Bordeaux 2011 at Four Years: Pomerol
I come now to the final red wine instalment of this 2011 Bordeaux report, looking at the wines of Pomerol in this vintage. Building upon the thoughts expressed in my 2011 St Emilion report, this appellation should also have the Merlot advantage. In addition, perhaps here we can regard the terroir as being a little more consistent; the focus here is gravel and it has none of the limestone, and although it does have some sandier soils at the bottom of the slope the châteaux featured here are largely on the more desirable gravel sections. Finally, there is no tendency to follow the same mantra of long hang-time and aggressive extraction here.
As a consequence quality should be a little more consistent here, and indeed this does seem to be the case, with more wines of genuine interest. As a whole they feel more convincing than those tasted in St Emilion. To be fair, though, the châteaux here are perhaps playing at a slightly higher level than those in my St Emilion report. While we have no Petrus and Le Pin, and numerous other notable absentees such as Château Le Gay, Château Lafleur, Château L’Église-Clinet and the like, there are plenty of notable names.
