Bordeaux 2008 at Four Years: Pessac-Léognan
In recent vintages Pessac-Léognan has offered us an increasingly diverse array of styles. Some châteaux are renowned for purity and intensity, some wines are more substantial yet remain taut, others smother their wines in layer after layer of buttery oak, the wines smelling more like freshly sawn barrel staves than anything to do with fruit, whereas in very recent vintages some wines are surprisingly dark and extracted. It does not quite engender the confused head-scratching that a line-up of wines from St Emilion can muster, but the teams at some châteaux seem to be trying hard to make it so. In short, this is no longer quite the homogenous appellation it was a few years ago. The 2008 vintage does nothing to dissuade me of this opinion; it is a vintage in which this commune has always, ever since my first taste during the primeurs, displayed some variability. Tasting the wines at the Institute of Masters of Wine in November 2012 brought me to the same conclusion; some wines displayed the character of the vintage, whereas some were perhaps more true to what can only be described as a ‘house style’.
Undoubtedly the leader in terms of quality was Château Haut-Brion, a hugely impressive wine which took just 35% of the harvest in this vintage. You might argue it is something of a no-brainer that a first growth should dominate, but that is not the case; certainly, in my subsequent write-ups of the Haut-Médoc communes, you will be able to find the occasional first growth outclassed or matched by one of its ‘lesser’ rivals. That is not the case here in Pessac-Léognan, however, where this wine towers above the competition, including its stablemate Château La Mission Haut-Brion in this vintage. It has concentration and substance, not characteristics with which many wines are heavily imbued in 2008, on the left bank at least, and also a good frame and definition of the fruit. Looking back at my notes made during the primeur tastings I see I regarded it as a candidate for wine of the vintage at the time, so there seems to be some consistency in my opinion here.
