2013 Bordeaux – and it was all going so well.

When a wine region is situated in a cool, maritime – north Atlantic, let’s not forget – climate, and they often need to pick around the time of the equinox, then there is bound to be trouble occasionally. The year began well for Bordeaux with a long, cold winter that enabled vines to hibernate well but which lasted a long time and was followed by a horrible Spring that severely disrupted the vital flowering period cutting yields severely. Summer picked up considerably, however, with a hot July and a warm August. All was set well for a small but high quality harvest.

Never take the weather gods for granted. Particularly if you’ve played fast and loose with your customer’s wallets over the last few years. In the UK we always hope for that elusive Indian summer to take us into late Autumn and prolong the illusion of summer. In Bordeaux the end of September came up with… a sudden Caribbean summer of warmth and high humidity. Not a cause for celebration. The combination of this and an horrendous forecast of torrential rains hastened the need for immediate picking in most cases. The weather didn’t affect the region in a homogeneous way. Merlot was the biggest casualty in Medoc, yet Pomerol has produced some excellent wines. The rain was patchy and even neighbours were affected differently. The rain behaved like hail, said Bruno Borie, touching some properties; leaving others alone.

Some properties dealt better with the situation than others. As revenge for the 35 hour week, the worst weather occurred at the weekend, so some vineyards weren’t looked at between Friday and Monday morning. You can see the disparity in resources too. Mouton dragged everybody out of the offices, hired like crazy and had 850 pickers in the vines. But you couldn’t rush picking. All the sorting for botrytis (rot) had to be done in the vineyard. You can’t carry it back to the cellar or it affects all the wine. Further sorting was done outside the cellar door on tables, but this was the vintage that discovered the limitations of the optical sorting machine. It was found that these work best in vintages where you don’t need them! First, they are looking for healthy grapes, which they speed through, bashing them against a steel plate before dropping them onto the next belt. Secondly that bashing bursts the fragile fruit from a harvest like 2013. An interesting alternative was used at Quintus, where they measured the density of the grapes in a light sugar solution, scooping up the grapes from the bottom of the fish tank and discarding the floaters.

With thin skinned fruit the key to the undoubted winemaking successes that we tasted was intelligence in the winery. We’ve heard of wines that were over extracted, leaving bitter tannins and overcooked fruit, but because we are lucky and taste at the top of the Bordeaux pyramid came across little of this. Additionally, having read the ‘experts’ before we got there we were expecting to see a lot of unripe wines, which didn’t materialise in the tasting rooms. What we didn’t see was a parade of over ripe wines, which are arguably part of Parker’s legacy in Bordeaux. We had a long chat from Paul Pontallier in which he strongly implied that the drive for later and later picking had taken the region away from its natural identity and that in fact 2013 Ch Margaux is an archetype: it certainly is delicious. This is also a vintage in which the wines are far from finished. In a year’s time, depending on circumstances, a perfectly legal and quite pragmatic injection of 2014 or even 2012 may well be lifting the quality.

How shall we compare the wines? Obviously there is no unity of thought. John Kolasa at Rauzan-Segla thinks they are most like 2002, while at Leoville-Poyferre Didier Cuvelier is reminded of 2008. A frank opinion at Mouton said 1991, while Bruno Borie at Ducru has a sense of history, calling up 1966 or a good ’71 as his references. Palmer’s comparisons are drawn from the sixties too, ’64 and ’67 in their case. And their style?  Freshness and light tannins with delicate and often perfumed fruit bring to mind the deftness of our better Brunello producers and even Burgundy.

Bordeaux isn’t just about red wine of course and both dry and sweet whites have scored spectacular successes, with Yquem the likely wine of the vintage. In their different ways the Sauternes we tasted approached perfection. With white Burgundies at the top end getting so expensive, the dry wines provide a great amount of real value.

Is this true of the reds? We have waited a long time for Bordeaux to remember the reason why consumers buy en primeur, which is to secure the best wines at the best price with the best provenance. This hasn’t happened since the 2008 campaign. The trade and the general market are extremely sceptical about the 2013 vintage and investors certainly should avoid like the plague. However there is a great deal to like about the wines for those wanting claret to drink. This vintage is therefore all about money. Should the Chateaux price correctly, which would be unprecedented, then there are delicious wines to buy. Look for a 10% discount on the cheapest other available vintage for any wine that interests you.

How shall we compare the wines? Obviously there is no unity of thought. John Kolasa at Rauzan-Segla thinks they are most like 2002, while at Leoville-Poyferre Didier Cuvelier is reminded of 2008. A frank opinion at Mouton said 1991, while Bruno Borie at Ducru has a sense of history, calling up 1966 or a good ’71 as his references. Palmer’s comparisons are drawn from the sixties too, ’64 and ’67 in their case. And their style?  Freshness and light tannins with delicate and often perfumed fruit bring to mind the deftness of our better Brunello producers and even Burgundy. (CW 10/04/14)