Bordeaux 2009 at Two Years: St Emilion & Pomerol
As far as my early Bordeaux education went, my palate spent many years getting accustomed to the wines of the left bank before, other than the occasional taste of a few high flying properties such as Vieux Château Certan, I really began to get to grips with the right bank. Chatting about this with a French-American citizen who works in the wine industry in Bordeaux recently, he said to me, with a twinkle in his eye:
“I think the left bank is for the
British, whereas the right bank
is for Americans. And Belgians“.
I’ve never been comfortable in making any comment on ‘national’ tendencies as far as wine consumption is concerned, as I think stereotypical concepts such as the ‘American’ and the ‘British’ palates are, despite the tongue-in-cheek comment within my introduction to this 2009 report, fallacious. Nevertheless, I think there is a long-standing association – going back many centuries – between British claret drinkers and the wines of the left bank, and hence my early Bordeaux experiences did tend to feature Léoville-Barton and Gruaud-Larose much more than they did Larmande or La Gaffelière. Perhaps this is why Figeac, which seems to have so much more in common with the left bank (Cabernet dominance, gravelly terroir) than many of its St Emilion peers frequently appeals so much to my palate.
