I assume you meant 2000 versus 1999 and 2001. 2002 was never hyped (except maybe the Conterno Monfortino). It was a pretty disastrously wet summer with terrible hail in La Morra and Castiglione in September.
I think only the Wine Spectator (Suckling, I think) touted 2000 (“Vintage of the Century” was the headline as I recall). When I visited the Langhe in 2002 and 2004, the producers thought that was a nutty view.
Correct, I meant 2000. WS ratee the vintage 100 points, and the wines were not bad at all, but they are not the vintage I would cellar. I’m not surprised the producers thought it was a little nutty, but at the time WS was probably the most well marketed of the wine review periodicals. And at the time the Advocate, Spectator, and Tanzer carried a much higher level of impact than they do today.
agreed
Just a comment (that I have made before) on the 2009s from the Produttori - even bottles tasted at the winery (in 2018) were fading fast. It’s not a good vintage from them for any aging.
I feel that phenomenon is one of the less well understood aspects of red wines.
When I bottled our 2005 Willamette Valley, it was a rather pale wine. Opening it now it’a a surprisingly dark wine, not in an oxidized way but just depth of color.
The first time I noticed this was with the 1995 Produttori wines. I split a case with a friend and the first bottle I opened was like a tannic rosé. By 10 years later it was significantly deeper hued and a much, much better wine.
100% agree on this. The mini-VCC tasting that @Mark_Golodetz invited us to showed how dramatically the wines were shifting between the 90s and the 2010 and forward vintages.
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And this circles back to the importance of tannins, in the sense that Marcus described. It’s not quantity of tannin, but quality. An excessively tannic wine, and/or one with hard unripe tannins, will not become ‘unbound’ in a reasonable timeframe, if ever. Tannic structure most definitely evolves, but age will not repair harsh, unbalanced tannins.
i find it hard to give a set # of years. For example, most of my 2001 and even 2002 red Burgundies are mature and should be drunk, while my 2005s are still too young or just becoming mature.
Great post, and pretty much exactly how I approach opening older wines. I truly enjoy the bottles that are showing perfectly, but still enjoy the stories told by bottles that aren’t quite there yet.
I find CT useful in looking at when wines are ready, but in addition to everyone having different palates, every bottle has a different cork. Even with Diam I still see variation in how fast individual bottles are evolving. It’s considerably less varied than it was with natural cork. But a bottle at peak for one person may or may not be representative of the majority of bottles in cellars.
The Mt. Eden recommendation is spot on. We just had a magnum of the 1985 that someone brought to a Christmas dinner that was spectacular. Really wonderful wine. 13.0% abv on the label and that felt accurate to me.
Very much agree. I try to let go of the idea of perfect showing. I like to think that, so long as I got pleasure from it, I drank it at the right time. That doesn’t mean my impressions won’t inform the next time, though!
I pretty much just focus on Bordeaux and Piedmont for my long-agers. That said, I am a slave to CellarTracker for drinking windows. I like to get at least 3 bottles of anything I’m interested in (budget-permitting). I always pop one ahead of schedule to see how they are doing. If that one is ready to drink, I update the drink-by date and accelerate the process.
I like the multi-bottle approach because not all cellars are the same and mine is probably about 5 degrees above what people actively cool to. If you’re storing in your dining room it may be even more accelerated. So what’s a 20-year ager to the vintage charts might only be a 12 year ager to you and so forth.
I collect classed growth Bordeaux so my wines never grow old and barely age…I try to check in every decade or two but there’s never any rush
So I’m curious what the approach is if you open a wine that might be in range, everything seems fine technically, but the fruit is muted?
I opened a 2005 Jadot Clos des Ursules recently and it was great, but I definitely felt the fruit elements were so far in the background I thought “maybe this doesn’t have the legs to age much further if the fruit is already so faded”. Maybe this is a reflection of my palate.
But I am confused as to the judgment call here: do I say “this was a huge vintage and probably needs another decade in the bottle” or “the fruit is fading, better drink up before it’s all gone”?
Based on Bordeaux from 2000 and after that I’m now tasting with 20+ years on them, I agree that Bordeaux today is not going to develop and age like Bordeaux from the 80s, but it may also last an incredible amount of time. I regularly have Bordeaux that are decades old but taste half their age or younger. rI’m referring to wines that don’t develop classically aged savory qualities but retain massive amounts of fruit.
You see this a lot on CT - people saying that a wine is on its last legs when it’s probably just shut down. I think you need to be able to judge the size and palate impact of the wine separately from the fruit sweetness
It can be very hard to say. I don’t think there’s a simple tell. This is where where having experience with that wine across different vintages, and/or experience with the vintage, really helps.
Over the 15 or 20 different vintages of Ursules I have tasted, I have never had one that outlived its fruit.
Then it wasn’t in range!
Either needs more time, or needed to be drunk sooner.
(Or was stored badly)
Some 2005s are drinking very well now and others are still grumpy. I dunno where Ursules is, but good bottles aren’t likely over the hill.