Bordeaux 2007 at Ten Years: St Julien
Some left bank communes have read the script to this vintage, and we can count St Julien among their number. In many vintages my personal preferences on the left bank draw me to the wines of this commune, and also its neighbour Pauillac, and on the whole certainly these two feature much more in my cellar than St Estèphe or Margaux. Nevertheless, it has to be said that in 2007 both communes transmit very readily the difficulties of the vintage.
These are wines laced, just like those in 2007 Pauillac, with the greener methoxypyrazine notes that act as a marker for the vintage, coming through again as herbaceous sage, thyme and mint notes, occasionally veering off into capsicum (bell pepper) and vegetal celery-like notes which indicate a serious deficiency in ripeness. Along with this comes the strident acidity of the vintage; I am not sure I can remember writing the word ‘fresh’ so many times during a tasting. The wines tend to combine this forward acidity with a leaner substance, the trademark structural profile of 2007, giving them vibrancy and a sense of piquancy which is sometimes confident and convincing, but more commonly the wines feel light and delicate, held back by the inadequacies of the growing season.
Again terroir won through, with the gravelly vineyards closer to the Gironde producing some of the better wines, including a surprisingly dark and sweet 2007 Château Léoville-Las-Cases and a perfumed 2007 Château Léoville-Barton, the latter brimming with the savoury scents of dried blackcurrant skins. Château Léoville-Poyferré and Château Branaire-Ducru also showed fairly well taking into account the nature of the vintage, but the commune also has its fair share of weaker wines. I could happily buy and drink the better wines from this commune, if they were at the right price, which seems extraordinarily unlikely.
