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latest first — 169 notes in the archive
1996 gave Champagne sugar and acidity at the same time, and the early verdict was that the acidity was too much. Thirty years on, in the original release of Cristal, that same acidity is the reason the wine is still young.
Bouchard owns roughly a third of Chevalier-Montrachet and is the only house with parcels on all four of its terraces. The domaine bottling, from a warm and generous 2009, seventeen years on — and the question of whether the hill's tension survived the sun.
Krug declared three vintages in a row — 1988, 1989, 1990 — and 1990 was the ripest of them. This was the original release, not the later Collection re-issue: thirty-six years under its own cork, and still carrying its acidity.
2003 was the summer Europe cooked. White Burgundy from that year was written off almost before it was bottled: too much alcohol, no acidity, drink it up. Twenty-three years on, the acidity was the first thing to arrive in the glass. Bottle 1,709 of 2,871.
2004 spent two decades as Burgundy's unloved vintage. At twenty-two, this Chapelle-Chambertin made the case for patience — quiet, lacy, held up by acidity that finally learned its manners.
Granbussia is the wine Aldo Conterno made only when the year deserved it: three vineyards the estate bottles separately, combined into one riserva. 1982 is counted among the greatest of them. Forty-four years on, this bottle still had grip at the finish.
Before the label said Piè Franco it said only Franco, for three vintages. This is the second of them: ungrafted Nebbiolo from the Gabutti parcel that Teobaldo Cappellano planted when everyone told him the phylloxera would take it. Thirty-one years on, the wine was wide open and still had something in reserve.
Ornellaia is a red-wine name. Its first commercial white, the 2013 Bianco, was four thousand bottles of Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier made without malolactic and left on the lees for a year and a half. Thirteen years on, the acidity that decision protected was still cutting straight through the fruit.
The label on Roagna's 1982 Crichët Pajé says Vino da Tavola, the lowest rung of the Italian system. Inside was a forty-four-year-old Barbaresco from one of the slowest cellars in Piedmont — brick at the rim, balsamic and dried rose on the nose, and a core of fruit that had not gone anywhere.
Piper-Heidsieck's Rare is declared only in the years the house thinks deserve the name. At thirty-eight, the 1988 was still standing on its acidity — deep gold, nuts and cinnamon, apple and honey trailing into salt.
Bonnes-Mares is called a Chambolle wine — but Dujac's parcel sits at the Morey end, just below Clos de Tart. At nineteen years, the 2007 was open, fine-boned, and stonier than expected.
From Lalou Bize-Leroy's private 0.16-hectare parcel, a 1997 that defied everything said about its vintage — stone, salt, pear and anise, precise and impossibly long after nearly thirty years. A new member of a very short personal list.
One village, one grape, one year — and barely forty-odd declared vintages in 120 years. The label had all but peeled away in the cellar; the wine inside had not aged a day it couldn't afford. The best Salon of my life.
Plénitude is Dom Pérignon's theory that Champagne peaks more than once. The same 2008, held fifteen more years on the lees and disgorged in 2024 — the cool vintage's blade of acidity intact, only the edges quietly smoothed.
For Krug, a vintage is not 'a wine from a good year' but a portrait of a year too distinctive to blend away. Thirty years on, the 1995 — Champagne's first generous season after a difficult run — still stands upright.
Pomerol has no classification, so its hierarchy was written by people. One bottle carried the name of Mme Loubat, who refused to price her wine below the first growths; the other came from a pine tree and a farmhouse. Side by side, the old king poured velvet and the young challenger stood at attention.
The Côte de Nuits allows white grapes in exactly one grand cru, and exactly one domaine makes it. After replanting, de Vogüé sold this wine as humble Bourgogne Blanc for 21 vintages — the grand cru label returned only in 2015. This is the third vintage of the comeback.
Made in just five vintages before the cuvée was mothballed, the 1985 is the last of the original Champagne Charlies. Forty years of gold in the glass — mushroom and caramel below, bergamot slicing through above.
Henry-Frédéric Roch co-directed DRC for thirty years and always stood at the back of the photograph. This is the wine he made under his own name — whole-bunch, near-zero sulphur Clos de Bèze, from a 2005 only now beginning to open.
Vinothèque is Cristal with time added — held nearly twenty more years in Roederer's own cellars, disgorged in 2016. Rose petals and red berries deepening into chalk, hazelnut and praline: a rosé precisely at its peak.
2008 was the vintage rescued by a north wind — high in acid, divisive, a year to judge by producer rather than by number. In Pacalet's whole-bunch, low-extraction hands, that acid becomes the spine.
Le Montrachet is 7.48 hectares in total; Ramonet's share is 0.26 — some 1,200 bottles a year from a parcel Père Ramonet secured in 1978. A cool, high-acid vintage, deep gold after twenty-two years.
Same hands, same year — France's smallest grand cru beside its village sibling. Two monopoles of Comte Liger-Belair, both 2006, opened side by side after twenty years: the domaine's starting point against its summit.
When words fall short of gratitude, there is always the upper slope of Puligny. Twenty-two years on, Leflaive's flagship grand cru still held its chalk-and-steel spine beneath layers of honey and toasted bread.
Two Musigny 2007s side by side — Mugnier's 1.14 hectares and Roumier's 996 square metres sit one above the other on the same slope. Iron and earth in one glass, rose petal and silk in the other.
Only two Burgundy grands crus carry an owner's name — Romanée-Conti, and this monopole, Faiveley property since 1874. And 2007 happens to be the very vintage the domaine began remaking its style.
The Cathelin began as a painting by a family friend, and 1990 was its first vintage — made only in years with something to say, each bottle numbered. Thirty-five years on, the dark fruit still holds the center.
In Bordeaux, 1982 is a legend — but that story belongs to the reds. In Sauternes the October rains washed the botrytis away, and almost nobody had picked in time. Forty-three years on, what you notice first is not the sweetness but the acid.
Cistercian monks planted Pinot Noir in Malterdingen some seven hundred years ago, and the parcel they chose — Wildenstein — sits on shell limestone closer to the Côte d'Or than to the rest of Baden. They were not guessing.
Nana-Tsu-Mori — 'seven forests' — was once an orchard of seven fruit trees; now it grows Japan's most talked-about Pinot Noir. Pale, floral, high-strung, and not quite like anything in the Burgundy songbook.
Grand cru fruit from a second pass through the vines, declassified to premier cru under the founder's name. 4,511 bottles in 2011, and most never left France — born privileged, travelling under a modest card.
Two bottles of Único, ten years apart. The 1966 label reads only 'fine table wine' — its region had no name yet. By 1976, Ribera del Duero was written on the glass. Between the two bottles, a wine region was born.
Substance carries no vintage because it carries all of them — a solera begun in 1986, Avize Chardonnay only. At a sushi counter, this is the rare Champagne where 'it tastes like sherry' is the highest compliment.
In 1996 the same hectare of Vosne-Romanée wore two labels — Henri Jayer's and Emmanuel Rouget's. Opening both side by side turned out to be less about comparison than about provenance, price, and what a legend is actually worth.
A walled parcel inside Les Perrières, owned outright by one family — an unusual thing in a village divided into slivers. Opened far too early, and honest about what that costs.
The domaine itself calls Chambertin the masculine one — broad-boned, short on finesse in youth, rounding out with time. Twenty-three years on, that sentence was sitting in the glass.
Mention Faiveley and opinions split — those who remember the old, hard, closed wines, and those who taste the estate now and wonder what happened. The dividing line is roughly 2007, and this 2010 Mazis stands firmly on the new side.
The label states it plainly: 3,330 bottles harvested, and this is number 1,319. From 0.67 hectares of sixty-year-old vines — the smallest production at the domaine, and for decades DRC's only white.
One vineyard, two soils. De Vogüé's parcel sits on the red, clay-heavy terres rouges — where the domaine's Musigny is silk, this is muscle. At twenty years, the 2004 was only just beginning to open its door.
At de Vogüé, 'Vieilles Vignes' is not a special edition — it is the only Musigny the house makes. Twenty years on, the 2004 arrived as texture before aroma: liquid silk over a tension that still hasn't let go.
Nineteen years in large old casks before bottling — one of the first Malbecs ever presented to the world as a fine wine. Half a century on, the core of the 1977 was still dark, and the wine had not fallen.
Musar is spoken about as a red house, but the stranger bottle has always been the white — made from two grapes that grow almost nowhere else, oxidative by design, and capable of outliving the reds that made the estate famous.
Everyone says 'solera' the moment Selosse comes up — but V.O. isn't one. It is three consecutive vintages from the chalk heights of Avize, Cramant and Oger, and it drinks closer to mature white Burgundy than to Champagne.
The rosé is the bottle Dom Pérignon skips in years it does not like, and takes more than a decade to release in the years it does. The 1998 arrived in the shadow of 1996 — and quietly kept the better balance.
Harvested in 1970, bottled only in July 1982 — Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial is declared only in exceptional years. Fifty-four years on, the colour had long since faded to brick, but the acidity was still razor-sharp.
A house built on Côte de Nuits reds makes only a handful of whites. This is one of them — closed on opening, then long, layered and saline, and still not finished at fifteen.
Malconsorts ends where La Tâche begins. A premier cru that has spent a century being told it belongs one rank higher — and a 2010 that argues the case in line rather than in flesh.
Rousseau's hierarchy is drawn not only in the vineyard but in the barrel cellar: new oak for Chambertin and Clos de Bèze, seasoned casks for Charmes. Not a lesser wine — a different intention, and the light 2011 shows it clearly.
The label says premier cru; the fruit comes from the Musigny grand cru itself — young vines, declassified to protect the old-vine cuvée. Twenty years on, this 2004 smelled of forest floor and carried none of the vintage's feared green edge.
Krug's Vintage is a portrait of a single year, released only after a decade or more in the cellars. At thirty-five, the 1989 — a sun-blessed, generous season — stood at the absolute peak of maturity, opulent yet never slack.
Say 'Lignier' and most Burgundy drinkers think of Hubert or Georges. Virgile Lignier's family domaine is a different lineage altogether — and its Clos de la Roche 2012 opened with dried petals and a Vosne-like elegance.
For fifteen vintages this classic bottling was the only Barbaresco DOCG Gaja made — the single-vineyard wines had been voluntarily demoted to Langhe. At twenty years, the 2001 showed why the house never needed more than this.
Beronia began in 1973 as a project among friends from a Basque gastronomic society, named for the Iron Age people who lived along the Ebro before the Romans. Its Reserva from 2015 — a warm, generous Rioja year — opened at home on a summer night, six years on.
Colgin's IX Estate grows at eleven hundred feet on Pritchard Hill, above Lake Hennessey and the Napa fog line. The 2005, at sixteen years, showed what mountain Cabernet does with age that valley-floor wine cannot: keep its shape.
Le Clos des Corvées is a walled five-hectare monopole at the Prémeaux end of Nuits-Saint-Georges, farmed by Henry-Frédéric Roch with whole bunches, wild yeast and almost no sulphur. The 2011 — an early, cool, uneven year — at ten, from a label that carries a pictogram and nothing else.
La Grande Dame is named for Barbe-Nicole Clicquot, widowed at twenty-seven, who ran the house for sixty years and invented the riddling table. The 1990, Pinot Noir-led from eight grand cru villages, in magnum at thirty-one — the format that keeps Champagne young longest, at the age where that matters.
Les Suchots is the largest premier cru in Vosne-Romanée, wedged between Romanée-Saint-Vivant and Échezeaux. Nicolas Potel's domaine farms a parcel of it planted in 1937, and the 2012 — a tiny, concentrated crop — showed what very old vines do in a difficult year.
A puy is a rise in the ground, and Grand-Puy-Lacoste sits on a high gravel plateau behind Pauillac, away from the river and the first growths. The 1990 — a hot, generous year on a Cabernet-heavy estate — was thirty-one years old and had settled into the middle of a very long life.
Les Vignerondes sits at the northern edge of Nuits-Saint-Georges, where the commune runs into Vosne-Romanée and the wines start to smell of it. Domaine Leroy's parcel is under half a hectare, and the 2001, at twenty years, was the estate's concentration wrapped around a cru that is usually described as elegant.
Narvaux is a village lieu-dit on the thin ground above Genevrières, and 2013 was the late, cold, hail-struck year that gave Meursault its acidity back. Eight years on, in Colin-Morey's hands, the two had made something taut and mineral out of a commune usually described as rich.
Piper-Heidsieck declares Rare only in the years it thinks deserve the name, and 2002 — a warm, dry, concentrated vintage — was an obvious one. At nineteen, with Chardonnay leading the blend, it was still bright at the core and only beginning to turn golden.
Nathan Fay planted the first Cabernet in what became the Stags Leap District in 1961, and it was a glass of his homemade wine that persuaded Warren Winiarski to buy the land next door. The 1992 is the third vintage of the vineyard bottled under Fay's own name — Napa Cabernet from a drought year, at twenty-nine.
In 1936 the surveyors drawing the boundary of Châteauneuf-du-Pape were turned away from a walled hunting estate by its gamekeepers. The vines inside have been Côtes-du-Rhône ever since — surrounded on every side by Châteauneuf, on the same quartz pebbles. Les Quartz is that accident of history in a bottle, from the best year the southern Rhône had seen in some time.
The name was invented in 1911 by a London agent who thought 'non-vintage brut' undersold the wine. What makes it Bollinger is what nobody sees: old barrels, and a library of reserve wines kept under cork in magnums for years before they are riddled, disgorged and poured back into the blend.
Ed Durell bought a cattle ranch outside the town of Sonoma in 1977 and planted vines because the neighbours had. Forty years later the name is on half the serious Chardonnay labels in the county. Sojourn's version is all Old Wente, from two blocks, in the third year of the drought.
An Irpinian estate built after an earthquake, a consultant from Avize named Anselme Selosse, a bottle designed by Massimo Vignelli, and the grape of Taurasi turned into a pale traditional-method rosé. DUBL is what happens when southern Italy decides to take sparkling wine seriously.
A Gevrey Boillot who moved to Chambolle, farming a scrap of Nuits-Saint-Georges planted before the First World War. Les Pruliers is the town's structured, tannic side, and 2011 was the early, cool, uneven year that Burgundy wrote off and then quietly reconsidered.
A rudius was the wooden sword a Roman gladiator received on the day he was freed. Jeff Ames named his own label after it — a few barrels a year, from other people's famous vineyards — and this is his Chardonnay from Larry Hyde's clay, in the coldest, wettest Napa year of its decade.
The ripest, most flamboyant Dom Pérignon of its era — a year so warm that the house later admitted it had picked the Chardonnay too ripe. Nineteen years from the harvest, opened before two Californian Chenin Blancs, which is not the usual company.
A Pinot Noir specialist plants a few rows of Chenin Blanc on shale above Monterey Bay, and the very first wine off the new site is not Pinot at all. Seventy-five cases, from vines in their third season.
Pax Mahle named his second label for the breaks in the coastal hills that let the Pacific air in. This Chenin Blanc, at twelve and a half percent with a hand-lettered label, is the label's idea in its plainest form — a grape almost nobody in California was taking seriously, picked early and left alone.
Five hectares of white vines on a fifty-hectare estate, classified for both colours, from a Bordeaux year that cool July and dry September made better for whites than for reds. A gold capsule between a 1990 champagne and a 2008 Aubert.
Hervé Duboscq, a former railway worker, bought seven hectares of neglected vines in 1952 on a life annuity. His son made the estate famous for Merlot and new oak in a commune known for neither. The 1995, at twenty-five, closed a five-bottle evening.
California's first proprietary Bordeaux blend, in a year when the blend was almost entirely one grape. Six estate vineyards, two years in new oak, and a cool, late vintage that rewarded patience — opened at fifteen.
The bottle says Fleur de Champagne, which is what Belle Epoque was called in America for forty years. The 1990 inside it came from the ripest Champagne harvest since 1959, and it opened a five-bottle evening at thirty years old.
Tom Dehlinger planted an apple orchard to vines in 1975, eight years before the Russian River Valley had a name. His Pinot Noirs are labelled by soil type rather than by block, and the 2007 Goldridge was opened at fourteen years.
The most famous kosher wine in the world is made from a grape bred in a Massachusetts garden in 1849, sweetened to hide its bitterness, and sold for decades mostly to people who were not Jewish. Two glasses, late on a Saturday.
A Pinot Gris picked in the first days of a national lockdown, blended across two South Island regions, and finished in bottle by early July. On a home table a year later, between a Chianti and a Lambrusco.
Concerto was the first Lambrusco to carry a single vineyard and a single vintage, and the first dry one to win Italy's top guide award. The 2017 came from a year of frost and then a summer they named after the devil.
Clos de l'Arlot is a walled monopole at the southern tip of Nuits-Saint-Georges, farmed biodynamically and fermented with whole bunches in the Dujac manner. The 2017, from a quiet year after a brutal one, was the young wine on a table of old ones.
Bruno Paillard founded his house in 1981, the first new name in Champagne for decades. Nine years later he bottled a Le Mesnil Blanc de Blancs from the great 1990 vintage, in magnum only. Thirty years on, it had become the oldest wine on a table that included a 2000 Barolo.
Bruno Giacosa put a red label on a Barolo only in the years he judged worth it. The 2000 Riserva from Le Rocche del Falletto, in magnum, opened at twenty years — delicate for a hot vintage, and unmistakably the work of the man who owned the hill.
In 2005 Sine Qua Non split its reds into six lettered bottlings under one name — Atlantis, with the chemical formula for rust after it. The 2a is the Grenache from the estate's own Eleven Confessions vineyard, opened at sixteen years.
Next of Kyn is the wine Manfred Krankl makes from the vines outside his own door — a single vineyard in Oak View, one label that never changes, and a number on the neck instead of a name. No. 2 was the 2008.
Olivier Bernstein had made exactly three vintages when 2009 arrived. His Charmes-Chambertin, blended from old vines in Charmes and Mazoyères, was the Burgundy that followed a Salon and preceded two Krankls — and held its ground.
Sine Qua Non's 2008 Syrah carried a portrait of a red-haired woman with her eyes closed and the terse name B 20. Among the house's reds it is one of the more inward wines — cooler, more mineral, less inclined to shout — which at thirteen years turned out to be the point.
1996 gave Champagne a freak combination of full ripeness and ferocious acidity, and no house was better built to bottle it than Salon. At twenty-five years, the wine was still running on that spine — citrus oil, oyster shell, and no sign of slowing.
For nine vintages Manfred Krankl and the Austrian sweet-wine master Alois Kracher made dessert wines together under a shared initial. The Straw Man was their vin de paille: Sémillon dried on straw mats, in half-bottles, and gone for good after 2006.
The estate that made its name refusing Sangiovese puts it in the entry wine. 2017 was a drought year, and small berries left their mark on everything Tuscany bottled.
Six barrels from the coldest, wettest California vintage in memory. Four clones, eleven months on the lees, and a child's wagon on the label with wings on it.
Two profiles face each other on the label and two signatures sit beneath them. In 1999 the wine was still being made jointly by Tim Mondavi and Patrick Léon, a cool late season on both their terms.
Sixty-four hectares on the Duero, with Vega Sicilia on one side and Pingus territory on the other. Pruno is the wine the estate makes for drinking now rather than later.
Schönhell has been called the beautiful slope since the fourteenth century. Fred Prinz made his name working its loess and clay at night, while running the cellar of the Rheingau's largest estate by day.
The Côte des Bar sits nearer to Chablis than to Reims, on the same Kimmeridgian marl. Devaux built its house there and gave the 2008 more than seven years on lees before letting it go.
El Niño gave Napa twice its normal rainfall, eighteen frost nights and a cold bloom. The 1998 Reserve was written off almost on release. At twenty-three years it had the last word.
Pierre-Yves Colin was the first of Marc Colin's children to leave, and the one whose wines came to define a style — big barrels, no stirring, wax over the cork. His regional Bourgogne, from a warm year, five weeks after his youngest brother's Chassagne.
The Saint-Émilion limestone plateau does not stop at the appellation boundary. Gérard Perse of Pavie bought a clos on the far side of that line in 2001 and made it with the same team. The 2006, at fourteen years.
Cantemerle was left off the 1855 classification and got itself added a few months later after its owner confronted the brokers — the only estate besides Mouton to have moved the list. The 2003, from the summer of the heatwave, at seventeen years.
Kevin Harvey planted Pinot Noir in his backyard on an old Christmas-tree farm and decided the Santa Cruz Mountains could do what Burgundy does. The Alpine Vineyard 2006 is from the years when that was still a theory.
On the twenty-third of July 2013 a hailstorm crossed Volnay in about twenty minutes and took most of the crop — the third year running. What was left was picked in October. A premier cru from that small, late, hard-won harvest.
Bollinger's R.D. is La Grande Année left on its lees for years longer and disgorged late. The same 2002 base wine, in its first release, opened a few months after the R.D. had been — a chance to taste the difference time on the yeast makes.
1994 looked like 1961 until September, and then it rained through the harvest. Cos d'Estournel was one of the estates that came through — an unfiltered wine from a year that broke a lot of hearts, opened beside its own 1975.
A vintage that was bitterly tannic in barrel and spent decades being waited on, from the Saint-Estèphe estate whose founder built pagodas in the Médoc. Opened at forty-five years, beside its own 1994.
Aux Reignots sits directly above La Romanée on thin, stony ground near the top of the Vosne slope — a premier cru that in most hands would be a grand cru. From the domaine that owns the monopole below it, in a hot year that suited the altitude.
The house that makes Monprivato treats its Barbera exactly the same way it treats its Barolo — old Slavonian casks, nothing else. From a shield-shaped vineyard in Monforte, in a vintage the Langhe still talks about.
Petite Sirah is the grape Napa uses for colour and tannin and rarely bottles on its own. A single-vineyard version from Calistoga, made by Bob Foley, opened at eighteen years to see what the tannin had turned into.
Maurice Drouhin bought forty-one parcels from eight owners in the 1920s to assemble this vineyard, then found old papers saying it had once made white wine, and replanted half of it with Chardonnay. The 2005, at fifteen years.
Bryant's estate Cabernet comes from one vineyard on Pritchard Hill. Bettina comes from three vineyards that belong to somebody else — David Abreu's — and is named for the owner's wife. The last bottle of a long evening.
1993 was a rained-on harvest that most Champagne houses quietly skipped. Dom Pérignon made a rosé from it anyway — and at twenty-seven years, on a friend's dining table, it opened a six-bottle evening.
John Kongsgaard lets his Chardonnay ferment for the better part of a year, watches it go through a stage that smells like something has gone wrong, and waits. The vineyard is named for his father, who was one.
1986 was the Médoc vintage that made tannin a virtue and patience a requirement. Lynch-Bages, the Pauillac that drinks like a second growth and is classified as a fifth, at thirty-five years.
Nicolas Potel lost his family domaine, built a négociant business, lost the right to his own name, and started again from scratch in 2009. This Chambertin is from that first year of the second business.
Eighteen months in old French oak, no fining, from one block planted in 1992. Section 94 is the Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc built to argue with everything the region is known for — and three weeks earlier, a bottle of exactly that had been on the table.
Atalon was Jess Jackson's attempt at a serious Napa label — mountain-fruit Merlot and Cabernet, launched in 1997, quietly folded years later. The 2001 outlived the brand by a wide margin.
Tua Rita is famous for a Merlot that costs more than most Bordeaux. This is the estate's other face — the coast's own white grape, made in steel, opened late on a January night with no ceremony at all.
The label says Meursault and nothing more. At this domaine that is enough to make the bottle harder to find than most grand crus — and in 2015, the son's hand was already visible in the glass.
The words Marey-Monge on a DRC label are the trace of a two-century argument over who owned Romanée-Saint-Vivant. The 2014 is the vintage where the vineyard's own character — perfume over power — was easiest to hear.
Domaine Leroy's parcel of Clos de la Roche is two-thirds of a hectare — a few barrels a year of the rarest expression of Morey's greatest vineyard. The 2008, at thirteen years, was iron and dark fruit wound around Leroy's impossible concentration.
The oldest name among the first growths, and the only one the city of Bordeaux swallowed whole. The 2001 — forever in the shadow of 2000 — was at twenty years exactly what the vintage's defenders promised: smoke, stone, and silk.
A five-bottle counter dinner needed something to begin with that would not be forgotten by the time the DRC arrived. Substance — one village, one grape, every vintage since 1986 — was the answer.
Bob Lindquist planted Syrah in Santa Barbara County when almost nobody in California thought it was worth the trouble. A single-vineyard bottle from 2005, opened at fifteen years, to see whether the argument had held.
Marc Colin had four children and the family domaine has been dividing itself ever since. This bottle is from the youngest son's first real vintage under his own name — seven hectares, nineteen cuvées, and a label nobody had seen before.
New Zealand shut down two days into the Marlborough harvest. The grapes were saved by a line in a government notice — and the wine reached the table nine months later, opposite a bottle from 2000.
A Napa vintage that spent two decades being skipped over, opened at exactly twenty years — on a table where the other open bottle was from 2020.
A tertre is a mound. The estate sits on the highest gravel rise in Margaux, in a single unbroken piece facing south — and 2015 was the year the whole appellation, not just its famous names, got it right.
Half the blend is reserve wine averaging a decade in age. In a category where 'non-vintage' is usually shorthand for the current harvest with a little help, that is a different proposition entirely.
A week earlier the 2018 had been on the table — a cool year picked in October. The 2017 is its mirror image: a Labor Day heat wave, a rushed pick, a crop down by a fifth.
A month earlier the same wine had been drunk in its most difficult year. This was the other one — the hot, dry summer the Galatrona vineyard was planted for. A half bottle, at the end of a long evening.
Iscay means 'two' in Quechua — two grapes, two winemakers, two countries. The Argentine half is Trapiche's Daniel Pi; the other half came from Santa Barbara. The year they made it in, Mendoza spent the summer behaving like Bordeaux.
For the first time in the house's history, Dom Pérignon released a vintage out of order — 2009 ahead of 2008. The reason was not that 2009 was better. It was that 2009 was ready.
Belle Côte usually hangs two or three weeks longer than any other Chardonnay in Napa or Sonoma. In 2017 the picking finished on 28 September — ten days before the fires.
A Napa Cabernet house bought forty acres on the second ridge in from the Pacific, planted nine of them to Pinot Noir, and named the place after what it looks out at. 2012 was one of the first two vintages.
No vineyard name on the label, and no fixed vineyard behind it either. Cardinale is reassembled from scratch every year out of mountain fruit, and the 2003 came from four sites that have almost nothing in common.
Twenty-one acres on a volcanic shelf above the Silverado Trail, and an estate that had already lost its founder. The 2002 sits on the hinge between two eras at Dalla Valle — the last stretch before Michel Rolland arrived.
The same wine as the 2000 vintage bottling, held back and left on its lees for sixteen years instead of eight. The theory is that Champagne matures in steps rather than along a curve.
Hudson Ranch spent decades as the name on other people's labels. The estate bottling comes from the same Carneros blocks, in a year cool enough that the Chardonnay came in during October.
From the 2013 vintage Hungary abolished the lower puttonyos grades, and the number on the label stopped being a legal requirement. This bottle still says five — by choice rather than obligation, and from one of the best aszú years of the decade.
Troplong Mondot sits on the highest ground of Saint-Émilion, clay over limestone beside a water tower visible for miles. The 2004 — a quiet vintage between two loud ones — was drinking at full stride at sixteen years.
La Landonne is a name three houses have made famous, and Delas holds one of the smallest pieces of it — a little over two hundred cases a year off iron-rich schist. Opened on an ordinary Wednesday evening at the desk.
An April frost cost Fontodi a large part of the 2017 crop, and then the summer turned hot and dry. Giovanni Manetti has argued that the first disaster is what protected the estate from the second. Opened half an hour after a Côte-Rôtie, on the same table.
It rained on roughly half the days of 2010 in Tokaj, and the vintage was written off almost before it was bottled. Ten years later, in a half-litre bottle at the tail end of a long evening, the wine made the case that the write-off had been premature.
August 2002 was a disaster in Bordeaux and the vintage should have been forgettable. Then an Indian summer arrived and stayed until mid-October, and the Cabernet on the left bank ripened after all. Eighteen years later this was a Saturday-night bottle over dinner at home.
Everyone agrees this wine should be drunk within about three years. It was opened in its fifth calendar year, which turned out to be the more interesting experiment.
A two-hectare plot in Labastida, forty-year-old Tempranillo, twelve months in oak, and one of the great modern Rioja vintages. Sixteen years on it had shed the label 'modern' altogether.
A house that stopped using wood at the end of the 1960s, a vintage that lost half its crop to April frost, and a 375ml bottle on a weeknight table. Very little was hidden.
Two hailstorms took the Parussi vineyard in 2014 and Massolino simply did not bottle it. What was left came into the straight Serralunga Barolo, and in a half bottle six years later it looked like Barolo from an older decade.
In Tuscany's 2014, it rained for twenty-one days in July and Merlot was the variety that suffered most. Galatrona is one hundred percent Merlot. Six years later it was leaner than usual, and better for it.
Antoni Tàpies drew a nose, a mouth, an eye and two hearts in red for the 1995 label. Twenty-five years on it stood at the end of a long table, a head above the magnum next to it.
The neck label says magnum number 12,989, one of twelve hundred. Twenty-one years on, the 1999 Napa Valley bottling was still holding the cool, European shape that vintage is remembered for.
Every Sine Qua Non wine exists once — new name, new label, never repeated. The 2015 white, named for the French phrase for dusk, is a Chardonnay-Roussanne blend fermented 'as dirty as possible' and unlike anything else California makes.
Matt Courtney spent eight years making wine at Marcassin before starting Ferren. The 2017 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay shows what he took with him — and what he deliberately left behind.
2009 gave the Côte de Beaune ripeness and took away acidity. Morgeot is the broadest of Chassagne's premiers crus. On paper the two should have cancelled each other out — eleven years on, they hadn't.
2014 was the vintage several of Montalcino's most famous estates refused to bottle at all. Banfi made one — and at six years old, opened at home with a delivered pizza, it made a quiet case for the year.
The home vineyard behind Clos du Val's Stags Leap Cabernet, bottled under its own name in a cool vintage that turned hot at the last moment. Twenty-one years on, the acidity was still the load-bearing element.
Échézeaux is the DRC wine people meet first; Grands Échézeaux is the one that explains why the hierarchy exists. The 2014, tasted at six years old, was all coiled structure and saline red fruit — a wine opened a decade before its argument.
The Œnothèque programme launched in 2000 with two vintages, and 1985 was one of them. The designation has since been retired in favour of P2 and P3 — which makes the word on this label a small piece of Champagne's recent administrative history.
A third of a hectare at the northern edge of Nuits-Saint-Georges, close enough to the Vosne border that the wine keeps getting described in terms of the other commune. Leased since 2006, and the only wine the domaine makes outside its home village.
Grower on the label, appellation on the label, and where the vineyard name would normally go, a clone number. An unusual way to describe a wine, and an accurate one.
2017 is the Napa vintage people remember for the October fires. Merlot ripens ahead of Cabernet, and in that year the difference of a few weeks was the whole story.
An English engineer's Cabernet estate on a mountain slope in Knights Valley, from a vintage that punished impatience. At seventeen years, the 2003 had grown into itself — and it was drunk with takeaway Sichuan on a Friday night.
A house built on Cabernet and a Bordelais idea of restraint, making Zinfandel — the grape it planted in 1972 because everyone did, and never quite stopped. Opened on an ordinary evening at home, one glass, one cork.
R.D. is not a prestige cuvée in the usual sense — it is a vintage Bollinger left on its lees for years longer than anyone asked, then disgorged late and sent straight out. The 2002 is the argument in its most flattering year.
A Yountville vineyard that fed Beringer's Private Reserve before it was ever bottled under its own name, from the cool middle year of three cool years. At twenty-one, the acidity was still holding the wine up.
Morey borrowed its surname from this vineyard in 1927. Georges Lignier owns more of it than anyone — and in 2013, a delicate year met the most delicate of Morey's grand crus.
La Chapelle is named for a building, not a plot — a chapel Jaboulet bought in 1919, on a hill it does not own outright. The 2012 was the vintage where the house's long convalescence finally read as recovery.
The plainest wine a great Chassagne address makes, from the year a single April night took roughly a third of Burgundy's crop. At four years, it was brisk, chalky, and entirely unbothered by its own modesty.
A village Vosne-Romanée that sits directly under the family château, on old vines and heavy clay. Opened alongside a La Tâche and a vintage Krug, it had no business holding its own — and it held its own.
2008 was a summer that frightened Burgundy — grey, damp, and late. Then a dry north wind arrived in September and rewrote the vintage. At twelve years, La Tâche was still a young wine, and the year's nervous energy was exactly the point.
Krug's own tasting committee nicknamed the 1998 'A Tribute to Chardonnay' — only the second vintage in the house's history led by that grape. At twenty-two years, it was the Champagne asked to open an evening of serious Burgundy.