Bordeaux 2007 at Ten Years
My annual examination of the Bordeaux vintage celebrating its tenth birthday has brought some good times in recent years. After all, who would complain at being presented with a collection of wines from 2005, or indeed any of the region’s great vintages, ready to be tasted at ten years of age? And who would reject the opportunity to examine some of the region’s ‘lost’ vintages, years such as 2004 and 2006 which do not have a strong image or identity, but which are nevertheless brimming with overlooked buying and drinking opportunities?
But in wine there is karma, a need for the universe to balance itself. For every vintage of strength and confidence there is one that is, to be frank, weaker. For every 2005 there is a 2002, for every 2010 there is a 2012. Quite what sort of vintage you would need to provide karmic balance for the washout that was 2013 I am not quite sure, but I think you get the idea. There are great vintages, middling vintages, and weaker vintages, and such is the nature of time and the universe that they all, unfailingly, in quite orderly fashion, eventually achieve ten years of age, and the aim of this report is to see just how kind those ten years have been. Are the wines fit as a fiddle and well-priced, like a number of wines in my 2006 Bordeaux at Ten Years report last year? Or are they gasping their last, lean and wheezy wines in need of urgent drinking up? My concern, as I set my sights on the 79 wines featured in this report on the 2007 vintage, which was one of the more challenging years for the Bordelais this century, is that the latter scenario was more likely than the former.
Vintage Recap
Any worries we might have about the 2007 vintage stem from the very earliest of tastings, and of course from the nature of the season itself. Briefly, the 2007 growing season began with a slightly early but erratic budbreak, during some rather cool weather in late March, locking in an equally erratic flowering and véraison, so the vintage was always going to be problematic. This was followed by record-breaking warm weather in April, and so the vines surged ahead, which at least stood them in good stead for what was to come, a prolonged period of cool and wet weather that lingered over the vineyards throughout June, July and August.
