Since 1999 was the first vintage that I was old enough to legally drink, I'll always have a soft spot for it. I was in New Hampshire then, and the NH state liquor stores still carried a wide selection of great wines. Yes, you'd get the odd cooked bottle, and you always had to check the cork, but between the low taxes and the weak Euro, great wines were so cheap. I basically became a oenophile (sp?) because of the 1999 Burgundies: my local store carried half-bottles of all the Girardin 1er cru Volnays for ~$15, and 750ml's of D'Angerville 1er cru were $35-40. Its amazing how much things can change in 6 years!
Anyways, one of the producers I drank to excess that year were the Faiveley Mercureys. You could get the Framboisiere for ~$15, and the Clos de Myglands (sp?) was ~$20.
Every year since then, I've made it a point to buy the Faiveley Mercureys until this year when the price finally outpaced the value ($40 for the Clos de Myglands? Pass.) About 3 years back, I found a bottle of the 1999 Framboisiere in a store I trusted, and I stashed it in my cellar. I'd always heard those wines had the structure to age, so, I figured I'd wait.
Since I live in a small rental apartment and I'm a student, my "cellar" is a 35 bottle wine fridge that I picked up on sale for ~$160. So giving any bottle a spot in there is a real commitment.
Today, I'm studying for my 1L spring finals, which is thoroughly miserable, and I figure, its a good night to crack open a nice bottle. I peek in the "cellar" and see the Framboisere staring back at me. I figure, what the hey? I take it out, go to class...looking forward with great anticipation....i open the bottle and the cork is perfect.....I lean over the bottle, and then it hits me:
Corked. Horribly, utterly, completely corked.
$&#%^!!!!!!!!!!
(FWIW, under the must is vibrant strawberries, the color is a pure red with perhaps the slightest bricking at the edge, and the wine is firmly, but not excessively acidic. I think it's still very alive and probably delicious if you get a clean bottle. But lord, was this bottle corked. I'm not even sensitive to it, and I can smell it right now from my computer across the room.)
Random Extra WTN: I had a half bottle of 2002 Mount Veeder Winery Cabernet last week. Surprisingly, it was very good. The alcohol was -almost- reasonable on the first day (14.1), and the blueberry/blackberry fruit was balanced by a really nice sagey herbal note that I'm not used to in CA Cabernet. After a night under the Vacuvin, the rest of the bottle was substantially less fruity, palpably alcoholic, and the sage note was even more pronounced. The half bottle was ~$20 on sale, bought in NYC in the last year, and just about worth what I paid.