Chateau Teyssier 2000
The Bordeaux Vintage already hailed as “the best since 1990, 1982, etc” really must be something special to convince the sceptics.
This was far from the case when winter started. Until mid-January the weather was wet and mild, slowing the natural end to the vines' growing cycle. Adding to which, just before the New Year, a terrible storm with winds raging at more than 100 miles an hour hit the region. None of the vines were really affected by this, but roofs and hundred year old trees were destroyed. As a consequence, the millennium festivities were spoilt and after enduring no heating and no electricity for 10 days, we finally decided to decamp to the nearest hotel. Mid-January brought frost, which the vines, if not us, needed. February stayed cold and it wasn’t until the end of March that budding started. April was cold and rainy. Mildew began to appear, helped by the fact that the tractors couldn’t get into the vineyards to spray because of the wet. We were lucky – the mildew was limited to a small area close to some surviving Saint Emilion woods.
The arrival of a heat wave in May didn’t help to stop the disease. The hot weather continued during June, though there were some cold spells, drying the first formed buds. Flowering progressed evenly. July was perfect with very little rain and this continued in August. Two green harvests promised an excellent concentrated vintage.
September was superb with just 43mm of rain compared to an average of 75mm, and most of that came after the merlot was picked. Temperatures of 30-33ºC blasted the vines producing ultra-ripe, alcoholic, thick-skinned, concentrated grapes. The white grapes were brought in with the semillon and muscadelle being picked at the same time followed by the sauvignon blanc which came in half way through the merlot picking. As is normal at Teyssier, once night-macerated and gently pressed pneumatically, the juice was left until November at 5º whilst the important work on the red wines was completed.
The pickers were assembled. The merlot at Le Dôme followed by the merlot at Laforge started to come into the new wooden-vat winery constructed for these two wines this year. All movement is now conducted by conveyor to eradicate all forced transfers of must. The merlot came in at around 13.5º in an excellent shape with very little triage being required. The IPT tannin counts were the highest we’ve seen at Teyssier so colour extraction wasn’t difficult. The two new pieces of land purchased added to our crop – a parcel adjoining Clos Fourtet for Laforge, and a parcel in the region of Monbousquet for Teyssier.
This level of ripeness and state of the harvest continued with the Teyssier and Lacroix parcels (with one Lacroix parcel yielding 14.5º). But the biggest eye-opener this year was the quality of the cabernet-franc which is concentrated, spicey, full, and peppery – really impressive.
The new barrel cellar to take 600 barrels was commissioned half way through the harvest with the heating being in place in time for the malolactic fermentation to be effected for Le Dôme and Laforge on a temperature-controlled basis in new barrels with Teyssier’s being conducted in the wooden-vat winery. Whether the results will match the legendary 1990 or 1982 vintages only time will tell, but one thing is for sure, we’re looking at a serious Bordeaux vintage.