Iggy's, Hilton Hotel, Singapore
Tasted Monday, February 27, 2017 by Paul S with 513 views
With most of the other vintages in the mid-1990s and early 2000s done, we now turned our attention to 2003.
2003 was the "heat-wave" vintage, where people died of heat-exhaustion in their homes, and train carriages melted on their tracks. In the vineyards, grapes threatened to shrivel-up and those winemakers who could afford it actually refrigerated their fruit right after picking. On release, I thought the vintage was quite a disaster. Hot, messy fruit, harsh woody tannins, overripe flavours unbalanced by a lack of acidity. And that was just the reds.
Over the years though, a few odd bottles here and there seemed to have developed more nicely than expected, coming into better balance and focus. In the past couple of years especially, more and more people starting reassessing the vintage's long-term prospects. Thanks to everyone's usual generosity, we had a line-up of some of the very best terroirs and makers in Burgundy tonight. This then was a good chance to see how far the wines had truly come along in the past 13-14 years.
So, the verdict...
Many of the wines on the night were truly impressive, and quite a few were starting to show really well. They were perhaps a touch less classically balanced and more heayset than usual; the fruit was dark and powerfully ripe; and many wines were still showing woody tannins in various measures. Save for a couple of examples, the wines also seemed to lack a bit of the transperancy and finesse that makes Burgundy so special for me. However, while definitely not a vintage that engendered elegance, these were yummy wines that were generally attractive in their own particular way, especially when paired with appropriate food. In short. the hot, sticky, imbalanced caricatures upon release have indeed started coming together very nicely.
All in all, it is not a vintage I will go out and buy - the wines are just not built in a style that I associate with the best of Burgundy. But if you can get past that, there are some truly great wines in the vintage that could grace any cellar.
2003 Krug Champagne Clos du Mesnil 94 Points
France, Champagne
An unusually soft, ripe and expressive young Krug, but this was nevertheless a top-class Champgane. It had a lovely nose that just exploded out of glass with wafts of chantilly cream, rose water and ripe white fruit shading into almost tropical shades, even a bit of lychee in there I thought. This was such a floral bouquet, bringing to mind Pierre Herme's rose Isphahan dessert, with just a faint hint of savoury white mushrooms binging it back to more weighty territory. The palate was very fine as well, if not quite as put-together and integrated as the nose at the moment. It was very pleasing though, with unusual sweet cream flavours at first, and then weighty white fruit and rich lychee shades coming up along with a fresh citrus counterpoint with time - all this couched in sparkly acidity and very fine mousse. It did feel a touch soft and fleshy for a Krug Mesnil at first, but with time, the wine started showing a really muscular spine of underlying minerality that drove it into a long, long finish with savoury bits of stone and smoky earth notes lingering away. It really gripped the backpalate there. A fascinatingly different Krug. No harm drinking now, but I would be really intrested to see how this develops vis-a-vis other vintages over the next decade or so.
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2003 Dom Pérignon Champagne 92 Points
France, Champagne
Third time round, and impressions are quite consistent - markedly ripe and forward, but not a bad DP. Unusually enough, this smelt so much like a bottle of 2003 Krug Clos des Mesnil that we had alongside - sweet cream, yeast, ripe, almost tropical fruit notes, and a dash of floral rose water. A lovely nose that was a strange echo of the other champagne's. The palate, while pleasant, had nowhere near as much substance as the Krug's though. This was all sweet and airy and felt just a little soft, with expressive flavours of ice-cream soda, sweet longans and lychees, and plenty of floral notes. Unusually ripe and forward, but not bad. There was a little touch of minerality at the end, all dresssed in quiet acidity and a gentle mousse. A good Champagne and a decent drink, but not one I would go out and hunt out - I think this will fade drastically in the long-term compared with the fabulous 2002 and 2004 vintages.
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