It our effort to clean out the cellar (see my article Free Your Cellar Captives on the Love that Grape! Website) we recently tasted two 2000 vintages: A Oregon pinot noir and a Bordeaux.
2000 Chateau Lagrange Saint-Julien Grand Cru
This wine had a very pretty dark purple color, and on the nose I got blackberry, tar, smoke, leather, and clove. On the palate I tasted bright sour cherry, earth, and wood with some good acid and long heart-warming finish. This is certainly primed for drinking but the structure tells me you can hold it for a few more years, too.
2000 Torii Mor Oregon Pinot Noir
This wine did not taste quite as I expected it would. I think this may have been the last year Patty Green was making this wine so maybe she was saving her best efforts for her new label, I don’t know. There was some cherry there but it seemed a bit fruit-robbed. The oak and tannins where present on the palate and in the finish, but the roundness had gone, leading me to think we had waited too long to drink this wine. I’m going to pull some 2000 Patty Green single vineyard pinots out of the cellar to see how they compare. If this wine is any indication, it’s time to drink our 2000 Oregon pinot noirs.
