WTN - 1999 Domaine Michel Gros Clos Vougeot

Did you ever accidentally open a MUCH better bottle than you intended to? Then had to decide between freaking out and relaxing to enjoy it? I just did that. I decided to enjoy it.

The color is translucent, red, but just a little bricked, just enough to make the color soft, rather than bright.

The nose starts with a nice barnyard funk. Cloves, lilacs, black currants and black raspberries. The nose just keeps getting more complex, new scents every minute.

The taste is a little sharp, not just, just sharp. Man I wish i'd saved this. What a screw-up. Okay, back to enjoying it. This one really needs more time. There is meat, a bit of tar, plenty of plum, raspbery, blackcurrants, and florals. It is closed now, but there is a lot there laying in wait.

I am going to revisit this tomorrow night. Perhaps a day of exposure will quick-age it.

I'm beating myself up over this one. Has it ever happened to you?

Came close a couple of years ago. I had the cork screw poised to enter a '96 Echezeaux which I thought was a 2000 Village Cru. I pulled back in the knick of time. Since then I've been pretty anal about checking the label.

I'm beating myself up over this one. Has it ever happened to you?

Oh, yeah. Most vividly, one trip down to the cellar for the '91 Chave Hermitage wherein I came up with the '88. Older wine = more ready? Not hardly! Looking back on that incident from the perspective of Chave's current pricing nearly brings me to tears. The pathos of it all...

Mark Lipon

Sounds like it was nice though! While certainly future enjoyment of a more appropriately aged wine is gone with this bottle, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all if this was let to go over the peak!

It could be worse, you could've dropped it........ (of course, I'd be on the floor with a straw after letting it air for about 15 minutes.....)

Second night, and I promised I would be back. This wine is still tight as a drum. Florals are magnificent, a cartload of violets and a garland of roses. The finish on this is amazing. I promise each and every one of you that I woke up this morning with this wine still echoing in my mouth (of course, I woke up before 5, agonizing that I opened the darned thing in the first place, and rearranged the whole cellar before anybody else woke up). I'm going to start looking in the couch cushions tonight - I simply must get another and give it the time it is due.