WTN: Where Overextracted Rhones Go To Die (Gourt)

[David M. Bueker]

2000 Jerome Bressy Gourt de Mautens (Cotes du Rhone Villages Rasteau)
A dried out husk of a wine. This was a beast when it was released, and it has now answered the question of what would become of it with some age. It's all dried herbs, light funk & brutally drying tannins. There is no balance here & no flavor interest either.

David
Your post brings to mind the dead parrot sketch (maybe "It's sleeping" ... or perhaps pining for the Fjords ).
regards
Ian

[David M. Bueker]

Implying that it's pining for the Audouze method?

The only reason that this wine managed to come out of its bottle was that it was poured out.

Ouch. I still have some.

[David M. Bueker]

Ouch. I still have some.

Double ouch - I still have some of the '98.

Not too surprised that it was gone, David. Has you noted, it was a beast of a wine. Maybe that "balance" thing counts for
something after all??? So how could you tell that this wine, when first tasted, was going to end up like that?? I sure couldn't
have guessed that. Probably only certain Monktown attourneys have that uncanny ability.
I had the '98 severl yrs ago, with much the same conclusion. Time had not done it well.
Tom

[David M. Bueker]

Tom,

The "Monktown Attorney" as you like to call him actually had nothing to do with me buying this wine. He did not review the '98, though I see he said to drink the 2000 "over the next decade" in 2003. I actually had never read his note on the wine in full until a few moments ago. He makes no claim of absolute certainty about aging potential. It has been readers who looked at the journal that made the leap from recommendaitons to a perception of absolute certainty, doing so only moments after deciding that points were not just shorthand but rather gospel carved in the hardest marble.

As for the Gourt, predicting the aging curve of a wine is an exercise in futility for everyone, but there is an expectation from many people that a critic can pinpoint the exact time when they should drink their treasured bottle of Chateau X. Too early is almost always better than too late (Burgundy and Barolo seem to be the exceptions that prove the rule), though more often than not a wine will suprise on the upside rather than the way ths one did. As David Schildknecht has often said (by quoting Terry Theise), the wine will always have the last word.