A shorter version of this article is published by the Financial Times. See also tasting notes for whites , right-bank reds and left-bank reds and this guide to our comprehensive coverage of Bordeaux Tastings of mature and maturing bordeaux are surely much more useful than tasting carefully groomed barrel samples such as the ones I am scheduled to try in Bordeaux in early April. And when the tasting is comparative and blind, it is even more instructive. The merchants are a curmudgeonly bunch.
A wine has to be absolutely stunning for them to inch their scores past 16 out of After the tasting, as usual when we meet, we were all asked to rate our top three vintages this century and for many people fell from its previous top spot to third place behind and The general feeling was that, although the best wines are truly glorious, some of them tasted as though they will not shed their tannic load until after the fruit has faded.
They may not have the easy ripeness and unusual consistency of , nor the fluid classicism and freshness of , but there are dozens of s that offer, or will offer in most cases, a great combination of full ripeness and impressive structure. They were not priced as excessively as the s and s, and some of them can offer relative value see below. But there is no doubt that in wines, particularly red wines, were made differently, and with very different ambitions, to how they are made in Bordeaux today.
Sheer mass and, in some quarters, high alcohol was seen as a virtue, as was ripeness at any cost. The result was that harvest dates were pushed to a late extreme, without the much more precise practice today of analysing and picking individual plots of vines according to their individual characteristics. Merlot grapes were more fashionable than now.
Over the last few years grape sorting has become almost a fetish in Bordeaux so that every imperfect or less-than-fully-ripe grape is eliminated, even though some argue that in a very ripe vintage, some underripe berries can add freshness, a quality lacking in some s. Most Bordeaux producers would say that they are making much fresher, less extracted wines today than they were in As well as of the most important red bordeaux s, we tasted nine of the more significant dry white bordeaux though neither one from the Haut-Brion stable unfortunately and 21 sweet white bordeaux including all the big names.
