Lacoste, and a 2000 Clinet. Of course this is a small sample size, but I think these wines are very approachable now.
Just curious what others think, or am I committing infanticide by opening these?
Ironically, I’m popping a 2000 Montrose tonight, will circle back. I’ve had quite a few 2000s over the past year, and concur, they are young but entering a comfortable drinking window. Ideally a wine like Montrose would be something I pop with more years on it, but a client of mine wan the s to try it at dinner tonight. He’s bringing a 2005, which is way too young.
2000 Gruaud was my WOTN a couple months back, and I’ve also loved the 2000 Lynch Bages and Pichon Lalande. To my taste (I tend to like them older) they’d generally benefit from a few more years but there’s no harm drinking them now
In my opinion, there’s no shame or harm in drinking Bordeaux young or in-between age as long as it’s not closed down. The thing that makes me sad is reading about people who bought a half case or case of a wine and drank most of the bottles when it was shut down. There are a zillion such cases in CT.
Some wines like 89 Lynch Bages have always drunk well, though arguably the wine is still not mature (some might say “not ready” but I might claim it always was). IMO there was no bad time to drink it, and likely that will be true for decades to come. But some other vintages of LB shut down and there would be times when it really didn’t pay to drink them (I’ve read this about 2000 Lynch Bages but haven’t tasted it myself). I expect there are 00s of both types. I’ve mostly sat on my 00s due to personal preference, but I will probably try some bottles before long.
In the old days, a gentleman [of a certain age] would never open a bottle from a Bordeaux vintage of the caliber of A.D. 2000, simply because he [as a gentleman] understood instinctively that those wines were meant to be consumed by his grandchildren or his greatgrandchildren.
But folks nowadays seem to have lost sight of The Big Picture.
Petite Chateaux from 2000 are drinking well and have been for a good 5 years or so. For me, the grand cru stuff needs more time to peak, but there’s pleasure to be had today for all but the most structured wines.