200 Burgundy Grand Crus from vintage 2000, 4-day blind tasting

Singapore
Tasted Saturday, August 13, 2022 by Collector1855 with 1,257 views

Introduction

Where to start...
if someone puts together a 4-day blind tasting of 200 Grand Cru Burgundies of the vintage 2000 that features all 33 GC appellations including all Grand Cru wines produced by the cult producers LEROY, DRC, ROUSSEAU, ROUMIER, COCHE-DURY, LEFLAIVE, etc. accompanied by a famous Chef on each day, I would say: you're kidding! Yet, it happened in Singapore and a few lucky friends were invited – generosity at a different level. The host is one of Asia’s prolific collectors, who not only has a 40k bottle deep cellar but also has done his reading homework with WSET and other exams on his belt. This epic blind tasting had the following features:

The tasting was called Route de Grand Cru (RdGC) 2000, meaning tasting all Grand Crus appellation of the vintage 2000 in a way that all anchor producers of each Grand Cru site were shown. As mentioned, of the very top producers, all of their GC wines were shown! For this, sometimes dedicated producer flights were showcased in addition to the appellation flights
The tasting was organized in 12 flights of 4, 48 btls per day over 4 days, with a pirate in each flight. There were also some separate surprise flights in-between and after tasting nite cap bottles, as if we had not enough wines :-) with pirates from all over the world. All wines, including the pirates, were from the vintage 2000.

Observations:
To the surprise of many, the whites did not have much premox issues and showed more consistent than the reds (also, not many corked bottles). The light and challenging vintage produced great whites. The best whites were not the heavy ones, but the ones that retained a mineralic, flinty note. They were simply stunning. Some whites where maturity was pushed, smelled too much like a pina colada (pinapple plus cream).
The reds were light as the medium quality vintage suggests. They are at the end of their drinking window with browning edges. The top reds were excellent, classic and elegant, they gave a lot of pleasure. Producers clearly trumped terroir.
Leroy and Coche were a class of their own. Boy, are they expensive, but are they awesome. Leflaive, Henri Boillot also top for whites. DRC, Ramonet, Roumier good but not at the level of Madame's wines - looks like they fired the wrong person at DRC back in the days...

Enjoy the tasting notes.

Flight 1 - Day 1 - 51 bottles (52 Notes)

Flight 2 - Day 2 - 48 bottles (49 Notes)

Flight 3 - Day 3 - 52 bottles (53 Notes)

Flight 4 - Day 4 - 51 bottles (54 Notes)

Closing

Simply the biggest and most dazzling tasting of my life. I cannot thank the knowledgeable and exceptionally generous host enough.

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