When to drink a 2000 Bordeaux

Salut/Hi Scott,

le/on Wed, 03 Mar 2004 22:33:07 -0700, tu disais/you said:-

Not true for ALL of them, but some (maybe 50%) made some excellent wine.

That's the second wine from one of the most highly reputed chateaux.

Indeed they are.

For lesser wines in lesser years, although some, from Pomerol for example, can start to soften up a bit earlier.

start to "blossom".

I'd say that wines that start to soften up in 5-6 years will not need as long as that to show attractively. I'd say a couple of years, after which they'll stay at or near their peak for 5-6 years before startng to decline. But I'd emphasize that this would be for _lesser_ wines from lesser years.

Great wines from great years have an entirely different time scale. I would reckon that you shouldn't touch them at less than 15 years old (so 2015) and even then they may well be quite tannic.

That's quite a disadvantage, though sudden short term shifts in temperature are worse for a wine than one that's steady but high. Of course you don't say whether you're in North Dakota or Arizona, and normal house temperatures can vary widely between them! I'm guessing you may be in northern California, and if so, you're likely to have fairly wide annual temperature variations. If you have a space under the stairs, that might be a place which is less subject to rapid temperature changes.

Hope this helps a bit.

Subjective, of course, but last night we had two bottles of 2000 Bordeaux and they were glorious. Simply opened and poured.

Chateaux Lanessan and Chateaux Giscours.

I have been a wine buff for maybe 35 years and have found that for the most part, wines are not as fragile as many will have you think. The imported wines at least in the past were shipped in containers, kept on the docks in a variety of climatic conditions, stored in bonded warehouses..some temperature controlled...some not....and finally delivered to the various merchants and restaurants where cellar temperature storing conditions are a myth. These statements will arouse a bit of controversy as everyone's experience and taste varies, but is my observation.

Wish you the same experience.

burris

Personally, if you don't have good storage, I'd either: check out what the '99 that's available is, as a rule it's an earlier drinking vintage. with some good wines (and some bad ones) or look for some cheaper lesser (Haut-Medoc, Medoc, or right bank satellite appelations) 2000 Bdx that are more ready to drink (though most could use a few years, they're pleasant now with some decanting): Coufran , Canon de Brem, Lanessan (previously mentioned), Ste.Colombe, Epicurea de Ch. Martinet, are a few that come to mind, or lesser seconds like Sarget de Gruaud-Larose, Les Fiefs de Lagrange.

Lots of the classed wines (and seconds of the big boys) are really closing down now, not best way to get a view. At a recent horizontal even with being decanted an average of 7 hours earlier, some were still tight.

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

I'm in New Mexico, the oldest wine producing area of the United States. We currently have about 20 something wineries in the state that are small to medium size.

As far as house temperature goes, in the winter at night or during a work day we allow our house to go down to about 64F (17.8C) and then heat up to about 70F (21C) when we're home. We have a forced air natural gas furnace so it can make this temperature change in about 45 minutes.

In the summer when we're away our house will slowly heat up to around 80 to 82F (27C). When we are home we use an evaporative cooler (adds gallons of water to the air) to cool the house down but it is very slow and can usually only get down to about 74F (23C) after as many as 6 hours.

The humidity gets as low as 10 percent in the winter and can get up to almost 40 percent in the summer (because of our evaporative cooler). In addition to that we are over a mile above sea level. I wonder if the reduced atmospheric pressure has any effect on the leakage through the cork :-)

We don't have any stairs that we could store the wine under but we do have a crawl space under the house which would probably be perfect in the summer but much too cold in the winter...

I guess if I plan to store much wine for any length of time I'll have to invest in a small electric wine storage cabinet or I'll just have to buy the wine and drink it fairly soon (which is what I usually do now :-)

Cheers, Scott

If I were you, I couldn't/wouldn't resist the urge to try a bottle of the Carruades right now to see if it's worth laying down. I recommend a nice steak on the BBQ to accompany it.

I have a friend who makes wine in New Mexico. She sent me a couple of bottles of her NM Cabernet Franc, and it was so good I couldn't believe it!

So put the wine there in the Summer and in the bottom of a closet in Winter.

I really wouldn't worry so much about storage temperature. Red wines aren't as terribly fragile as you seem to think. The worst thing is long term _hot_ storage, but you seem to have reasonable options to mitigate that exposure. Maybe your 2000 Bordeaux will only last for 15 years or so (instead of 25 or 30), but it'll be good drinking for at least that - _if_ you can keep out of it for that long!

Tom S

"Scott" innews: snipped-for-privacy@news.swcp.com...

Scott, I cannot speak necessarily for the Costco near you, and I don't know anybody connected with the firm, but the Costcos I visit on the west coast US get these "premium wine" pallets arriving that contain some exceptional items. My wine enthusiast friends and I spot solid, insightful stuff at good prices (and in good ship condition), randomly. I am guessing that a corporate purchase gets split up into these "premium" pallets and distributed. (Costco is better known for toilet paper by the cubic-meter box, for any of you who don't know this retailer.)

we allow our house to go down to about 64F (17.8C) and then heat up to

Scott

Have you checked the temperature of the crawl space winter and summer? Is it sealed from the outside, or open to the outside air. If it is open to outside air, I suspect the desert sun will heat up that crawl space in the summer to above 75 deg, and the dry air will cool down to 30 deg in the winter.

When I first moved to Casper, WY, I rented an old house with a shallow basement accessible through root cellar doors (as are common in the midwest). I didn't do anything to correct for temps in that basement, although my August temps reached 74 and my winter humidity was low.

The big problem with swamp coolers in that you can't seal the house off while you travel, because the house gets too musty (even in the arid west). I finally installed central air (ie eastern air conditioner) and could leave it running while I was gone. It sounds like your swamp cooler is underpowered though. They should cool very quickly. You may need a bigger unit (Sears carries them).

If you can seal off this crawl space and add a small humidifier in the winter, you could have great storage, without spending tons of money to retrofit your house.

Tom S. says not to be obsessed with storage conditions, and he's right. But I suspect with a little work, you can lessen the temperature variations and add a ltttle humidity. Try to stay below 70 degrees for your storage area. My tasting notes posted in this group attest that Bordeaux wines will keep for ten to twenty years with less than ideal storage (similar to yours). So you can probably buy and hold some of the bigger Bordeaux.

Tom Schellberg

I whole-heartedly agree! I am hardly a wine expert, but I have bought a lot of wonderful wines at Costco (midwest). This morning, I went to Costco to pick up various items (let's just say we won't be needing to purchase kleenex for a while), and I picked up something new (for me):

-Cherie

] > > One day while walking through Costco (massive general warehouse type store ] > > for those not in the United States), I was surprised to see that they has ] > > a small selection of 2000 Bordeaux available from 20 USD to 40 USD. ] > ] > Scott, I cannot speak necessarily for the Costco near you, and I don't know ] > anybody connected with the firm, but the Costcos I visit on the west coast ] > US get these "premium wine" pallets arriving that contain some exceptional ] > items. My wine enthusiast friends and I spot solid, insightful stuff at ] > good prices (and in good ship condition), randomly. I am guessing that a ] > corporate purchase gets split up into these "premium" pallets and ] > distributed. (Costco is better known for toilet paper by the cubic-meter ] > box, for any of you who don't know this retailer.) ] ] I whole-heartedly agree! I am hardly a wine expert, but I have bought ] a lot of wonderful wines at Costco (midwest). This morning, I went to ] Costco to pick up various items (let's just say we won't be needing to ] purchase kleenex for a while), and I picked up something new (for me): ] 2001 Cotes du Rhone--Ste Fermieredes Vignobles Pierre Perrin, ] Coudoulet de Beaucastel. Anyone know anything about this wine? ] ] -Cherie

Hiya Cherie,

This is the well known "cru du Coudoulet", the cotes du rhone of what is perhaps the most famous chateauneuf du pape (and also perhaps the most atypical) Chateau Beaucastel. It is a well made cotes du rhone that usually demands a bit of aging, although it can be enjoyable at almost any time of it's life.

It will probably lack a bit of the immediate warmth of the '00 Louis Bernard you mentioned in another thread -- not a terrific wine in my book, but if it can help introduce you to the pleasures of chateauneuf, all the better -- but if you let it open for a while, I think you'll find it very chewy and somewhat more complex.

I am not a collector of coudoulet, although I do specialize in the rhone and CdP in particular, but I think I've got some 89 hanging around somewhere. Should be about settled down now! As for Beaucastel, a quick google search of this newsgroup will give you lots of notes. Off the top of my head, I believe I still hold '83 and '88 - '90, but since that time I began to be a bit put off by the oak in their style, (not to mention the now myriad imitators.)

As you say, Costco is a great place to find stuff, with the caveat that in the smaller markets you may have less luck. Seen some great deals, though.

To the OP, you've had the good advice, I'll only add that you should probably taste the wine, give it lots of air, (maybe as Tom said with a grilled steak), _and_ stick one under your stairs. Then you can see "what a difference a day makes." As others have said, don't be too paranoid about conditions. It's mostly rapid temp swings that you have to worry about. Most young wine (maybe Pauilliac in particular) is pretty tough, older bottles do become more sensitive.

cheers,

-E

Helluva deal, just happened to be gathering wool on the Berry Bros site, (not the cheapest, OK) they are selling this for 40 quid, about US$60!

Here's the sales pitch:

"A brilliant second wine, the 2000 Caruuades de Lafite (51.4% Cabernet Sauvignon, 42.3% Merlot, 4.9% Cabernet Franc and 1.4% Petit Verdot) aged in 10-15% new oak, shows wonderfully sweet lead pencil shavings intermixed with an elegant black cherry and cassis nose. A wine of tremendous pirity, medium body and the tell-tale Lafite elegance, this is a gorgoeus wine to drink now and over the next 12-15 years." 90/100 pts (Robert Parker - Wine Advocate - Apr-2003)

YMMV!

-E

Thanks so much for the feedback. I think that is exactly what I will do.

-Cherie