The merits and faults of the 1997 vintage have been debated endlessly. Some

people love the wines for their rich round fruit, others find the wines atypical and

overly ripe. My own feeling is that the vintage is simply uneven, and that there

are exceptional wines that capture the best of the vintage and there are overripe,

unbalanced wines that are by comparison much less complex. /RP /Dec 2004