Bordeaux 2008 Primeurs: Pessac-Léognan
We tumbled off the plane at Mérignac ready to taste, and our first stop was Smith-Haut-Lafitte for a tasting of the wines of Pessac-Léognan. Three groups – in three different vehicles – were due to converge in the car park, but due to some delays in collecting our hire cars we were already behind schedule when setting out. Fortunately the Rocade, the Bordeaux ring road, was unusually quiet, and we made it to the Cathiard estate with a reasonable if not ideal amount of tasting time in hand. Fortunately I was able to top up my Pessac exposure at other times during the week, at Château Brown with the members of Bordeaux Oxygène (young, next-generation châteaux proprietors), and later at La Mission Haut Brion; this also meant I could retaste one or two wines, always a valuable practice during the primeurs assessments.
The Graves region is unusual in Bordeaux in that it, excluding lesser appellations such as AC Bordeaux Blanc and Entre-Deux-Mers, it is the only region where decent volumes of dry white wine are made alongside the red. As such the region deserves some specific consideration; it was one of the worst affected by the April frost, and so yields here tend towards lower values, with considerably less than 30 hl/ha for the white vines on many estates. For the reds here, as elsewhere, many estates brought in less than 40 hl/ha, a huge reduction. Nevertheless, although small, the Graves harvest ran fairly smoothly, although naturally it was more stretched out here than elsewhere, as the white varieties are picked before the reds. Work got underway on the whites in the first week of September and continued throughout the month, although most was in before the vines were able to take advantage of the good weather when it arrived later in the month. The opposite was true for the reds; the Merlots were picked first followed by the Cabernets, with the majority of the fruit coming in during the warm and beneficial month of October.
