Top 2000 red bordeaux reviewed
We all went a bit mad over Bordeaux's 2000 vintage. The wines seemed so delicious. The number was beautifully round, in a way unlikely to be repeated for another thousand years. The merchants kept putting the prices up but still we went on buying. I certainly spent far more per bottle on the 2000 bordeaux wines that I bought when the prices were released in the spring of 2001 than I have ever spent on any other yet-to-be-bottled wine.
So now that the wines have been shipped and had more than a year in bottle, how do they taste?
This is clearly a pressing question, for I was invited to two different tastings of about 20 of the smartest wines, one in London and the other in Hong Kong, in the same week late last month. My mother drummed into me that the first invitation received takes precedence so my review of this glamorous vintage took place in an air-conditioned salon in the Conrad Hotel overlooking the offices of the new Asian FT.
Under the auspices of one of Hong Kong's many new wine importing companies, Altaya, two large tables of us (one mainly doctors, the other mainly bankers) examined 20 of the most sought-after wines from this vintage.
The first thing to report is that overall these wines were showing very well indeed. Wines like this often go into a bit of a shell soon after they are bottled but almost all of these wines were expressive and enjoyable - remarkably so for such youthful examples of a wine type designed to last for decades. Tasting young red bordeaux is usually quite a painful experience, leaving the palate exhausted by cheek-drying tannins, prominent acidity and alcohol. But at the end of an evening spent tasting these 20 three-year-old wines we felt refreshed and titillated and, heaven help us, raring for more. I remember even when tasting these wines as six-month-old babies at the en primeur tastings in spring 2001 that the tannins were easy on the palate and therefore obviously remarkably ripe.
And of course consistency is the hallmark of the vintage - on the left bank in Médoc and Graves anyway. Thanks to unusually prolonged fine, warm weather from mid-July to early October, most vines benefited from a long, steady ripening process which yielded healthy, deep-coloured grapes with fairly consistently ripe fruit flavours and ripe tannins in a crop reduced in quantity by poor weather at flowering and a dry summer. So in general even the less exalted properties managed to produce good wine because so little wine had to be eliminated from the final selection (unlike other, much less homogeneous vintages such as 2001 and 2002 in which only the top châteaux could afford the financial sacrifice necessary to maintain quality in their flagship wines).
The exceptions to this general rave review were all on the so-called right bank in St-Emilion and Pomerol where I have noted some wines with unpleasantly dry, rasping finishes - presumably a result of the severe drought suffered by vines on this side of the Gironde, which did not, unlike much of the Médoc, benefit from the odd late summer shower. On the other hand, there was no shortage of winemaking ambition on the right bank in 2000 so the best wines are extremely glamorous and, just, manage to submerge any dryness with flamboyant fruit.
A blind tasting in London of nearly 50 St-Emilion 2000s last July had shown there were essentially three styles of wine from this combination of appellation and vintage: the over-manipulated, the delightfully terroir-driven and a few wines clearly still made by people who are asleep at the wheel.
Before dinner at the Hong Kong tasting we 'looked at' (a favourite wine trade euphemism) three flights of related wines whose prices are less than stratospheric: St Estèphes, various non-first-growths from the Médoc and Graves, and then some right-bank wines. Unlike most of the tasters, I chose to taste the wines blind which was wonderfully revelatory.
Thus I was able to discern Calon Ségur's rather disappointingly obvious, almost New World, nose - unprejudiced by the fact that I own a case of it. In the next flight I was knocked out by the beautiful balance, class and opulence of the second wine which turned out, to my surprise, to be Gruaud Larose - a wine that made the much-loved Léoville Barton look pretty uncompromisingly brutal at this stage.
La Mission Haut Brion stood out like a beacon when served alongside Palmer. This wine and Château Margaux are clearly the left-bank stars of this vintage for me.
Just before dinner we tasted three second-tier right-bank wines, Châteaux Pavie Maquin, Troplong Mondot and La Fleur de Gay. I enjoyed the voluptuous, refreshing Troplong Mondot best but they all had slightly dry notes on the finish.
The grandest wines of all (which had been opened at 8.30 that morning, four hours before the rest - none of which showed the slightest sign of deterioration) were served with dinner.
With duck and mushroom ravioli in truffle sauce we tasted the obvious superstars of the right-bank Châteaux Ausone, Cheval Blanc, Pétrus and Le Pin as well as Eglise Clinet. Tasting them blind, I gave my highest mark to Eglise Clinet which in this tasting was extremely impressive - very far from classic in structure but in its own dramatic way truly caressed the palate and just went on and on. Pétrus is clearly the odd one out, the funkiest, least streamlined and modern - a Morgan rather than a Porsche perhaps (here endeth my attempted career as motoring correspondent). Ausone under Alain Vauthier's new reign is the opposite - a very dramatic statement indeed, and quite different from the sort of wines once made here by Pascal Delbeck. At this tasting I found this particular bottle of Le Pin worryingly evolved with hints of overripeness and the acidity somewhat intrusive.
We tasted the left-bank first growths with prime rib. Château Haut Brion seems less exciting in 2000 than its stablemate La Mission Haut Brion, and Mouton is somewhat downbeat (an impression echoed at Farr Vintners' London tasting). Latour and Lafite are certainly very fine wines indeed but prize for overall achievement in this exceptional vintage must go to Château Margaux which manages to combine so many different flavours with real density and a sort of dancing liveliness. When it was released in 2001 it cost just under £2000 a case. It now costs £3000.
Comparing my recent impressions with how I rated these wines in April 2001, I was disappointed in these particular bottles of Calon Ségur and Le Pin and even more impressed by Eglise Clinet than initially. Otherwise, initial favourable were impressions confirmed.
For tasting notes and scores on more than 100 red bordeaux 2000s tasted in bottle, see my tasting notes on purple pages.
My ranking of 20 2000s tasted September 2003
This is my ranking, most to least impressive, of wines tasted blind in Hong Kong last month. In brackets where applicable is the ranking of Farr Vintners staff at their similar tasting (not blind) in London the same week. Also given is an approximate current price per case in bond in pounds.
(2) Margaux 3000
(7) Eglise Clinet 1400
(6) La Mission Haut Brion 2500
(3) Latour 3000
(5) Lafite 2750
(4) Pétrus 11500
(1) Ausone 4200
Gruaud Larose 500
(8) Haut Brion 2600
(17) Mouton-Rothschild 2600
(11=) Cheval Blanc 3800
(13) Léoville Barton 780
(14=) Lynch Bages 650
Montrose 600
Troplong Mondot 450
Pavie Macquin 520
Palmer 900
Le Pin 10500
La Fleur de Gay 650
Calon Ségur 480
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