Remember all of those 2003 harvest reports you read at the end of that year? Me neither. That’s one of the many challenges of keeping up in the wine world; the vintage is captured in a bottle, only to be released years after you’ve read about it, making the drama in the glass always a complex interpretive act. You may recall that Europe in 2003 was a freakishly warm year, and in France especially that led to some very uncharacteristic wines; sometimes that was a good thing, and sometimes, not so good.
Meanwhile, few American writers have devoted much ink to the domestic vintage. But it was warm here too – it may or may not be global warming, but it was certainly warmer, globally, that year.
Recently I had an opportunity to taste a number of the Napa cabernets from the vintage, enough at one sitting to take a step back and revisit what I remember from that year and see whether it translates to the glass. Oregon and Washington are presented here too, regions which experienced a few anomalies of their own.
Napa:
In a recent blind tasting of 2003 Napa Cabernet, the participants were struck by an oddly lackluster quality in many. There were exceptions, but many heralded Napa Valley wines seemed to lack energy and definition.
California had a cold wet spring, which slowed the early stages of the vintage and led most to believe it would be a late harvest year; but heat spikes in September accelerated the vintage and moved up the harvest date – still late, but not perhaps for a vintage that started late. In some cases vineyard managers decided to let the fruit hang – after sugars were already high – in the hope of gaining some additional physiological ripeness.
Cabernets, generally, are high in alcohol and low in acid. In texture they tend toward the thick and monolithic, powerful, but lacking definition or tone. In certain cases, especially in the western mountain districts of Spring Mountain and Mount Veeder, there are some green flavors that suggested that the grapes didn’t reach full ripeness. Wines aren’t especially tannic, and the tannins feel soft, as if the wines are built on rubber legs.
The best wines, it seemed, had a mineral core to draw from to gird the wine and give it tone; the wines from Diamond Mountain and Howell Mountain in particular seemed to have the backbone to shore up the fruit beautifully. But generally the softer structures suggest that this will be a vintage to drink earlier rather than later.
Oregon:
Many wineries have put 2003 behind them and introduced their 2004 Pinots to the market (in tiny quantities – 2004 was a terribly small crop). But there are still plenty of 2003 Oregon Pinots in the market.
In August of 2003 Willamette Valley grapes were well on their way to ripening in a warmer than average year. A heat spell in August, however, pushed those vines to the brink. For an entire week, temperatures shot up into the high-nineties and higher – and seemed never to relent. Sugars shot up dramatically, acids plummeted, and grapes dehydrated. Many growers waited for a break in the heat wave that never came, and that gamble, for many, was lost, as grapes reached the picking stage without having reached phenolic ripeness.
As a result, the customary nerve and femininity you find in an Oregon Pinot is largely absent; instead, you have wines with more power and amplitude, and their textures, in particular, are notably thicker and richer.
If you love California Pinot Noir or you’re a fan of big, buxom fruit, ample textures, and low acids, then the 2003 vintage will please you. Most wines still possess the earthy, foresty quality that’s so appealing in an Oregon Pinot; it’s just buried under a cushion of fruit. Drink them young.
Washington:
Summer in the Washington high desert is always exceptionally warm, where grapes gather potency from a practice of deficit irrigation, and so typically the fruit is pretty lean and concentrated, packed with flavor. But 2003 was warm even by Washington’s standards. Grower after grower reported lower than average cluster weights, thicker skins, tighter juice-to-pulp ratios, and gallons of juice per ton of fruit – a useful measurement I’d never heard before – was down dramatically.
Many Syrah wines were better able to absorb the extra oomph of tannin from the big vintage. Cabernets, though, are marked by off-the-chart intensity. This is a boon for collectors I think, since these wines are so tightly structured and wound up by tannin that they’re bound to be spectacularly long-lived.
If you uncork one of these 2003s, be prepared to wait – a while – for the wines to show up in the glass. They’ll get there, but they’ll need time, and a decanter. With air they can be powerhouses, and will knock you back on your heels with their concentration, with intense black fruit and earthy tannins. They too are monolithic, like their Napa counterparts, but seem built for the long haul.
Here are some particular wines that could give you an illustrative taste of 2003 from these three regions:
Pine Ridge, Howell Mountain (Napa Valley, California) Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 ($80): This is a wine that amplifies the vintage without going over the line, and if you were one of those types who believe mountain fruit will always be more interesting than valley floor Cabernet (and I do, at least from time to time), this would make the case. Spice aromas of graham and cinnamon are very appealing, and the fruit is immediately apparent but it’s also reticent, undergirded by a dark mineral edge and plenty of chocolate spice, like mole. The dark fruits–black plum, black raspberry–are bound up and monolithic at this moment (a marker for the vintage), but with air they start to unfold, leading to a finish of sweet oak that again gives way to the wine’s mineral core. Don’t even go near the thing for 7-10 years, then unleash it on a steak. 92
Ridge, Santa Cruz Mountains (California) Monte Bello Vineyard Cabernet Blend 2003 ($120): High in the cool coastal mountains, Monte Bello is a vineyard site that rarely has a problem with overheating, even with torrid late summer heat spikes, and cool fall temperatures allow grapes a luxurious period of hang time, without much of a risk of them getting overripe. And it shows: this wine seems poised in an exquisite balance between cool blackberry fruit flavors and warm, figgy fruit flavors, with an earthbound mineral component girding the wine and supporting the fruit. That minerality, and the wine’s shimmering acidity, make it feel lean, light-footed and detailed, for a finish of lift, poise and precision. It’s more potential than reality right now, and will benefit from years in the cellar. 93
Solena, Willamette Valley (Oregon) Pinot Noir “Grand Cuvée” 2003 ($25): This is a dense wine, dark, brooding and very ripe, and its broad shoulders and deep blue fruit flavors make it seem masculine almost like a blackstrap Syrah from Washington. That likeness would hold true except for the fact that it’s so earthy and vinous; its aromas are spicy and firm, reminiscent of the soil, with a beautiful array of black fruits as if spiced by Telicherry peppercorns. The finish is somewhat thick at the moment, but it’s likely to gather some precision with time. A great partner for earthy foods, like a wild mushroom risotto. 90
Domaine Serene, Willamette Valley (Oregon) “Mark Bradford Vineyard” Pinot Noir 2003 ($90): This wine is always on the high end of Serene’s Pinots, a big, sumptuous example of the vintage, and depending on your tastes, you’ll either love or find that there’s too much to love here. Its heady scents of boysenberry and blueberry seem to come from a much warmer place than the Oregon hills, and its rich, buxom texture will be impress those who like their pinots big and amped up. For all that there’s considerable polish to the wine, an opulence bred on round shoulders and rich textures. For confit of duck. 89
L’Ecole No. 41, Walla Walla Valley (Washington) Pepper Bridge Vineyard Red Blend “Apogee” 2003 ($45): Marty Clubb makes two wines, Apogee and Perigee, meant to mirror each other as expressions of two of the best known vineyards in Walla Walla, Pepper Bridge and Seven Hills. The latter tends toward a feminine, floral brightness underlined by an earth core; the former is usually has much deeper structure and a darker fruit profile. So too with this 2003, an intense, superbly built wine, a morass of black fruit at the outset (the 2003 Apogee is a blend of Cabernet, Merlot, and the balance Malbec and Cab Franc) with its aromas of black coffee and dark red cherry fruit giving way to a warm spice. On the palate it’s graceful and concentrated, upheld by a fine vein of minerals and a tightly woven finish. This will reward cellar time, and I’d recommend at least six years before serving it with steak. 93
Andrew Will, Columbia Valley (Washington) Champoux Vineyard Red Blend “Sorella” 2003 ($66): Sorella is Chris Camarda’s true reserve wine, and much of it comes from one of Washington’s oldest and most famous vineyards, Champoux, in the Horse Heaven Hills. The 2003 is a blend of Cabernet, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot, with the Cabernet coming from Champoux’s oldest block, planted in 1972 (which is ancient, relatively, for Washington). This is a powerful, brooding wine, a pot of black fruit contained in an iron lined box; it’s showing a fair amount of oak both in structure and flavor at the moment, which will certainly recede with some age. As with some of Camarda’s other wines this vintage, it feels extremely impacted, not showing a full picture of itself now and needing time in the cellar to knit. 93