Bordeaux 2007 at Four Years: St Estèphe & Pauillac
I started this tasting of the 2007 Bordeaux with low expectations, and by the time I had tasted the first eight wines from Pessac-Léognan, all fresh, crisp and rather light, my outlook had certainly not changed. I wasn’t expecting much relief as I moved onto the wines of the Médoc communes.
When drinking at home, low expectations can sometimes be beneficial, as you may find unexpected pleasures. You pull a ten-year old Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon from the cellar, unintentionally overlooked for far too long, and expect it to be lean and disjointed. Instead you find something surprisingly integrated and harmonious, and the unexpected nature of this finding tends to reinforce the pleasure of the experience. You naturally find yourself picking out all the good qualities, and perhaps overlooking the fact that, despite all this unhoped-for joy, the wine is still a fairly basic one.
I think it is important to acknowledge this happens. And, in fact, it is one of the joys of cellaring wine; sometimes a simple wine can exceed our expectations. But when it comes to reviewing wine, it is important to not fall into this same mindset. We are not drinking unprepossessing petits vins here; these are the grand vins of Bordeaux, wrapped up in their self-important history and prestige, and wearing very high price tags. Let us thus remain objective, and not fall into the trap of scoring wines too highly simply because they aren’t quite the disappointments we half-expected.
