Bordeaux 2010 at Two Years: Then and Now
The dry white wines did very well, any thickening of the skins of no real relevance here because of key differences in way whites are made, and the freshening acidities did much to lift the substantial body of many of the wines. As for the sweet wines, this is also a great vintage, but Sauternes and Barsac has more variables than I care to try and cover here, and so I will save the detail for my later report on those communes. What of the red wines, then?
Looking back two years, the wines were a pleasure to taste en primeur, in most cases. But what quickly became apparent was that, on the left bank and in Pessac-Léognan, there was a tendency towards higher levels of Cabernet Sauvignon. I acknowledge that some châteaux bucked the trend, and produced wines of a fairly standard composition, but the Merlot tales of the vintage were legion. Some plots of Merlot at Château Margaux came in at 16%; the final blend at Château Mouton-Rothschild featured the highest ever concentration (94%) of Cabernet Sauvignon; visitors to Château Calon-Ségur were poured the Cabernet-dominant grand vin first, the more brawny, Merlot-dominant second wine following on, not the usual tasting order but one that showed the wines best. And so on. And as for the right bank, I sensed the greatest elegance and success in the Cabernet Franc superstars, wines like Château Ausone and Château Cheval Blanc, two wines very different in style but certain successes. Some châteaux did somehow manage to produce lovely Merlot-dominant wines, so as always a vintage generalisation quickly shows itself to be flawed. But, as a rule of thumb, thinking of 2010 as predominantly a Cabernet-vintage remains valid.
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