jamie goode's wine blog

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Wow. Had a great wine dinner last night, organized by Gareth Groves and Cassidy Dart with the intention of revisiting the Bordeaux 2003 vintage. Full write up should be posted this weekend, or early next week. In short, nine of us, including Keith Prothero, Neal Martin and Linden Wilkie, tasted eight top examples from this vintage, including Cos d'Estournel and the much talked about Pavie. We tasted blind and it was truly illuminating. After this we had some older Claret and a few Sauternes. A brilliantly enjoyable evening - one of the most enjoyable wine dinners I've attended. Thanks to Cassidy and Gareth for organizing this. All I'll say for now is that Pavie, tasted blind, didn't taste like a late-harvest Zinfandel (it was served in a flight with a ringer - a Turley late-harvest Zinfandel!).

5 Comments:

At 3:07 AM, Blogger Salil said...

Sounds excellent. First I've heard of late harvest Zinfandel btw - could you elaborate on what it's like? (Will be heading by the Napa in March - shall keep an eye out for it)

On a digression, got a bottle of Cte. Lascombes 2002 some time recently - would you have any idea when we could open it/how long we should cellar it?

 
At 5:43 PM, Anonymous Keith Prothero said...

Yes a most enjoyable evening-------nearly as good as the Pinotage offline!!! Personally,I was disappointed with most of the 2003,s and am pleased that I only bought one case EP, the Gruaud Larose.
Do not think many will improve with bottle age ,although the Cos d'Estournel certainly will.

 
At 12:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why do your tasting notes for the Bdx 2003 appear to conflict with your final rating/recommendation on some of the wines? E.g., for the Gruaud Larose 1990, your note ends with "not that nice" but the rating is "Very good". Similar for the 2003 Gruaud.

I note similar unflattering tasting notes by other tasters, often followed by generaous scores. Confusing . . .

 
At 1:23 PM, Blogger Jamie said...

Regarding the scores, it has to do with expectations. These are expensive wines so we expect them to be pretty impressive. The Gruaud Larose wasn't as good as it should have been IMO - but I describe it as 'ver good' because it would be a nice enough bottle on an average Tuesday evening. At the top end of fine wine we are being very picky about small differences in quality, I guess.

Salil, haven't had the lascombes 02 - I guess you could drink it now but it's probably a good bet for midterm ageing too. The Zinfandel was technically not late harvest - it was just harvested very ripe (16.5% alcohol).

 
At 3:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK - makes sense, thanks

 

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