Bordeaux’s memorable vintage

The questions were buzzing in February and March as the region prepared for en primeur. How much would prices drop? Would the Chinese buy? Would the Americans? Then stories began to circulate

Many of the Chinese who had supposedly bought 2010 wine were defaulting on their orders. “Millions of euros” of wine was apparently now looking for new buyers.  In Britain, critics like Anthony Rose were boycotting the en primeur tastings, declaring “The en primeur system today is in danger of losing its relevance.”

Then Robert Parker tweeted HEADING BACK TO BORDEAUX NEXT WEEK TO TASTE 2011s-ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST IN THIS VINTAGE IF MY instincts are correct” (his capitals) and James Suckling chipped in with a demand for a 50% price cut (compared to the costly 2010s).

During the En Primeur week itself, much of the talk was about the nationality of the tasters. I was only there for 28 hours, but got to six big tastings and can confirm that there were plenty of Chinese, including a disproportionate number who were young and female.  As one negociant quietly pointed out “they’re not buyers; they’re mostly sommeliers. I’ve seen very few real Chinese buyers”. Americans with cheque books were apparently a little more numerous, but there were still far, far fewer than in 2009 or 2010. Most of the buzz in the halls was in French (possibly with a Belgian or Swiss accent), German, English or Dutch. “Classic wines for classic countries,” as the negociant continued.

The wines were hard to judge, because of the wide diversity in their flavours.  A unusually cool summer had been followed by an unusually hot September. This combination, in some cases, when coupled with skilled winemaking, made for attractive mid-weight wines with a good, traditional Bordeaux cassis-and-green-pepper flavours and moderate tannins. All too often, however, the green pepper was in the ascendant along with the tannins. In these cases, memories of vintages like 2002 sprang to mind: years whose wines were too tough and green to enjoy in their youth, but not built for long ageing. There were over-extracted wines too that seemed to show evidence of too much effort having been applied by their makers. Some patterns emerged: St Julien and Pauillac seemed to have done better than St Estephe (hit by hail and with ripeness problems) and Margaux (too variable). But these were far from reliable. Calon Ségur in St Estephe was  deemed a success  by most tasters, and Margaux variability is a regular problem, given the size of this appellation.

In any case, consistency even within St Julien and Pauillac was hard to find. Langoa and Léoville Barton were more dissimilar than usual (I preferred the Léoville but actually marked that a notch lower than Léoville Poyferré).  The two Pichons were also very different (I went for the Comtesse) and I found the Lynch Bages hard to judge (was it a little too extracted?).