Bordeaux 2010

En Primeur Trip Report Black Teeth, Horse-drawn Spraying Machines, and Blood Pancake

March 2010, Bordeaux.......

Its raining. Hard. Its freezing. The wind is blowing sleet at us horizontally. Oh lordy lord, I thought we were

off to the sunny south for a break from the British winter. Only packed my shorts and some factor 50. Now,

how to get to Pauillac? The road is virtually cut off from all the flooding. Should have maybe thought this

through a bit better .....

March 2011, Bordeaux.......

Well, we’ve come prepared this time. Arctic survival gear, waders and small dinghy. Never knew BA was so

flexible with hand baggage. Now, wheres our Hertz Snowplough?

Ah, it seems to be 30 degrees with unbroken blue skies. Hmmmm.

And so started the en primeur week for the Bordeaux 2010 vintage, when half the world’s wine trade

descends on Bordeaux to sip, swill, slurp and spit through the products of last years crop.

This report isn’t intended to be a even slightly complete guide to the vintage, but instead is an opportunity

for me wax lyrical about the stuff we loved and get all frowny about the stuff we didn’t. Its also intended to

show how hard we work on your behalf, and so is scattered with other non-wine happenings, such as who

has the prettiest light fittings, which chateau makes the best food, and which estate hires the prettiest

guides (Haut Brion, of course)

Latour in the sunshine. Luberly jubbly.

Vintage Overview – The Growing Conditions, and Style Guide

2010 arrived, surprisingly, straight after 2009, a season which had delighted the bordelaise with hot

weather and an almost perfect growing season. They couldn’t do it again could they?

Well, yes and no. In spite of the flooding due to the tail end of a hurricane when we visited, Bordeaux 2010

was actually pretty dry and cold to begin with, allowing a regular and relatively easy bud break. Partial

drought and relatively cool conditions made flowering a little uneven. June was then really wet, actually not

a bad time for it to rain as its before the grapes really get going so rot wasn’t a problem. This rain in June

was pretty much the last rain of the whole season, very unlike the summer in England.

There then followed an extremely long and very dry ripening period, lasting until a harvest that only ended

in November for some estates. If it had been as hot as 2009, the vines would have had real problems, but

actually temperatures were pretty moderate so ripening went extremely well with the grapes able to retain

their acidity more easily than in 2009.

These conditions led to big stylistic differences to the wines from 2009:

Tannins: much higher as the grapes were small due to the drought and the length of the season led to very

thick skins.

Acidity: much higher than 2009, for the same reason

Alcohol: maybe a little less overall than 2009 on average, but still pretty high

Fruit: full and rich, balancing all of the above off beautifully

So, unlike the easy voluptuousness of 2009, 2010 reds are much more classic and will need a lot more time

to become ready to drink. Some of these wines will last many decades, and some will require that amount

of time to reach maturity. Time will tell if 2010 becomes the equal or superior to 2009, but the signs are

good, with some wines having amazing structure, fruit and balance.

For us, the watchword of the vintage is tannin. Some properties decided to go for broke with long

macerations and lots of extraction, but for us these wines tended to lack charm and balance and will take

so long to come around that they are more for your grandchildren than you. Frankly, we reckon life is too

short for this kind of patience, so have instead concentrated on offering wines that were made with a

lighter hand and which have more joie de vivre. They will still take quite a while to be ready, but we think

they will be classics.

Monday April 4th 2011

Arrive on the evening flight from Gatwick. BA is great, in complete contrast to our Easyjet nightmare of last

year.

Pick up the hire car. Phew, its too expensive to add another driver, so Simon will have to do it all. At least

Matt won’t be driving, his double accelerate and brake thingy was a little too exciting last year. Now, I can’t

say that I remember checking the condition of the car, but there were definitely a few scratches here and

there.....

Into Bordeaux to stay at the extremely unluxurious Le Chantry, which smelled of a curious mixture of ear

wax, bleach and mildew. Well, it has clean beds and fewer mosquitos than our hotel last year, so not all

bad. Apologies all round for me forgetting to bring the Sat Nav. This way we can get more familiar with our

surroundings, although we have to get up an hour or so earlier than would be strictly required otherwise.

Dinner next door at “Le Bistrot du Sommelier” Intriguing name. Matt and I made a little mistake by ordering

the rillette to begin with, curiously seasoned with raw garlic. Ah, France.

Tuesday April 5th 2011

Early start, off to Chateau Lascombes for the Union des Grands Cru Margaux tasting.

Strangely, we didn’t get lost. We did however have a slight run-in with a rose bush at the front of the

chateau, but if you don’t tell Hertz or Lascombes, neither will we. Simon claims that it jumped at him. This

is before any wine has passed his lips. I think he was just getting excited.

Lascombes – notice the lack of rose bushes

Margaux – an overview

Many critics have been full of praise for the wines of Margaux this year. Maybe it was just because we

hadn’t encountered the tannic ferocity of the vintage before, but we were a little less impressed than most,

finding too many wines with burly, somewhat aggressive structure. Having said this, some of the wines

were excellent:

Simon gets sniffy

Top Notch

Giscours. Brilliant this year, best of the tasting for us.

Brane Cantenac

Rauzan Segla

Malescot St Exupery

Great Value (probably!)

Rauzan Gassies

Pontac Lynch

Siran

Avoidable

Durfort Vivens, Monbrison

Right, off to lunch with Ulysse Cazabonne, a negociant based in Margaux.

Oysters with Doisy Daene Sec, and a lifetime supply of Petrus 2000

at Ulysses Cazabonne, worth a mere £40,000 per case

These negociant tastings are great – they have many of the estates that don’t get shown at the UGC tastings and are much less crowded.

We tasted a range of Cru Bourgeois and similar throughout the week, but many of them were here, so this feels like a sensible place for the summary:

Listrac, Moulis and Haut Medoc

This is the area to look for value this year – many wines were clearly of cru classé standard and in many cases significantly better.

Top Notch and Great Value

Cissac – our pick for best value wine of the vintage, and a real joy. We actually trecked over to

Cissac on our last day (just after Lafite) so that we could taste this as it wasn’t being shown

elsewhere, but boy are we glad we did. We loved the 2009, but this was even better. All three of us

will be buying a case this year, more than we can say about any of the other wines. We actually

scored this higher than Lynch Bages (which is saying something)

La Tour de By – often I’m not that keen on this wine, but this year its lovely and shouldn’t be very

dear either.

Poujeaux

Cantemerle – usually really good, and again it comes up trumps this year

Haut Madrac – never heard of it, but it was lovely

Other Successes

Fonreaud, Maucaillou, Caronne St Gemme, Camensac, Sociando Mallet, Tour St Bonnet

Avoidable

Beaumont, Lanessan

Right, no rest of the wicked, so off we pop across the Gironde to Saint Emilion and Pomerol.

St Emilion

I’ll come straight to the point with Saint Emilion – we didn’t particularly like them. There seems to be a worrying tendency to go for very high alcohol and very high extraction with most of the wines here, and this really didn’t suit the merlots in 2010 in our opinion. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some very good wines, but in general they are the top estates and will be very expensive.

Expensive but Very Good

Canon La Gaffeliere

La Gaffeliere

Canon

Figeac

Clos Fourtet

strangely, Pavie Macquin

Clos la Madeleine

apparently Ausone and Cheval Blanc were very good, but we didn’t taste them as we reckon our view on these hyper expensive wines isn’t of much relevancy

Avoidable

Most of the others. We would be tempted to include Troplong Mondot here, but I admit than many people would enjoy its massive, creamy style. Just not really our style.

Pomerol

I’ll come straight to the point with Pomerol – we liked them. Not sure why the wines seemed so very different to those across the road, but possibly the heavy clay soils helped to retain water better and thus lend some balance. Anyway, virtually everything here was good or excellent, so only the special ones that will cost less than £3k a case are getting a mention:

Excellent

La Conseillante

Gazin

Clinet

La Croix de Gay

Feytit Clinet

Fayat

And so the end of a busy first day. After scraping our teeth for an hour or so, we popped out for a decent steak and beer with another negociant in Bordeaux city and called it a day.

Wednesday April 6th 2011

For the morning, we headed up to Chateau Belgrave in the Haut Medoc to spend the morning tasting with another Negociant, CVBG. Here we had a brilliantly organised tasting and managed to get through about a hundred wines from the lesser communes as well as confirming to ourselves that St Emilion in general was rubbish. Along with the Pessac tasting that we did the next morning, it also provided us with our best chance of sampling the dry and sweet whites of the vintage:

Bordeaux Blanc Sec 2010

It seems that 2010 was a successful vintage for the dry whites – loads of refreshing acidity and good fruit balance.

Excellent

La Mission Haut Brion Blanc. We tasted this at Haut Brion on our last day, but it could be argued that it was the best wine of the whole week. Whats stranger, is that on paper it sounds rubbish – high alcohol, syrupy texture, quite low acidity. Put those together, and what do you get? White wine perfection. Reminded me of a great Le Montrachet with a bit more of everything. Gimme some. Will be horrifically expensive though, so I will have to dream on.

Domaine de Chevalier Blanc. Yet again, a brilliant wine, and relative bargain when compared to the above.

Doisy Daene Sec

Clos Floridene

Latour Martillac

Chateau Olivier

Sauternes and Barsac

Again, a very different style to 2009, with a more classical balance – more freshness and less opulent fruit than 2009. Generally these are very successful. A summary of the best cheaper ones follows:

Excellent

Rayne Vigneau

La Tour Blanche

De Fargues

Coutet

Doisy Vedrines

Doisy Daene

De Malle

OK, enough wine stuff, off to Pauillac centre for a really dirty lunch:

Duck pizza. Classy stuff.

We then dashed over to Chateau Batailley and then off to the Union des Grands Cru tasting for Pauillac, St Julien

and St Estephe. Blimey

The wine trade working hard after lunch at Branaire Ducru

These areas represent the core of the left bank, and often provides the bulk of the wines that are purchased en

primeur, so we avoided the sunshine, and got stuck straight in with Saint Julien:

Saint Julien

Overall, this was a great vintage for Saint Julien. Most of the wines combined a fresh sappy fruit with lovely

structure and length, and will make incredible wine for the future.

Top Notch

Leoville Barton – a brilliant success for this vintage. Really lovely.

Gruaud Larose

Branaire Ducru – not usually a superstar, but very good wine this year

Beychevelle – again can often be a bit up and down, but very good this year if not quite at the level of

Leoville Barton

Relative Value

Langoa Barton

Talbot

Avoid

St Pierre

Lagrange

Strangely, we weren’t all that keen on Leoville Poyferré either. We only managed to try it once

though so maybe it should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Pauillac

Again, Pauillac is on top form this year. Perhaps it’s the terroir, or perhaps just that weight of investment in the

vineyards and wineries that mean that it always seems to overperform, but yet again the Pauillacs shone.

Top Notch

Batailley – deserves top spot because it was both lovely and will also be relatively inexpensive. Bright red

fruits with a core of smooth tannin and real tastyness. Brilliant success.

Pichon Baron – we narrowly preferred this to Pichon Lalande this year, although both are great wines

Pichon Lalande

Pontet Canet – we tasted this the next day at the chateau. In honesty we were a little less taken with it

than we were last year, but there is no doubt that it is a cracking wine

Lynch Bages

Grand Puy Lacoste

Great Value (probably)

Pedesclaux – again made a lovely wine despite their lowly reputation, now rapidly improving

Haut Bages Monpelou

Lynch Moussas – one of the least well known cru classés. Good stuff.

Avoidable

Grand Puy Ducasse – this should really be better than it is. Very tannic and chunky. It won’t even be that

cheap.

St Estephe

You are going to have to love your tannins to enjoy the St Estephes this year. On balance, we would probably avoid

them as they are incredibly structured, and whilst they may eventually be lovely wines, we think you may have to

wait 30 years for this to be clear.

Very Good

Ormes de Pez

Lillian Ladouys

Cos Labory

Just too tannic

Phelan Segur – Matt actually liked this, but then again the picture at the front of this report is of him

immediately after he tasted it. Ask yourself two things

o would you trust a man like this?

o Do you want your teeth to look like his in that photo?

So, after that tannin fest, we felt like we needed a treat to perk us up, so decided to go to La Tupina, a traditional

south-western restaurant in Bordeaux city centre that is good for the spirit, but bad for the diet. Simon kicked

things off with a blood pancake:

An appetising looking plate of congealed blood and a bottle of Abreu Copella 2006

Strangely, that plate of blood was much better than the bottle of wine sitting beside it. We had brought a very

decent bottle of Ormes de Pez 1989, but after polishing it off, the owner of Chateau de Fieuzal kindly donated the

Abreu to us after he had tried it and not enjoyed it. Now Abreu is not cheap, like £400 not cheap. Robert Parker

would have you believe that this wine illustrates why some Californian vineyards are better managed and have

grander sites than their European counterparts. This may well be the case, but certainly not with this wine. Like

sucking blackcurrant flavoured olive oil. As they would say in Norn Iron, thats just boke. And off to bed.

Thursday April 7th 2011

An exciting day ahead, with three first growths on the itinery. First up, Chateau Latour.

A horse doing the biodynamic thang at Latour

Looks a bit like a 1980’s teapot, actually it’s a light fixing with the vines in the background.

In honesty, I don’t think there is much point in me telling you our views on the first growths – they will sell out

based on the views of Robert Parker, and will cost a fortune. They are very lovely wines (particularly Lafite), and I

suspect that we will rarely if ever get a chance to try them again based on their likely prices.

You would think that given how financially successful these properties are, they could tart up the signage a bit

though wouldn’t you?:

Lafite – clearly needs a few bob.

No sign of any Chinese interest at Lafite

Who decided to pack a double breasted woolen suit for 30 degree temperatures?

Carruades was annoyingly good. Lafite predictably so.

After Lafite we popped over to Cissac which was the probably the best spent 30 minutes I’ve had in the last year,

and then went to uber-hot chateau of the moment, the recently biodynamic Pontet Canet.

Lunch at Pontet Canet – we initially thought that this might have been the Hong Kong skyline which would have

been a bit cheesy, but actually its New York. No idea why its there though. The Foie gras here was amazing.

What a curious mixture – a horse-drawn spraying machine. Not for chemicals of course, just potions.

After tasting and lunch, we drove south of Bordeaux for the Pessac and Graves tasting at Malartic Lagraviere:

Pessac Leognan and Graves Reds

Before arriving at Malartic, we weren’t that hopeful for the wines – Pessac tends to be warmer than the rest of

bordeaux and so can have pretty high alcohols and low acids, not a pretty combination with high tannin. However

we were pleasantly surprised with a number of really good wines, if not quite as consistent as the Medoc:

Very Good

Domaine de Chevalier

Latour Martillac

Pape Clement (if you like them rich and modern)

Avoidable

Chateau de France

Bouscaut

Smith Haut Lafitte

And so were are almost done. Off to Haut Brion (well we actually turned up at La Mission before realising that we

should have been across the road), to taste another immaculate series of wines. Better than that though, Simon

got to sit on a statue of a lion, something hes always wanted to do:

Ride ‘em, Cowboy

And so we finished, tired, sore mouthed, but generally invigorated by the quality of the wines.

So how to decide on what to buy I hear you ask?

Well, we aren’t called The Sampler for nothing, so we are currently organising the shipping of loads barrel samples

of the wines that we liked so that you lot can try them on the tasting machines. There should be 40 or more, so you

will get a very good chance to see for yourself and help to make your mind up.

In the meantime, if you think you are up for some purchasing, please fill in the wishlist thats on our website, and

we will subscribe you to our en-primeur email offers list. These emails will come out as soon as the prices are

released, and you will need to respond very quickly to secure what you want.

Summary

Best Red Wine

Lafite

Best Relatively Affordable Red Wine

Batailley, honourable mentions to Leoville Barton and Giscours

Best Cheap Red Wine

Cissac, honourable mention to La Tour de By

Best Dry White

La Mission Haut Brion Blanc

Best Relatively Affordable Dry White

Domaine de Chevalier

Most Consistent Commune

Saint Julien, honourable mentions to Pomerol and Pauillac

Least Consistent Commune

Saint Emilion

Most Avoidable Wine

Grand Puy Ducasse