2000 California Cabernets

Over the weekend, I found several 2000 California Cabs, mainly from Beaulieu Vineyards (Georges De Latour and Tapestry in particular) in the celler. It appears to have been an uncharacteristically poor year in the Napa Valley and I must have gotten a great price on these. Before I start opening, does any one have some experience with cab from this time and place that they would like to share?

No signs of a poor vintage here:

Burgess, Cabernet Sauvignon, Vintage Selection, Napa Valley 2000
Nice, deep royal purple color. Jammy nose, with oak and vanilla. A a big, rich, jammy wine, but in the best possible way - in fact, the best and most succesful jammy character I've encountered. Black cherry, raspberry, currants, cocoa, with very nice vanilla and oak. Reviews I've seen of this wine are not very positive, and suggest that it is well into decline. I don't know what wine they tasted! Great stuff, with 5 or maybe even 10 years ahead of it. Exceptional (90 - 93) [6/7/08]

Ryan - Thank you for the uplifting report.
JP

Jon,

I've never had a bad bottle of GDL regardless of vintage. A 2000 may not have the staying power of, say a 1990, 1994 or 1995 but I would venture to guess it is still a solid bottle of wine. I look forward to reading your notes one day.

Does anyone know if the 2000 vintage was in the barrel room at BV before the TCA taint was discovered? BV totally redid everything wood in their cellaring area at beginning of this decade, depending on timing might have been affected. I batted about 40-50% noticable taint on the 97-99 BVs I tried (and I'm not very sensitive). To their credit, they replaced a corked GdL with a 2004 when I wrote to complain.

Dale,

Thanks for jogging my memory. I did have one bad bottle of GDL and that was a '97 that was corked. The bottle was happily replaced by the winery. IIRC, winebid would not even accept '97 GDL's because the TCA problem was so pervasive. I have not had any more recent bottles since the '97 but the ones prior were all fine.