Tasting notes from the Oct. 2003 BAWE Old World vs. New World Pinot Tasting...

Medium light red, with a nose of cotton candy, earth, cherries, and violets. Excellent balance, offering a smooth rich mouthfeel, fine grained tannins, and a very nice medium finish. 90 points, drink now-2007, my #1 Old World Pinot of the tasting.

For those keeping track, this was Ambroise's "Rue de Chaux" bottling (making this the 99 B. Ambroise Nuit St. George "Rue de Chaux"). Also, BurgHound gave the 2000 version of this wine a drinking window of 2008 to 20014 (BurgHound didn't start giving drinking windows with every wine until his review of the 2000 vintage). BurgHound tends to recommend drinking wine later than others, Rovani for example. It's not uncommon to find a wine that Wine Spectator recommends drinking it all up before BurgHound suggests even starting to drink it. Still it's one man's opinion, and I think Allen has a darned good understanding of Burgundy.

Eric L...

Boy, that's one heck of a long drinking window!

Yes, very long drinking window. BurgHound did mention that the wine would most likely be seriously shut down for 10,000 to 15,000 years, so just be patient if you catch it in this phase

And yeah, I like BurgHound a lot. I probably wouldn't have the courage (i.e. money) to dabble in Burgundy without it. And I feel like the cost of the subscription has more than paid for itself in the few purchases that I've made with it.

i have been told that amboise wines in general need plenty of bottle age before opening.

Yea, I believe that about ambroise wines needing lots of age. However, burghound quoted ambroise as saying that their style had changed to be less tannic. So sounds like they don't need quite as much age as they used to. We'll see cuz I have more bottles of the ambroise that I brought.