WTN: 2000 Pipeau

[Jenise]

Decided to open a little Bordeaux the other night, but wasn't prepared for just how 'little' this 2000 St. Emilion would be. Have no previous experience with this wine, btw, but I think it's one that Covert likes.

Day one: Nice but not great nose, taut and shallow, mild fruit on the palate. Kind of kept expecting something else to happen, to burst forth, but it didn't. Eventually decided it doesn't have much stuffing and too, of note there's a bit of mud on the finish, a flavor that usually indicates to me a wine that isn't aging well. Not enough redeeming qualities to drink, so we set it aside for overnight improvement. Day two: Less here than on day one. Sophomore problem? Set it aside for Day Three. Day three: forgot to check it. Day four: we were out. Day five: little change but just slightly more blah than day two in a way that suggests that there's nothing here to wait for, it probably should have been drunk five years ago. I'm going to pour the rest on the camellias.

Oh great! And I have 11 of them. I don't necessarily like them; opened one for science in 2003 and thought it had potential for such an inexpensive St-Emilion. I will open one tonight and report back.

Now that I have your attention, I will parlay my comment into some marginally, or not, related reportage. Not more than five hours ago, a bottle of Pipeau was staring me in the face at the Woodcliff Spa in Rochester, NY. I had to see a surgeon there yesterday and we pretended that we were going on vacation. The weather certainly complied.

Rochester is a trip. I wrote a piece recently about North Carolina, but I think the Carolinians are more sophisticated. A colleague of my wife's, Lynn (I know you know, but there might be an additional reader) made reservations at Joey-B's, a supposedly "fine" restaurant. The location is very cool, though: it sits on the Erie Canal in Fairport in a yacht landing zone. It was Canal Week in Fairport and zillions of people descended upon the quaint little canal side town. At least 70% of the revelers were teenage girls in short shorts. I know I am not supposed to look at stuff like that, but my eyes seemed to gravitate to them at the expense of the boats.

Anyway, I came with no expectations of anything beyond mediocre. Zagat had only a few restaurants listed; Albany, which is no great shakes, has about five times more. That was a clue to me that almost nobody in Rochester cared about food. It was totally bland, and the wine list, atrocious.

The people of Rochester are very nice, but bland compared to crazy New Yorkers, like the food. It is an interesting area, though. All the great photographic and optics industries have all but dried up. The biggest employer is the University of Rochester. There are a bunch of entrepreneurs who came out of Kodak, Polaroid, Bausch & Lomb, etc., but they suck up money rather than create any. I think the entire area, which is plush with multi-million dollar mansions, runs on health care and retail (Century Wine and Liquor is the best store).

God help us. You of course realize that people are using the Internet to project their egos rather than material things. How can there be a sustainable recovery?

The Woodcliff resort was also very interesting and characteristic. There was at least twice the staff as necessary, if not three times. But, this is a warning to any reader to never go there, unless you bring kids. Almost everybody but us had a bunch, and they all seemed to be connected somehow. Until about midnight, young kids would open their doors loudly (and when the doors opened you could hear a din coming from inside) and then slam them, and run screaming past our door. Then they would open another one and yell through the door to a throng within. Others from the second room would join the first group and, after slamming their door, run the other way past our door screaming. This was repeated many times, and you could hear that it was going on elsewhere, also. The running made extra noise from the flip-flops.

Lynn suggested that she go out into the hall naked and play with the kids. When the parents took issue, she would explain that she thought the hallway was a communal hotel room. I slammed our door as hard as I could a few times in rapid succession to see if I could get the kids’ parents' attention, but nobody noticed.

When I went to obtain some pancakes from the warmer at the breakfast buffet, a young man was carrying out a fresh load. He almost reached the warmer, but instead dumped the pancakes onto the carpet. I grabbed some eggs instead. I am sure they must have come pre-prepared in a gallon container or something. They were inedible. But on the way out, I saw the Pipeau and some other Bordeaux in a glass cabinet. I asked a waitress if it was cooled. Of course not. But you know, I am not complaining. It is fun to see how other people live. Lynn remarked that in our retirement we can travel around the US and pretend we are visiting a bunch of different countries, and save a lot of money.

Covert,

I think your report is HILARIOUS, especially since I come from that part of the world... a little town called Seneca Falls, half way between Rochester and Syracuse.

Yes, Century Liquor is by far the best liquor store for many miles. They also sell to many Canadians.

What you need to eat in upstate New York is Italian cuisine. There are many people of Italian descent up there, and the food can be really delicious.
But, yes, don't expect good wine lists or wine service...

Back to Pipeau.
This has a decent reputation.
It is a largish estate, and they have their own special embossed bottle.
I have a bottle of their 2000 in my cellar, so I'm hoping in a way that Jenise's appraisal isn't on target - at least not for a bottle that hasn't travelled.

The word "pipeau" also means "worthless" (as in "c'est du pipeau"), so the name may, in fact, be appropriate...

Bet regards,
Alex R.

Covert,

I think your report is HILARIOUS, especially since I come from that part of the world... a little town called Seneca Falls, half way between Rochester and Syracuse.

Yes, Century Liquor is by far the best liquor store for many miles. They also sell to many Canadians.

What you need to eat in upstate New York is Italian cuisine. There are many people of Italian descent up there, and the food can be really delicious.
But, yes, don't expect good wine lists or wine service...

Back to Pipeau.
This has a decent reputation.
It is a largish estate, and they have their own special embossed bottle.
I have a bottle of their 2000 in my cellar, so I'm hoping in a way that Jenise's appraisal isn't on target - at least not for a bottle that hasn't travelled.

The word "pipeau" also means "worthless" (as in "c'est du pipeau"), so the name may, in fact, be appropriate...

Bet regards,
Alex R.

Glad you enjoyed it. And, on the way home, Lynn and I talked about just what you said about going Italian when in that part of the coutry. Same applies to Utica, Amsterdam, and even Albany. Good advice.

You are right about the name. I had forgotten. I will indeed open a bottle of the 2000 Pipeau tonight and report back. Hope her pipeau was a fluke.

Best,

Covert

[Jenise]

Covert, for your sake, I hope mine was a fluke too. I do have a second bottle that I'll leave alone for a few years but I won't hold out any hope that it's better than this one.

Oh, and thanks for the long tale about Rochester. I read it to Bob, and we both laughed. Those kids were at the Westin in Vancouver just a few weeks ago....

Covert, for your sake, I hope mine was a fluke too. I do have a second bottle that I'll leave alone for a few years but I won't hold out any hope that it's better than this one.

Oh, and thanks for the long tale about Rochester. I read it to Bob, and we both laughed. Those kids were at the Westin in Vancouver just a few weeks ago....

You are welcome re the story.

Originally, you said re the bottle: Nice but not great nose, taut and shallow on the palate. Doesn't seem to have much stuffing and there's a bit of mud on the finish, a flavor that usually indicates to me a wine that isn't aging well.

We opened one and almost agree with your descriptors, but found them with regard to delight rather than fault. To Lynn and me, the nose was very nice, but more complex than you found it. It said a lot. It was soulful. Not a 1947 Cheval Blanc, or something like that, but very nice.

The cork showed very well. In great shape, clean and with a very good aroma. I studied the nose still, with no swirl for some time, attempting to detect any potential flaw (but when a cork is perfect, I never find a fault after that). It was very clean with a classic Bordeaux smell mixed with more vanillin than I would have expected, with a mixture of aromas I associate with a find Bordeaux, but can never identify adequately.

On the first swirl, I got some mud, like you said, but it was a great smell to me: in other words, a nice mud or dirty soil, like barnyard is nice; it wasn’t at all barnyard, though, just dirty soil as in really rich soil. There were decaying leaves in it, and minerals, as if the soil was dug from a spot next to a forest spring or creek.

It is a smaller wine than I thought it would turn out. Maybe even a little taut. But not too shallow, unless you were just banging it down without thought, which you obviously were not doing.

We also both detected a bit of cardboard, too, which always means that the wine will open a lot more, nicely. It did over a short period of time (while watching the Belmont) and coniferous smells joined the other forest smells. The cardboard morphed to sweet cassis, which I don’t expect as much from a Merlot laden Right Bank Bordeaux, with perfume and licorice.

I agree that the wine does not have far to go in time and likely will not improve anymore. I think this is strange from a 2000 Bordeaux with a lot of tannin originally. The glasses threw off profuse sediment, indicating that a lot of tannin resolution had gone on.

We will therefore drink up the rest of the nine remaining. I had ten left, not eleven as I had thought; which means I drank another one after the first for science. I very well might have posted something positive about it provoking your comment about me liking it. We like it a lot. It would be cool if we could get a third opinion from someone else.

On

Covert, for your sake, I hope mine was a fluke too. I do have a second bottle that I'll leave alone for a few years but I won't hold out any hope that it's better than this one.

Oh, and thanks for the long tale about Rochester. I read it to Bob, and we both laughed. Those kids were at the Westin in Vancouver just a few weeks ago....

We opened one and almost agree with your descriptors, but found them with regard to delight rather than fault. To Lynn and me, the nose was very nice, but more complex than you found it. It said a lot. It was soulful. Not a 1947 Cheval Blanc, or something like that, but very nice.

The cork showed very well. In great shape, clean and with a very good aroma. I studied the nose still, with no swirl for some time, attempting to detect any potential flaw (but when a cork has a perfect aroma, I never find a fault after that). It was very clean with a classic Bordeaux smell mixed with more vanillin than I would have expected, with a mixture of aromas I associate with a find Bordeaux, but can never identify adequately.

On the first swirl, I got some mud, like you said, but it was a great smell to me: in other words, a nice mud or dirty soil, like barnyard is nice; it wasn’t at all barnyard, though, just dirty soil as in really rich soil. There were decaying leaves in it, and minerals, as if the soil was dug from a spot next to a forest spring or creek.

It is a smaller wine than I thought it would turn out. Maybe even a little taut. But not too shallow, unless you were just banging it down without thought, which you obviously were not doing.

We also both at first detected a bit of cardboard, too, which always means that the wine will open a lot more, nicely. It did over a short period of time (while watching the Belmont) and coniferous smells joined the other forest smells. The cardboard morphed to sweet cassis, which I don’t expect as much from a Merlot laden Right Bank Bordeaux, with perfume and licorice.

I agree that the wine does not have far to go in time and likely will not improve anymore. I think this is strange from a 2000 Bordeaux with a lot of tannin originally. The glasses threw off profuse sediment, indicating that a lot of tannin resolution had gone on.

We will therefore drink up the rest of the nine remaining. I had ten left, not eleven as I had thought; which means I drank another one after the first for science. I very well might have posted something positive about it provoking your comment about me liking it.

We liked it a lot. I think that there might have been something wrong with your bottle.

Alex, could you drink your bottle and post your findings? I don’t think it will help to keep it any longer. It would be cool if we could get a third opinion.

Ah, Covert, if you had just asked me an hour ago!

I have just decanted a 2002 La Fleur Perron (cuvée prestige of Ch. Perron in Lalande de Pomerol) and there are just 2 of us for lunch (veal stewed with white wine, cream & mushrooms.

However, I will try to line up the 2000 Pipeau very soon .

I was born before the Internet era.
So to fine people on the West Coast of the US, the East Coast of the US, and Bordeaux chatting about their experiences with a specific wine pretty mind-blowing!

Best regards,
Alex R.

Ah, Covert, if you had just asked me an hour ago!

I have just decanted a 2002 La Fleur Perron (cuvée prestige of Ch. Perron in Lalande de Pomerol) and there are just 2 of us for lunch (veal stewed with white wine, cream & mushrooms.

However, I will try to line up the 2000 Pipeau very soon .

I was born before the Internet era.
So to fine people on the West Coast of the US, the East Coast of the US, and Bordeaux chatting about their experiences with a specific wine pretty mind-blowing!

Best regards,
Alex R.

It will give me something to look forward to, Alex; thanks! I agree, This Internet connection is really something.

[Jenise]

Covert, thanks for opening this wine and reporting back.

Two things jump out at me. First, The cardboard morphed to sweet cassis, which I don’t expect as much from a Merlot laden Right Bank Bordeaux, with perfume and licorice. You had a better bottle than we did. At no point in time did our bottle show any sweet fruit, not even a hint of it. You know when you open a bottle, in an hourish you kind of expect a certain morphing to occur, some change, a reveal. Our bottle never changed, except to go from unremarkable and unfulfilling to even less so. No perfume, no cassis.

And re the mud thing: you might have enjoyed it but really, it's not a good sign. When that's present, it indicates that's where the wine's going to go over the years. Instead of developing interesting secondary nuances like leather and all that funky stuff that you (and I) love, it just gets muddier until mud is all there is. Much as you might have enjoyed it now as an integrated part of the experience, you don't want your wines to go there, you really don't.

Covert, thanks for opening this wine and reporting back.

Two things jump out at me. First, The cardboard morphed to sweet cassis, which I don’t expect as much from a Merlot laden Right Bank Bordeaux, with perfume and licorice. You had a better bottle than we did. At no point in time did our bottle show any sweet fruit, not even a hint of it. You know when you open a bottle, in an hourish you kind of expect a certain morphing to occur, some change, a reveal. Our bottle never changed, except to go from unremarkable and unfulfilling to even less so. No perfume, no cassis.

And re the mud thing: you might have enjoyed it but really, it's not a good sign. When that's present, it indicates that's where the wine's going to go over the years. Instead of developing interesting secondary nuances like leather and all that funky stuff that you (and I) love, it just gets muddier until mud is all there is. Much as you might have enjoyed it now as an integrated part of the experience, you don't want your wines to go there, you really don't.

I hear you re the mud, but what I got might be in part what Parker and others would call loam or damp earth. Can't wait to see what Alex says. I'm really sorry I didn't get up an hour earlier so that I would know today.

But, I am sure my bottle was better than yours. So it is not like Alex will settle a debate, it will just add another interesting data point or two regarding the 2000 offerings from that property.

The 1999 Barde Haut is a lot more expensive than the 1997 and 1998 was: around $50 or more, now. I will still buy one or two. Another St-Emilion of interest.

[Jenise]

The Barde Haut's that expensive? Didn't realize. I just checked my inventory, and I paid $22 for the 99's and 17 for the 01's. But you know me, the auction shopper.

Jenise,
We were a little concerned with your note, as we have 3 bottles in the cellar. So we pulled one tonight to accompany cold roast beef with roasted nugget potatoes and green beans with pesto.
The cork was pristine and the bottle showed moderate sediment. Decanted and tasted immediately. Sweet raspberry and blackberry nose with just a hint of peppermint. In the mouth medium weight ripe fruit- blackberry and cassis- and quite a bit of soft tannin. After 30 minutes,with the food, the tannin became unnoticeable. The fruit was still showing ripe and the wine had a medium length finish.
We have advanced our drinking window to 2010-2013 for the other 2 bottles, as it has little prospect for improvement, other than to resolve the tannins a bit more.
Bearing in mind that this a very moderately priced Bordeaux we are quite happy with this purchase.
Jenise, we think that you either had a bad bottle or the provenance might have been suspect. Was this an auction purchase or did you buy it on release?

Lynn remarked that in our retirement we can travel around the US and pretend we are visiting a bunch of different countries...

You don't have to pretend. It really is that way!

[Jenise]

Jenise,
We were a little concerned with your note, as we have 3 bottles in the cellar. So we pulled one tonight to accompany cold roast beef with roasted nugget potatoes and green beans with pesto.

David, thanks for the additional data point. Sounds like a much better bottle than mine and I'm glad, even though it led you to conclude it has "little prospect for improvement". Mine was a retail purchase though not direct on release. I acquired them in 2004.

And oh those nugget potatoes! I'm very jealous--they're not legal for border crossings because they carry dirt, supposedly, and I never tried to cross with them again. Maybe if I washed them?

Jenise,
We were a little concerned with your note, as we have 3 bottles in the cellar. So we pulled one tonight to accompany cold roast beef with roasted nugget potatoes and green beans with pesto.
The cork was pristine and the bottle showed moderate sediment. Decanted and tasted immediately. Sweet raspberry and blackberry nose with just a hint of peppermint. In the mouth medium weight ripe fruit- blackberry and cassis- and quite a bit of soft tannin. After 30 minutes,with the food, the tannin became unnoticeable. The fruit was still showing ripe and the wine had a medium length finish.
We have advanced our drinking window to 2010-2013 for the other 2 bottles, as it has little prospect for improvement, other than to resolve the tannins a bit more.
Bearing in mind that this a very moderately priced Bordeaux we are quite happy with this purchase.
Jenise, we think that you either had a bad bottle or the provenance might have been suspect. Was this an auction purchase or did you buy it on release?

David, it is interesting to me that you did not mention any form of soil (not earth, as in earthy) or forest aromas at all. I have long recognized that the mind brings a lot of color to a wine, as a browser brings individual expression to HTML. My wife and I clearly got a taste of the wet forest floor, with some minerally rocks and pine trees tossed in. I wonder if it is our life in the North Woods of New York that brings this association to the wine, rather than anything in the wine independent of our appreciation. But we apparently concur on the sweet cassis, even though you attributed the sweetness to the raspberry. And there are no two bottles exactly the same, like grains of sand...or is it snowflakes?

Well, I really couldn't go very long without giving this wine a try after all the discussion.
Like 36 hours .

So, this is my impression of 2000 Ch. Pipeau:

Color: lovely intense red with a deep core and bricking on the rim.

Nose: The first impression after uncorking was a sleek cherry-vanilla bouquet. However, this changed over time, and not necessarily for the better. At one stage there were aromas that both my friend of mine qualified as... shellfish! There was also a metallic aspect and a smell like acetone. More roasted notes came out later.
Mud? Well, there was a decided whiff of "terroir," which might be the same thing.
Without a doubt, there is something unfocused here.

Palate: This wine more or less seemed to be in 3 stages, starting off smooth and attractive, then become big, but somewhat dilute and hollow, followed by an aftertaste that is the wine's least positive quality.
In fact, there are elements of this wine that are very attractive. But it is fundamentally disjointed and has litte to gain - or lose - by further aging.
A lively well-made wine, but the terroir is probably just not up to anything much better.
That aftertaste I referred to is somewhat green and acidic (although textured), as well as hard and unyielding, with hints of tobacco and overbrewed tea.

Am I glad I had the wine (in the interest of science, of course....).
Yes.
Am I very glad.
No.
We finished the bottle, but this is nothing special and I too came away slightly disappointed.

Best regards,
Alex R.

[Jenise]

We finished the bottle, but this is nothing special and I too came away slightly disappointed.

Best regards,
Alex R.

Your bottle was a lot more like mine than either David and Nadine's or Covert's. In fact, yours sounds like a more advanced version of mine, further along toward that untimely death and devoid of any vintage character.

To Covert: what I detected wasn't the loam or earthy thing, that's a GOOD characteristic, what I call mud is something else, something that's not in the wine as a baby (and which critics would make note of) but which develops along the way. It is in fact a form of secondary development, I guess, but the evil dark side of same that won't enhance your wine's flavor but instead ruin it. I sometimes also call this flavor 'soy sauce'.

Hi Jenise,

We had a 2003 Pipeau in our last bordeaux tasting and it was drinking very nicely. It was not the best sipper, but I cheated and brought a bordeaux blend from Sonoma. However, it was the best of the 3 bordeauxs with food. My full tasting note is in my last post on the Noland Brothers tasting bordeaux.

[Jenise]

Tom, I remember your note on the 03, and in fact it was precisely your note which encouraged me to move one of my 00's to the drinking queue from which it got plucked last weekend. I'm tempted to open my second bottle soon, hoping it might be more like Cov's or David's, and since we have consensus that the 00's won't improve.

Albany, which is no great shakes, has about five times more....

And how many more politicians???

Bingo!

I think you're being a bit hard on poor Rochester and didn't move around that much. They have some pretty good Indian restaurants (including the best dosa I've had) and other places as well, but I'm sure they are not 'Zagat rated'. I try to be a bit charitable when traveling. For the same reason I won't sneer at white Wonder bread sandwiches in West Virginia, I'd also give a break to a region that's been taxed to death to the point where jobs and people have left and despite this, people try to perseverve. That said, there's no excuse for poor service. Covert, I don't know where you grew up, but Upstaters (those along the canal belt) tend to be a reserved bunch. You have to know them to love them.

And as for the Pipeau? I've never heard great things about it, probably more neutral than anything else.