Bordeaux 2007 at Ten Years: St Emilion
The damp and drizzly summer that marked the 2007 vintage came to a fairly abrupt end in late August, after which all Bordeaux enjoyed some fine, dry and sunny weather, with only the occasional light and inconsequential shower, through September and October. This gave the vines two months to ripen their grapes. Two months to save the vintage.
I have already written that, despite the fact that Cabernet Sauvignon ripens later than Merlot (and therefore you might think it at a disadvantage in a vintage where the number one difficulty was ripening the fruit), the 2007 vintage was one that tended to favour the late-ripener over the early-ripener. This will always be the case in vintages where summer has been cool, drizzly and disadvantageous, for the crop to then be saved by a late Indian summer, a pattern that is not unique to 2007 (2014, for example, followed the same script). This is because grapes ripen in a number of different ways, including technical ripeness (the rising sugar concentration), physiological ripeness (the maturity of the tannins, associated with the shifting of the pips and stems from green to brown) and in the case of the Cabernet family (Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and others) there is also methoxypyrazine ripeness, the gradual degradation of methoxypyrazine, source of all those green, herbaceous, minty, bell pepper flavours, over time.
As the clouds parted on August 30th and the bell rang, signifying the start of the ripening race, the Merlot and Cabernet vines began their work. But it is physiological ripeness as much as sugar concentration that determines when the fruit has to be picked, a point that comes more quickly with Merlot than it does with the Cabernets; so if the Merlots demand picking in September, after three or four weeks of sunshine, yet the Cabernets can be left until late October or November, it isn’t too hard to figure out which variety has more time to sort out its tannins and methoxypyrazines. While the 2007 was a generally difficult vintage, some corners of Bordeaux were certainly more disadvantaged than others. The corners with more Merlot in particular.
