ripe vintages tend to be attractive from barrel though, no?
I have yet to taste an â03 Burgundy that I would buy over its 1999 equivalent. The 2015s have been variable, as winemakers are learning how to deal wit global warming, and some really excellent wines came from it. Sounds as if 2018 will be the same; the good news is that there is plenty of wine left over from less ripe vintages to buy, and I would guess they will be a lot less expensive even without tariffs.
So, nobody can rate vintages unless all wines from the vintage are uniformly good or uniformly bad? There go vintage charts.
I went to Burgundy for a very short trip , tasted at 4 top domaines . Obviously , my opinion is irrelevant but for what it is worth , my conclusion is the same as Claude Kolmâs . The reds are very high in alcohol and it shows ( aftertaste⌠) but I donât know if this will also be like that once the wine is in the bottle .
The whites are a pleasant surprise : good freshness and good acidities , surprising to me for such a hot year .
Do you think that very high in alcohol could change in bottle? Or maybe, it will show less but still be here?
This is worryingâŚ
sell the bottles to yourself at $1 each and pay the 25 cent tariff.
Howard,
there are plenty of 2003 Left Bank Bordeaux of very good quality and even fine wines from the Right Bank do exist. Therefore the statement that 2003 Bordeaux is crap is misleading and improper wine criticism. IMO. One may not like the style of that vintage but even that is no basis for bashing 2003 entirely. At least not if you are a wine critic or a blogger.
This is where things get interesting. Lost in all that heat in 2003, is a terroir signature. I tasted Montrose 2003, supposedly one of the wines of the vintage, and while more than drinkable, hard to think of as a Montrose let alone Bordeaux. Ditto Cos, so the question is, if you want to drink Bordeaux, then is a critic who dislikes these anonymous wines wrong?
More importantly, if he dislikes a wine because he values terroir, should he pretend otherwise? Give me an honest critic who tells me what he thinks over some of the mealy mouthed ones who give higher scores because they wonât offend the winemakers.
A critic should inform readers correctly. If he states even the good wines are maybe atypical but enjoyable and probably not for anyone everything is fine. If he states the wines are crap it is not ok because it is not true. A crapy wine is defective and not worth buying and drinking. Those 2003 wines do exist due to water stress and harsh tannins or overripeness. But the good 2003 wines show nothing like that. Therefore the information that 2003 is entirely crap is misleading and therefore wrong.
No, that is not what I want from a critic. I want somebody whose palate I relate to telling me whether or not he likes a wine. What possible use it anybody to say I really hate the wine, but I am still scoring it 90 plus points? You are just extrapolating based on what you think someone else might think. Itâs wildly inaccurate, and does no service to your client, the reader.
Take 2009 Cos. I disliked it intensely, Gilman also. Both gave it a low score, Gilman an incredibly low score. To me, it was a wine that could have been grown anywhere. It was fat and sweet with too much alcohol. Plenty of people like that style, I am not one of them, so how can I possibly score it high when I really could not wait to spit and chew on a piece of bread to get rid of the taste?
Among those who like the wine; I have no doubt Jeff Leve, who gave it a perfect score, will weigh in on it. Which is how it should be, people scoring honestly the wines they taste, allowing the readers to follow the recommendations of those palates they feel are most aligned with theirs.
Sorry Mark but I disagree. A wine critic who has only his personal taste in mind and can not be at least somewhat objective about the quality of a wine is no good wine critic IMO. A good wine critic is someone who is able to describe a wine in a way the consumer is able to see what is in the bottle and what one has to expect. And I still believe it is totally unfair to a wine to call it crap only because I have certain preferences. Aside from the fact that the good 2003 Bordeaux are not out of balance.
Is Mozart crap because I love Jazz or the other way round? Sorry, but that would be a caricature of a music critic IMO.
I think you can say, âThis is a well-made wine in this style, and I give it X points based on that, even though itâs not a style that appeals to me.â
FYI, another tweet from John Gilman yesterday:
@JohnBGilman
Nov 14
In Burgundy this year, each vigneronâs perception of when to pick colored the style of their 2018s more than I can ever recall happening before: one starts on Sept 2nd & makes great classics, another on 9/7 and has jammy, fairly alcoholic wines. Perfect timing was needed in 2018.
And Claude Kolm has begun posting notes on individual producers, beginning with Fourrier:
I think that is useless. I think that critics should project their point of view and also comment on style.
Jurgen
At no stage did I say the 2003 Bordeaux vintage was âcrap.â That is an objective (and unnecessarily pejorative) word. But having tasted extensively the vintage, I find few wines to my taste. My whole point is that wine criticism is by definition subjective, and attracts many different palates. The people I listen to will NEVER say âI donât like this wine, but if I am John Doe with a modern palate, it is fine, and I will give it a 92â.
To use your word, that is crap. It is a completely moronic exercise, based on extrapolating to write what you donât mean. In fact I think it is actually dishonest, because somebody who dislikes a wine like 2009 Cos, cannot honestly score it in any other way than his palate preference.
I, too, like criticâs have a clear point of view. But its possible to say, âI donât like this but others with different tastes willâ if the critic is aware of his/her own biases. I know Claude Kolm often says more or less what I suggested. I see movie reviewers do that time. They say, âThis is great as an action flick and some people will like it for that, but the plot is lame,â or whatever. A critic isnât bound to say, âThis is my view and thatâs the only one Iâll acknowledge,â though certainly many do!
Jurgen, I think what people are suggesting is that thereâs really no point in having a jazz critic review Mozart âobjectivelyâ.
And what I would say is that your personal preference isnât objective, but some people, anyway, can say, âThis is what I like, but I know other people will like this because itâs a great example of this style.â I can say, âIâm bored with cabernet, but this is a great Medoc.â
Mark,
I still do not agree. While a Jazz critic may not like classical music that much â which is very unlikely â every serious music critic has to know the architecture of music. If not, he is an amateur. If a Jazz lover scoring the ZauberflĂśte a 80 because he dislikes opera entirely he has no clue what he is talking about.