2000 Opus One

I know that there are many non-believers out there who claim to hate Opus one, and I attribute a lot of this to the inflated price. I was lucky enough to pick up a few bottles of this wine a few years ago for around $70, and I have to say that for the money, this was one hell of a great wine! I grabbed this from the cellar where we hide all of our “gems,” as a pre-anniversary celebration bottle, since our anniversary falls during the week this year. This had about 45 minutes to warm up on the way to Fiddleheads in Jamesburg, NJ, and was popped and poured. Gorgeous deep garnet classic cabernet color in the glass, thinning towards the rim made this wine still look very youthful. As a lot of you know, 2000 is not known to be a stellar vintage for the Napa Valley, but this wine showed to prove this wrong, as have some of the other big hitters from this vintage. On the nose, this reminded me of a nice Bordeaux with some cassis, tobacco, earth, blueberry, and cherry, with the smallest hint of band aid / brett. On the palate, all kinds of red cherry, blackberry, pomegranate, and raspberry jam. Off vintage my foot, this wine has a great fruity, jammy, and velvety structure, with a bit of oak on the medium finish. All in all, this was a pleasure to drink, and I couldn’t think of a better wine that I expected so little from to date. This was darn good, and I wish I would have bought more at this price. Thankfully we still have one left that we’ll revisit 5 years down the road. For now, feel free to pop one of these, as I believe it is drinking in a beautiful place. After drinking an ’02 Insignia just a few weeks ago, I think that this wine would give it a run for its money, and is 94 points worthy. Cheers!