Bordeaux 2007 at Four Years: St Emilion & Pomerol
Moving on from the left bank communes we now come to the two principal right bank appellations of St Emilion and Pomerol. In a number of vintages – classic examples being 2008, 2001 and 1998 in my opinion, although there are other vintages where this is true – the right bank communes can outshine those on the left. In other years, of which the leading example is surely 1996, the left bank communes reign supreme. In 2007, for the red wine communes at least, few such distinctions are really valid (except to say that they all outperformed Margaux). On the right bank, however, it does seem that these wines are very slightly favoured, although I don’t think the effect is strong enough for us to label 2007 as a right-bank vintage akin to some of those listed above. There are no great success stories here in this vintage.
Having said that, as is the case with most of the left bank communes, we have here a collection of wines which have turned out better than anyone might have imagined was possible from reading the original harvest reports, testament to the hard work put in by Bordeaux’s many vineyard managers and technical directors. That is not to say, however, that this is a vintage crammed with great but under-appreciated wines; it is more that a growing season like that seen in 2007 would once have been a comprehensive washout characterised by a spread of dilute and unripe wines – think 1992, or 1984 – but instead wines that were at least drinkable were made. So to be clear, although better than expected, many wines still display the weaknesses of the vintage, a handful appallingly so, and as always the issue of prices – universally these were too high from the moment the wines were released – has to be thrown into the ‘buy or avoid’ equation.
