There's no substitute for class, and Laville Haut Brion (which must be one of the world's lesser known great white wines) has produced a lovely 2000 - possibly not the longest-lived example but equally not at peak yet. Surely this will rate at least four stars in time, which is one more than the other two perfectly good examples we tasted from the vintage: Latour Martillac and Malartic - Lagraviere.
Etiqueta blanca was I think the label for a relatively basic Rioja from Murrieta: the 1967 though still makes an intriguing drink - piquant with iodine character. Very pleasant.
I find it difficult to get the hang of the 1997 vintage for red Burgundy - good fruit, not a huge amount of acidity, quite forward and relatively short-term everybody says. Personally I have found them quite challenging at this stage though - firm and dry and needing some cellaring to open out - assuming that is what they will do. We will see, I guess, but at any rate it is not a bad year. We all took a while to decide (actually we took ages and a number of incorrect guesses) to spot these as Burgundy at all, a number of them having quite mentholy, boiled-sweet noses. The wines we tasted were all good and a couple at least promising to be very good - particularly the Chambolle Musigny Combe d'Orveaux from Perrot-Minot and the Gevrey Chambertin Les Corbeaux from Serafin. I don't feel very confident in guessing their likely evolution however.