Bordeaux 2003

[gco1133]

To relieve the lockdown tedium I decided to crack a few cases of different Bordeaux 2003 I have in my cellar over the next couple of weeks.

Started tonight with Batailley 2003. Definitely a more modern style (just finished my 1996s of this Chateau which were excellent). Still a deep red colour. Some coffee notes on the nose.
Crunchy red fruit and some drying tannins. Quite long and some decent life left in it. Not unenjoyable but I prefer the old school Batailley. Will retaste the balance tomorrow.

[JimHow]

Looking forward to your "Bordeaux 2003 During the Lockdown" notes, gco1133...

[AKR]

To relieve the lockdown tedium I decided to crack a few cases of different Bordeaux 2003 I have in my cellar over the next couple of weeks.

Started tonight with Batailley 2003. Definitely a more modern style (just finished my 1996s of this Chateau which were excellent). Still a deep red colour. Some coffee notes on the nose.
Crunchy red fruit and some drying tannins. Quite long and some decent life left in it. Not unenjoyable but I prefer the old school Batailley. Will retaste the balance tomorrow.

Wow, I would have thought the combination of a hot year and Batailley's non faddish winemaking would have been a good combo. I had the 2000 a while back and enjoyed it.

[gco1133]

Tonight it was the turn of Pontet-Canet 2003

A deep ruby colour. Lots of ripe black cherry and blackcurrants on the nose. Very Inviting. On the palate plums with a graphite background
with some rounded tannins. Good length and has plenty of life in yet. Overall very good.

[Nicklasss]

Me too looking forward your multiple reviews of some 2003, a vintage a bit weird for me.

Welcome to BWE gco1133.

After all your reviews of 2003, don't hesitate to post your order of preference of the producers you will open.

Nic

[JoelD]

I tried the 2003 Montrose again on Saturday. Has the makings of a great wine but takes 3-4 hours in decanter to open up for me. I would definitely leave it alone for 3-5 years as it feels in a bit of an odd spot right now. Some fruit, but drying tannins until it's been decanted a while and then it comes together in the way a good Bordeaux should.

[JimHow]

The conventional wisdom about 2003 was always that the wines fared better the further north you went in the Medoc as the soils and micro-climate better absorbed the impacts of the heat. I'm just not so sure about that. I've had some delicious 2003s from Pessac, Margaux, and St. Julien, and if anything the Pauillacs and St. Estephes have been more uneven or sometimes weird. Some Pontets have been great, others have been weird. Sociando Mallet, Leoville Barton, d'Issan, Smith Haut Lafitte were all great in my experience in 2003.

[Nicklasss]

2003 Montrose was the best "very young wine" i had (in 2004) before i tried the 2009 Pontet Canet (in 2015) that is now the best ever young wine I had.

Nic

[JoelD]

I think it might just be a weird "teenager" right now.. maybe just coming out of a shut down phase. I have good hopes for it though. 93-94 now, 95-96 potential if the baby fat marbles in well.

Sad i missed the zoom happy hour, had to work until 5pm EST that day.

Was really glad i got to meet everyone at the BWE event.

Hope you guys are holding up well with everything.

[JCNorthway]

gco and Joel, thanks for agreeing to conduct research on the 2003 vintage. I have only the Pontet Canet from that vintage, and am looking forward to cracking a couple of bottles in the coming months.

Joel,

630-xxx-xxxx

I take it you were in the western suburbs of Chicago at some point? We moved from Chicago in 2017 after more than 30 years there, and are now in the Detroit area.

[JoelD]

JC, born and raised in Wheaton/Winfield. Lived in the city and north west burbs a bit as well then moved to Northern Va/DC in 2008. Need to get back more. Hear its got a pretty great wine scene

[JimHow]

Hey Joel, we'll do it again, I predict sooner rather than later.
I enjoyed meeting you, you definitely have the "BWE attitude"!

[JoelD]

Hope so Jim! It's a great crowd so thanks to everyone who is including me. Especially Marcus, David, Jay for brining me in after our first dinner.

Sad i missed the zoom meeting, and was also fomo-ing out on the bordeaux trip you guys had to cancel sadly.. but if it gets set up for another time, maybe i can get in on that one! Any chance you could send me the details for the last one? Was curious on the cost/itinerary of everything. Let me know. Thanks

[Nicklasss]

Yes was fun to meet you JoelD in DC. I think these two LLC (1982 and 1990) were just too good.

Will meet you back surely soon, on a Zoom meeting.

Nic

[AKR]

That 2003 Cos Labory I had recently was indeed really weird. Nothing at all like it was in its youth.

I loved that year when young, they were so goulee.

[Musigny 151]

Hmm!
All these nice notes, and none of them gel with my experience. I just had both the Cos and Montrose (half bottle) for lunch recently.
It was not a success; the Cos was sweet, big and almost totally lacking in character. Alcohol was intrusive, the finish reasonably long. Very disappointing. I left the remaining wine in the decanter, went back after a couple of hours, the same monolithic mess.


Back to the cellar and pulled the half bottle of Montrose 2003. Montrose was the better wine, but it was for me the taller midget. Rich, fat thick, incredibly big and concentrated, it came at me like a Rottweiler. No subtlety, no layers of flavor, and totally unlike any Montrose I have ever tasted. I will say the finish was incredibly long on the plus side, but again one dimensional. I would have classed it as a Parkerized Napa wine, never a Montrose, which usually has a good deal of character.



We did finish the half bottle, mainly because I was too lazy to back to the cellar. The one compensation, the alcohol in these wines was enough for a fine afternoon nap.

[DavidG]

I’ll more or less agree with you on the 2003 Cos Mark. A big, lush, alcoholic, very ripe verging on raisiny wine but not lacking acidity to the point of flabbiness, it had as much Napa character as Bordeaux but I thought I'd be able to distinguish it from a group of Napa cabs. Outstanding as a cocktail wine but only for a glass at one sitting.

I’ve had really good and meh bottles of 2003 Pontet Canet. Time to give it another try.

I sold all of my right bank 2003s as they were too ripe and alcoholic. Except for a couple bottles of Pavie because it was the wine that Parker and Robinson jousted over. I wanted to see what the controversy was about. It was the quintessential Napa fruit bomb though it wasn’t actually flabby. It was uber-ripe to the point of jamminess, very big and concentrated. I’d never have picked it as Bordeaux if served blind.

[Blanquito]

FWIW, I found the 02 Cos modern, unpleasantly so. We picked these up for like $35 at the MacArthur’s heist, but I still didn’t want them even at that price. I can only imagine what the 03 is like if the 02 showed this way.

[Claudius2]

Musigny151
If you check my old notes on the 2003's, I liked several of the wines and bought cases of the Montrose and Pontet Canet en primeur, plus various others in smaller quantities.
I went to a big 03 tasting put on my an importer in Sydney and the wines were served in flights (largely price levels and status) and the better wines tasted very nice young, the remainder were often dry, coarse, hot and had very unusual vegetative flavours.
I have for some reason upset others here for being critical of how they have developed.
The Montrose and PC were delicious at tastings when they first arrived.
After a little while I thought the Montrose shut down, and the PC progressively changed to a wine lacking in structure and elegance.
I have now drunk it 10 times with gaps of a year or two between them, and it tastes like a loose knit cab blend from a hot Australian area to my palate.
I sent the Montrose to auction when I moved to Singapore in Jan 2010, and was happy to have achieved a reasonable price. I just did not have the heart to open one.

I was in France and Italy during the late summer and fall of 03.
It was incredibly hot (like about 120F) on the hottest days and even at Lafite, the temps reached close to that point.
Coming from Australia, I have tried wines from vintages with similar temperatures - 2001 was a good example, and even 2003 was searingly hot in many Australian vineyard areas.
2019 however was the hottest on record and the grapes in the Barossa Valley looked like little raisins. The heat stress also led to shut down in many vines, the resulting grapes often being both peppery and hot tasting.

My point is that the extreme heat led to somewhat extreme wines - I was actually amazed that they turned out as well as they did, and always worried about their ability to age.
Hot vintages in Australia have taught me to not expect long ageing potential in heatwave harvests, but of course there will always be exceptions.

[Musigny 151]

Very interesting. I used to buy wine based on my tastings en Primeur, and really did not like the 2003s. Bought a few bottles to cover verticals, and the Montrose, which did show well there. While the wine is not a disaster, and there are many who will love it a let more than I did, it is not a style that I enjoy.

[robert goulet]

5 years ago almost to the day, when Bobby Orlando used to invite me over (lol) he popped a monster 2003 Montrose and a 2010 Mark Plouzeau franc de pied along the beautiful shoreline of Lake Lancaster. The Montrose huge wine that has a very long life ahead.

[JimHow]

I drank a 2000 Montrose once in the village circa oh I don't know, it must have been about 2003-4, with Jacques, Pappa Doc, and what was that guy's name, Jacques, I keep forgetting his name. AKR may have been there as well. I literally tasted nothing. It was as closed a wine as I've ever tasted. It was like drinking nails. There was nothing wrong with the bottle, it was just shut as tight as a monkey's ass.

I uncorked my other bottle of 2000 Montrose last year with my aunt and uncle in the Berkeshires. It was magnificent.

Montrose is one of the great, great wines of Bordeaux, of the world. I was REALLY looking forward to visiting that property. Montrose was great in 2003, and basically every other vintage since about 1989....

[gco1133]

Today was the turn of Leoville Poyferre 2003

The colour shows a tinge of bricking. Appealing black fruits and spice on the nose. Some ripe fruit, cedar, leather and ripe tannins on the palate. Great length. For me this is ready to go but I guess it may improve a touch over the next few years and hold for a while yet. Overall excellent.

[jal]

I drank a 2000 Montrose once in the village circa oh I don't know, it must have been about 2003-4, with Jacques, Pappa Doc, and what was that guy's name, Jacques, I keep forgetting his name. AKR may have been there as well. I literally tasted nothing. It was as closed a wine as I've ever tasted. It was like drinking nails. There was nothing wrong with the bottle, it was just shut as tight as a monkey's ass.

Wow! I have no memory of that at all. But then again I'm older than you..