Bordeaux 2010 Primeurs: Pessac-Léognan White Wines
The white wines are just as interesting this year, and here we continue in the same vein. Although I note Pessac-Léognan has come in for high praise from some quarters, the evidence from my tastings is not so straightforward. We should expect the wines to be right up my street, perhaps; after all, with an openly declared love of Savennières and other wines of the Loire, I am no stranger to acidity, and the story of 2010 is one of good acidity freshening up wines of firm substance. I found the wines to be more nuanced and the story of 2010 white Pessac-Léognan to be more complex than one of uniform success. It’s never simple, is it?
I have perennial favourites among the white Pessacs, beyond the undeniable but (for me, at least) also unaffordable greatness of the wines of Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion (the renamed Laville Haut-Brion). Domaine de Chevalier perhaps leads the pack, and the occasionally wanton Smith-Haut-Lafitte usually pleases, with its sometimes sweet and exotic array of fruit. Even Pape-Clément has impressed in the past, although such an oak-dependent style does warrant a different approach to cellaring. But in this vintage this trio, although turning out some very good wines, do not manage to set my palate alight with passion for them in the way that they have done in other recent vintages, years in which the fruit has perhaps been more finely sculpted by the acidity.
