2000 Pauillac

What an enticing opportunity to taste several southern and mid-Pauillacs at the same time. Ample pours and ample time left us with plenty of opportunity to really get to know (or, in most cases, re-visit) these wines. At 23 years of age, it's a great time to learn from these wines. Most are showing well; some of the more modest estates seem to have just fallen past their apogee while the loftier addresses have almost invariably come into their own and dazzle.

The conventional order of service was inverted with the Latour and Pichons served first. Yet I found this useful as it gave us much more time with the greats and the benefit from that prolonged period of observation was great.

• 2000 Château Latour Grand Vin 96 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac

  I'm lucky to have the chance to taste good pours from 3 different bottles of this on the same night with no rush, following each for about 4-4.5 hours from just after pouring. The first bottle is disarmingly (and slightly unnervingly) ready, but one can hardly find fault with the very Latourish profile, full of black fruit, grilled chestnut, worn leather, and meaty, clove so typically derived from the Enclos. The other two bottles were are more as expected, offering muscular black fruit without the aromatic nuances found in the first bottle. Yet they allay any fears any unnaturally rapid evolution that might be founded if the first bottle were the sole example one had to taste. All three examples offer good presence on the palate, if perhaps not the endless finish and peacock's tail that great Latour usually provides. Maybe this is still coming out of its adolescence and it will be nice to have more data points in the coming years. A great wine, even if I am not positive it will end up in the pantheon of the great Latours.
  
  96-97

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• 2000 Château Pichon-Longueville Baron 95 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac

  Another glorious bottle of the 2000 Pichon Baron, really needing no time to show well and offering a big, powerful black-fruited nose, accented by graphite, coal embers, and an inky/nori like note. This is biggish, but so engagingly racy and just begging to be drunk now (though there's a long life ahead).

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• 2000 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande 95 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac

  The 2000 Pichon Comtesse shows well right out of the gate, but really does continue to develop positively over 2-3 hours. The initial curranty fruit and freshly-sharpened pencil mineral develop in intensity and cultivate a lovely cigar wrapper and subtle bacon note. Fresh, incisive, but also with an embracing lushness. Very fine and such a great counterpoint to the Baron and Latour alongside (which are more similar to one another than either is to the Comtesse, as usual).

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• 2000 Château Haut-Batailley 88 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac

  It's been 8 years since I last tasted the 2000 Haut-Batailley and my opinion hasn't really evolved in a meaningfully positive direction; this is example is a bit better than the last and still sports a pleasant pencilly, currant profile but it is a little light and undistinguished. Moving west to east along the southern border of Pauillac, one moves from Haut-Batailley to Pichon Comtesse, then Pichon Baron, and finally the Enclos of Latour up against the Gironde. The wines, all present tonight in adjacent glasses, illustrate the benefits of the deep gravel that Haut-Batailley seems to miss; this has none of the panache of these wines. Of course, there is likely a significant element of under-investment and, now that the Cazes family is in charge at Haut-Batailley, this quartet tasting may be more interesting...

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• 2000 Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste 93 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac

  It's interesting to re-visit this, as I've had the good fortune to do at 3-4 year intervals. While this is a perfectly pleasant wine, it seems neither a great Grand Puy Lacoste nor a great 2000 Pauillac. A couple good pours, followed over a few hours (followed from about 30 minutes after opening), show a black-fruited, curranty wine with cedar, cigar wrapper accents, but a little bit of weediness as well.

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• 2000 Château Pontet-Canet 91 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac

  It's been 3.5 years since I tasted the 2000 Pontet Canet and, if those two data points aren't misleading, this seems to be evolving reasonably rapidly. It's showing less exuberant fruit now and is moving into a loose, fleshy, nutty, cedary, leathery profile without a ton of heft. It's certainly a good drink now, but it doesn't come across as particularly ambitious - particularly alongside some neighbors from St. Lambert...

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• 2000 Château Lynch-Bages 92 Points

  France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Pauillac

  I continue to have some reservations about the 2000 Lynch Bages; it just seems it should be better than it is. This example is a little round and plumpish, a little too simple; this shows nice black fruit and a little graphite but misses a lot of the verve and depth that great vintages usually confer to this exceptional estate. I don't get the long, expanding finish which might suggest these things are just to come. Maybe I am a little hard on this, tasting it alongside the Pichons and Latour, but there are many vintages in which Lynch is a fair flight-mate to those wines.

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The 2000 vintage posed its own challenges, quite hot and wet through July until a sunny and warm August and September - only to revert to showers through October. I think those climactic conditions have really set the greatest terroirs apart from the good ones. A shame not to have had northern Pauillac represented with Mouton or Lafite, but an undoubted difference between the trio of Latour, Pichon Baron, and Pichon Comtesse
and the rest of the pack.

Among the elite band, one nagging question is whether Latour will definitively pull ahead of its St. Lambert neighbors Pichon Baron and Pichon Comtesse in the coming years. Probably, but I expected to see a bigger gap between them now and I expected to find more depth and persistence from the Latour. Will this eventually enter the pantheon of the truly great Latours? Time will tell. Yet, the endless game of which is the best is probably less interesting (and less productive) than observing their true personalities, reflecting the nuanced differences in their terroir (and, in the case of Comtesse, in its assemblage). Truly, these are some of the most captivating wines on earth.